The First Christmas Pageant Ever

This afternoon we went to the Rome Little Theater production of “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.” It is a great Christmas classic and the production was excellent. Allison played the role of Grace Bradley, and she and her fellow thespians did a great job.  

Tonight as I am reflecting on the play, I am thinking about an experience that could be called “The First Christmas Pageant Ever.”

One Christmas in Burkina Faso, our kids, our colleagues’ kids and some volunteers decided to have a live nativity during a Christmas Eve program at the church closest to our home. All the believers in our churches were first generation Christians, so the kids wanted to show the villagers what a Christmas pageant was all about.

Amanda was four at the time, and she was chosen to be Mary. She was excited after we explained what she was going to do. She had never seen a live nativity, much less participated in one.

The other four MKs and the Tennessee played the parts of the shepherds, wise men, and angels.

As usual we were on “African time,” so we waited at our house for some of the church members to come get us when all the people had gathered. It was late when they finally came and told us that we were ready to begin the service. Cheryl had to stay at home with baby Allison who was asleep by that time, and as we were leaving our home to walk the short distance to the church, Cheryl told Amanda to go to her room and get a baby to be the baby Jesus. Amanda came back with a baby all wrapped up with a blanket and cuddling it in her arms. When we arrived at the church, Amanda went to be with the other pageant participants.

Amanda was sitting on the front bench—mud brick church with a tin roof and a dirt floor—with the rest of the pageant players. There was no electricity in the church, so we had set up a portable generator earlier. We had three lights hanging in the church for the Christmas Eve program.

When it came time for the pageant Amanda was holding the baby very close to her body and wrapped in a blanket, and then she gingerly place the baby into the manger. When the shepherds gathered around the manger, they started laughing. That was odd. Why were they laughing when this was such a serious moment? Then I looked more closely and saw why it was so funny. Lying in the manger representing baby Jesus was Smurfette—that’s right, the bright blue toy with blonde hair.

Later I reflected on the oddity that all the Americans at the service laughed at the thought of having a stuffed blue toy representing baby Jesus while none of the villagers even laughed when the baby Smurfette was placed in the manger.

This was the villagers’ first Christmas Eve pageant, and from their reactions, you would have thought that we had been at a Broadway production. All the villagers were so excited about everything. Since they had never experienced anything like this in their lives, they really did not know what to expect. For them they were pretending anyway, so a blue Jesus was nothing unusual—especially since none of the village girls even owned any kind of a doll or stuffed toy.

In our culture we don’t like surprises about things that we have grown accustomed to seeing and experiencing. During this Christmas season as you experience pageants, cantatas, music productions, and other special services, pretend that it is the first one you have ever seen. Don’t go to Christmas services with an attitude that you are a veteran attender or with a spirit of a scrooge. Don’t go to criticize people or music or costumes or decorations—just go and enjoy and let yourself get carried away with the celebration of the birth of the Savior of the world. This could be your best Christmas season ever.

Perfect

During my time with my dad in Colorado recently, we were having breakfast at a hotel and reading the morning paper. My dad pointed out to me a headline in the Denver Post about the devastating typhoon that hit the Philippines. The headline read, “Imperfect Man, Perfect Storm.” His immediate reaction was, “They got it right about man, but there is no perfect storm. There is only a perfect God.”

I don’t know about you but I have been listening to see how many times I hear the word perfect used. I have heard it used twice this week—once when I gave a clerk the correct change and she said, “Perfect.” My thoughts were Wow, her standards are low if that’s all it takes to score a perfect. I told someone that I was going to be 15 minutes late for a meeting, and their reply was “Perfect!” I wondered what they would have said if I had been on time?!

Baseball fans will immediately think of the perfect game—when all the batters of the opposing team are retired without a hit or a run or without any player reaching first base. It is essentially 27 batters up to the plate and 27 batters out.

When I was in high school the perfect grade was 100. But help me with this one: What is a perfect score for our high school students today. I hear frequently of high school graduates with grade point averages like 104 or 107.67. Whatever happened to 100? I thought that was the perfect grade. It wasn’t very often that I received a perfect score of 100. So, if 100 is a perfect score, then what is 106?

As I usually do when I get enthralled with a word, I looked up the word “perfect” in some online dictionaries. I found this in more than one dictionary: having no mistakes or flaws; completely correct or accurate. This definition really says more of what I was looking for with this post: Lacking nothing; essential to the whole; complete of its nature or kind.

We have all heard someone say “perfect baby” or “my daughter is just perfect.” I know those are expressions and are used loosely, but we use a lot of words inaccurately.

While I can live with the sloppy way we use and abuse words, I am really hung up on this word perfect as used in the Bible. The real challenge for me is that the Scripture demands us believers to be perfect: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). I don’t know about you, but that verse is a tough one for me. If the goal is perfection then what hope is there for anyone?

Jesus was not establishing a new standard for us with that verse because God had already outlined it for us in Leviticus 11:44: “…you shall be holy, for I am holy.” God’s standard for us who bear the name of Christ in our lives has always been perfect holiness. That is a heavy truth!

I believe that God gave us the goal to be perfect so we would never stop trying to attain it. In the life to come, perfection will be our possession and experience forever and ever. Oh that will be glory for me—I am singing that tune as I form these words.

Now I am convicted myself: I have to spend more time working on attaining that level of holiness that God wants me to reach instead of focusing all my efforts on waiting to possess perfection when I reach glory.

Memories

During this past week I was talking with Dr. John G. McCall who has been a mentor for me since I was 19. I always enjoy our phone calls as he is always teaching me. This past week he talked about memories. He said that he has outlived all of his peers (96 years old), so all he has are memories of his peers.

On Saturday my dad flew from Memphis to Denver (all alone and no spring chicken himself!), and we have just finished a few days together traveling around the Rocky Mountains. He had never seen this part of the country, so we had a great time taking the cog railway up Pikes Peak, touring the Air Force Academy, and many more sites. It was a sweet time and we made some memories such as stopping in the city limits of Estes Park for a herd of 75 elk to cross the street and breathing the 20 degree air at 14.100 feet.

The Bible talks a lot about the importance of memories. Pete and I read Deuteronomy 8:1-4 during our adventure. This is a passage about remembering the Lord our God. The writer is urging the Israelites to remember the way the Lord took care of them during the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness of the Sinai. They were admonished to remember how good the Lord was to them so that they might be humbled before God. The amazing scenery that we have witnessed these past few days has been a constant reminder of the grandeur of God, and I have felt humbled before the majesty of our Creator.

I am sitting on the plane on the return flight from Denver, and I am sitting next to Pete, my dad. We just realized that this is the first time in our lives that we have ever flown on a plane together. I am thinking, “Why did I wait so long?”

Get busy making some memories!

Syria

I am distressed over what is and has been happening in Syria. Millions of people have fled their homes in fear of losing their lives. Many are reporting that this could be the worst humanitarian disaster of our time. This crisis has been going on for TWO AND A HALF YEARS. Six thousand Syrians are fleeing their country every day.

One in five people in Lebanon is a Syrian refugee. One in seven in Jordan is a Syrian refugee.

In addition to the 1.6 million refugees in neighboring and other countries, according to the UNHCR, there are 4.5 million IDPs (internally displaced people; those who are victims of the war, but they have not escaped to another country). Refugees are generally people who flee their own country because of persecution or oppression.

As the situation gets worse there are two things that are most appalling to me: US media almost ignores this tragedy, and American believers are giving so little to help these people.

A worker In the Middle East has produced this short video telling the story of one family who has been a victim of evil people vying for political power in Syria:

https://vimeo.com/66150049

Please take four and a half minutes to view this story. If you are moved by this story and by the plight of the Syrian people, do not give out of guilt, but give out of a thankful heart that you have been so blessed. If you give to Baptist Global Response (https://gobgr.org/), one hundred per cent of your gift will go to help Syrian refugees—none to administration. No other relief agency—Christian or other—can make that promise.

Who loves the Syrians? If you ask that question many people will respond, “The Russians because they are so aligned with other Shiite Muslims.” Others will say, “The terrorists because they are supporting the rebel factions in Syria.” One thing for sure God loves Syrians—just as much as He loves you and me.

Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight…

Ton Tenga Morning

I had difficultly leaving home this morning because of this view from our deck. "And I pleaded with the Lord at that time saying, O Lord God, you have only begun to show your servant your greatness and your mighty hand. For what god is there in heaven or on earth who can do such works and mighty acts as yours?" Deuteronomy 3:23-24

Thank you, Lord, for letting me witness your hand in your creation each and every day.

Pray-er

It was May, 1991, and the Soviet Union was falling apart. Gorbachev’s glasnost policies had turned the hearts of many of the satellite republics towards a spirit of nationalism that resulted in the countrymen of these republics wanting to rid their lands of anything to do with Russian dominance over the past 70 years. Statues of Russian generals were being removed and names of streets and cities were being changed from Russian names to Kazakh, Tajik, and Uzbek names.

I had the opportunity to be in the middle of these historic changes from 1989-1994 through a couple of companies that I had established in 1990. One of these companies took American business people to the former Soviet republics before communism fell to teach western business principles. Believe it or not, we used Junior Achievement material to teach banking, accounting, marketing, and other subjects. One of the challenges was getting these people who had lived for generations under the socialism of the communist regimes to understand free enterprise and all the good things associated with it, like profit and losses.

The other company did community development work in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. When we first started working in this area there were no other companies from the west registered. Until just before communism fell in 1991, our business training company was one of only two western companies registered in Kyrgyzstan.

It was a case of being in the right place at the right time. There are many stories from these years, and we will share more of them at a later time.

Today I want to tell you about one of the several delegations from these republics that we hosted in the US.  My first introduction to these former Soviet republics was through a consortium of Baptist colleges and universities. I was working with Mississippi College at the time when this consortium was formed at the Atlanta airport in August, 1987. We were part of this consortium from the very beginning, and it was this introduction that led me to want to do more in that part of the world.

We were bringing official government delegations from these republics to the USA for the first time since before the time of Stalin in the 1920s. Each delegation consisted of three high level government officials, an interpreter, and a representative of the KGB whose job was to make sure that these government officials returned to the USSR.

It has been difficult in this post not to tell stories that come to mind about these experiences with these government friends, but I must save those for another time and move on to my story for this posting.

The mayor of Frunze, the capital city of the Kyrgyz Republic, was accompanied by the government’s Minister of Education and the Minister of Culture and, of course, a representative from the KGB. I recall that the title they gave him was something like the Associate Deputy Director for Internal Administrative Affairs. We enjoyed joking with him about us knowing that he was in the KGB, and he was kind-hearted enough to laugh with us rather than attacking us with a piano wire!

After hosting this Kyrgyz delegation in Washington, DC, Chicago, and Atlanta, we brought them to Mississippi. One evening during their visit, I had some business to take care of at my office, so one of my colleagues picked them up at their hotel in Jackson and brought them to our home in Clinton. A cable had arrived in my office for the mayor, so I delivered it to him in my living room. He opened the cable, and there was a lot of buzz in the Kyrgyz language—the three government officials often spoke in Kyrgyz when they did not want their KGB colleague or interpreter to understand them.

After a few minutes of discussion, our Russian interpreter explained that the mayor had been asked to cast the deciding vote for the new name of their capital city. Frunze was a famous former Soviet army general, and the Central Asian republics were trying to rid their countries of all Russian influence.

The mayor cast his vote for Bishkek in our living room that evening, and the next day our office sent the cable that determined the name of the capital city of the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic, which today is known as Kyrgyzstan.

Among the many stirring memories from these experiences with our Central Asian friends were the opportunities to share our faith with them. During that same Kyrgyzstan delegation visit we took our friends to church. That was the first time any of them had ever attended a church service.

It was a large church, so we decided to arrive just as the service had started so the delegation would not draw any attention. We sat near the back of the auditorium, and as the service was about to end, the pastor, a friend, recognized our delegation and asked me to pray the benediction.

After the service was finished and we were walking to our vehicles, one of the delegation said to me in broken English, “Larry, I not know that you are a pray-er.” That sentence has been played over and over in my mind through the years. I pray. But, am I really a pray-er? Is praying such a second nature action for me that others recognize me as a pray-er?

I think that my Kyrgyz friend was asking me if I was some kind of holy man. He did not know other English words to describe what he wanted to ask me, so he asked in the only way he knew how. The way he used the word is not proper in our colloquial English,  but it was a powerful word for me to hear, and I hope that it rings in your heart of hearts just as it has in mine for the past 20 years. Lord, I want to be known as a "pray-er."