On Raising Up a Joshua

Last Sunday in church, I preached my third-to-last Sunday as full time pastor of Dunwoody Baptist Church. In the church was my mentor of half a century. Dennis Rogers identified something in me when I was in high school and challenged me to develop it. In high school, I preached my first sermon. In high school, I served on a pastor search committee. He allowed me to volunteer with students when I was home from college on breaks or summers that I came home. We met at a Mexican restaurant in Stone Mountain every week. He challenged me to make a difference in college. Dennis took me (literally, in the car) to New Orleans to meet professors and apply to seminary. And I was not the only “Joshua” that Dennis raised up.

In Gen 15, Abraham is promised that his descendants will inherit the promised land. This promise is fulfilled not by Moses, but by his protégé, Joshua son of Nun from the tribe of Ephraim. Joshua shows up in one of my favorite (and quirky) episodes in Exodus 17 where Joshua is appointed as field commander of the army of Israel when the Amalekites attack them. The quirky part is that Moses stood on a hill with his arms supported by his brother and his (maybe) brother-in-law while Joshua won the battle.

From the beginning of their relationship, Moses let Joshua try things, lead things, learn things. Moses encouraged and nurtured him to follow God’ teachings, accomplish God’s plans, and join him (in protecting the people from themselves and moving them towards the promised land. Moses corrected  Joshua twice applying wisdom and knowledge. Near the end of Moses’ story, God tells Moses that it is time for him to die, and that Joshua, “a man with spirit” would be his successor. 

Although he is to share the power with the high priest Eleazar, Joshua will be the one to lead the Israelites into Canaan and conquer the land. Joshua’s story ends with his death and burial, some eight decades later (Joshua  24:29-30). Joshua succeeded in leading Israel into the Promised Land, but he didn’t raise up a Joshua to follow him.  Within a very short period of time, lacking in leadership and in a culture that was hostile to the ways of Yahweh, “everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” 

I wish the story had ended differently. I wish Joshua would have identified, trained, encouraged, poured into a successor like Dennis poured into me. As I approach retirement, I pray that I have raised up a team who will lead DBC well, but will also lead well wherever else they serve in the future. I am also convicted that I have a little Joshua to raise up in Texas.  I pray that God will grant me the wisdom and opportunity to pour into my grandson as he begins to understand the ways of God and the ways of the world. He has a great mom, a great community, an incredibly sharp mind and a tender heart.  

May we all have the courage to raise up a Joshua.

On the Holy Spirit and DBC

 A Prayer for DBC

God as we prepare to take communion, we have been reminded that Your Spirit in us produces character traits that make us more like Jesus. Many of us learned the Fruit of the Spirit as a list, a rhyme, or a children’s song. But You meant it to be so much more. You meant it to be a description in terms a human could put on paper of the richness You intend to invest in us. You meant it to be a gold standard of good qualities that You produce to compare with a list of bad decisions we make on our own. 

Thank you that You care for us. You have placed us a little lower than the angels, have filled us with Your power and Your glory. You put us here to care for Your creation and to establish relationships with other people and to work productively for the good of our homes, church, community and world. You have shown Yourself in amazing ways here at DBC and we thank You. You are present among us still in the Person of the Holy Spirit. Thank you that You comfort, encourage and guide us. Thank You–painfully–that You rebuke, admonish, and correct us. 

God forgive me when I–when we--reduce this mighty work of Your Spirit to a list of self-improvement goals. I bow before you in worship and thanks that You choose to work this way through us. As the Spirit works in us, we want to see growth in all these areas. Love AND joy AND peace AND patience AND kindness AND goodness AND faithfulness AND gentleness AND self-control. 

You wish for us to love as You loved us, sacrificially and without regard to a person’s appearance or background. You love us so much that You sent Jesus. You love us even though we can’t stop making bad choices. You love us yesterday, today, and forever. May we be filled with such love that seems to fertilize all the other fruit of Your Spirit.

You wish to fill us with joy, the inner contentment that does not depend on circumstance, but allows us to see some things as You see them. You showed such joy in your laughter with Your followers and with those whom You healed. You desire for us a joy that is not dependent on circumstance but on the presence of Your Spirit in us, giving us a quiet confidence that You are working in us for our good and Your glory. 

You wish for us to have peace, a deep inner tranquility that is beyond the comprehension of many around us. You demonstrated such peace, even as you were misunderstood, persecuted, and crucified because You had such confidence in the sovereign plan of the Father.

You want us to have patience in other people, in ourselves, in the timetable of Your plans for us and for our church. You modeled such patience with children, with persons with challenges, and with us. May we be patient when we are cut off in traffic, when we are misunderstood at work, and when we think You should do this or that in our world. Jesus, come quickly, but let us have patience and understanding as You delay in order to invite more people into Your Kingdom. 

You desire for to be kind as You were kind and to embrace that it is Your kindness that led us to repentance. Your kindness drew unlikely skeptics to Yourself, some who eventually believed and some who did not. Your kindness tolerated people who did not, do not and will not allow Your love to break through to have one more chance, two more chances, hundreds more chances to repent from sin and follow You in obedience, worship, and community.

You are a good God and Your Son is the Good Shepherd and goodness and generosity is what You desire for us. We pray to be filled with it. We pray that as we are filled, we would reflect Your goodness as we relate to those around us. 

You have been faithful through the ages and you are faithful now. You will be faithful to complete the good work You began in us.  We pray for that faithfulness to be in us as we relate to You and to the people around us–both those whom we love and those whom we are learning to love.

You wish for us to have the controlled strength that is called gentleness, so that we can face adversity and challenge even as our Savior faced the trials that led to His earthly death. You said we were blessed if we were meek, that we would inherit the earth. You want to fill us with humility and gentleness, not thirsting for power, but for righteousness and that as strange as it seems, we would see You at work. 

Perhaps hardest to pray honestly that we would receive is self-control. We enjoy our temper tantrums, but we read of the self-control that You showed as Satan tempted You in the wilderness. You remained on the cross because it was the Father’s plan. You did not lose Your temper with the slowness of Your followers then and now to understand what You came to earth to do. You put up with our questions and our self-righteousness and our reluctance to do the next right thing. May we be self-controlled because Your Sprit controls us, and to understand that as we give up control, we yield to Your control. 

Father, we know that the ways of the world will always present us with tempting, and sometimes very convincing, counterfeits to this Fruit of Your Spirit. We know in our heads that this fake fruit will leave us empty. Fill us with each of these fruits. Cultivate them, let them build on one another. Let them ripen to the point that they bring love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self control to a world that desperately needs them. May they produce in us a deeper love for Your kingdom and for the souls that You love so deeply. 

We want to make a difference in our families, influence our communities, and provide hope for our world. We know that as You fill us with these character qualities we will become better people, but better is such a small goal when what You desire is that we become like Your Son. May we be passionately more like Jesus. May we empty ourselves so You can fill us with the Fruit of the Spirit so that we can be instruments of change. May we be filled with the Spirit so that our words to “Love God, Love People, Make Disciples, and Make a Difference” can be much more than words. May we see Your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. May Your will be done.

May we be wise with our time, our talents, our resources. May we welcome our new pastor because he is the one whom You sent to lead us and teach us. May we see greater things because You promised that we would. May persons who are trying to decide what to do with You jump in with both feet, acknowledging You as Lord and Savior. May our baptistery be filled, our ego be emptied and our worship be pleasing to You. As we take this Holy Communion, may it remind us of the ultimate demonstration of love that You expressed by sending Your only Son to provide a forgiveness for our sins so that we can even have this conversation with You. 

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit

Amen

On Troubled Hearts

On Troubled Hearts

One of the most famous interactions that Jesus had with His disciples was on the last night that He was alive on earth prior to the crucifixion. The setting is in the Upper Room, where Jesus gives his “farewell address”  at his last supper with his disciples. He has

• washed his disciples’ feet and has explained to them what this means (13:1-20). 

• said that Judas would betray Him and Judas has slipped out into the night (13:21-30).

• told his disciples that he will be with them only a little while longer, and that where he is going, they cannot come (13:33).

• predicted Peter’s imminent denial (13:36-38).

So I understand why the disciples are “troubled” (which I think is a massive understatement–I think they were coming unglued). Jesus is leaving, Judas is off to the Jewish authorities to rat out their location and their spokesperson is going to bail. So Jesus says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me” (14:1). He calls them back to their relationship and assures that He is not abandoning them.As He speaks of His ascension to the Father, Jesus assures his disciples that this is also their destination.  But His illustration is fascinating to me. 

WARNING: SANCTIFIED IMAGINATION

Jesus says there are many rooms in his Father’s house, and He goes to prepare a place for them, so that they will be with him and dwell with him in his intimate relationship with the Father (14:2-3). Multiple sources describe the custom among first century Jews of the bride joining the groom’s family. Literally, not just symbolically. They would move in.

After the proposal (or rather the brokering of the betrothal) the groom begins to prepare a bridal chamber. He is building an addition–a room–on his father’s house. This process traditionally took a year or more (the length of time being dictated by the groom’s father). When the place was complete, the groom would return and fetch his bride. The bride would not know the day or hour of her fiancee’s return–it depended on the father’s timing–but the groom’s arrival was usually announced with a trumpet call and a shout so the bride had some forewarning. She would then proceed–some legends say that the groom’s attendants would carry her on her bed through the village to the house of the groom’s father where the wedding would take place. The wedding itself (mostly family in attendance) transitioned to the wedding feast (attended by much larger numbers) which could a night, a week or more. The transition was marked by the bride and the groom entering into the room that the groom had built to consummate their marriage.

The biblical references are amazing to me. The Parable of the Ten Virgins (Matthew 25) seems to reference the groom going to get the bride per the custom. D.A. Carson in the Expositor’s Bible Commentary describes the setting this way: “Normally the bridegroom with some close friends left his home to go to the bride’s home, where there were various ceremonies, followed by a procession through the streets – after nightfall – to his home. The ten virgins may be bridesmaids who have been assisting the bride; and they expect to meet the groom as he comes from the bride’s house…Everyone in the procession was expected to carry his or her own torch (a stick with a rag or an oil lamp). Those without a torch would be assumed to be party crashers or even brigands. The festivities, which might last several days, would formally get under way at the groom’s house.”

Jesus changed water into wine at a wedding feast in Cana (John 2) so the celebration is both endorsed and facilitated with miracle. But the most impacting comparison to me is that Jesus is the groom, the bride is the church.  He will one day come back for His bride (1 Thess 4:16) with a shout and a trumpet. In the meantime, He prepared a place for us through His death on the cross. 

That is why the disciples didn’t have to be troubled. That is why death does not send us into irretrievable despair. He has prepared a room for His bride. He will return to show us the way (which confuses a literal Thomas in 14:4). He wants directions, a map, a GPS turn-by-turn direction. Jesus responds by saying that he himself is the way: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (14:6).

This statement by Jesus is a promise, a word of comfort to his disciples. Jesus himself is all they need; there is no need to panic, no need to search desperately for a secret map. Jesus adds, “If you know me, you will know my Father also” (14:7a). The conditional phrase in Greek is a condition of fact, meaning that the condition is understood to be true: “If you know me (and you do), you will know my father also.” So that there can be no misunderstanding, Jesus adds, “From now on, you do know him and have seen him” (14:7b). 

In anxiety, despair, death, confusion or doubt, the relationship with Jesus is what centers our future. 

 On Sheep Without a Shepherd (reflections during a summer sabbatical)

And he said, “I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains, as sheep that have no shepherd. And the LORD said, ‘These have no master; let each return to his home in peace.’” 1 Kings 22:17

So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd, and they became food for all the wild beasts. My sheep were scattered; Ezekiel 34:5

For the household gods utter nonsense, and the diviners see lies; they tell false dreams and give empty consolation. Therefore the people wander like sheep; they are afflicted for lack of a shepherd. Zechariah 10:2

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Matthew 9:36

When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things. Mark 6:34

I have thought and prayed a lot about leadership. We had a series on Jesus as our shepherd, building on David's Psalm 23. (Hence the cartoon from Gary Larson). 

My church is in the process of seeking the leader who will shepherd the church following my retirement. My Bible reading plan has taken me through the Kings and the prophets who followed David and Solomon, but who preceded the Exile.  The well-known pattern of “good king/bad king” in the Southern Kingdom of Judah and the pattern of all bad kings in the Northern Kingdom of Israel is a referendum and judgment on poor leadership–defined by refusing to rely exclusively on God for making decisions.  One of the most poignant and prophetic statements in the book of Joshua is when God tells him to “be strong and courageous” by following God closely and faithfully (“do not turn to the right or to the left”). Then God adds the promise that He will always be with this leader of a nation. Only 200 years from the time when King David, the people were leaderless (1 Kings 22). And it would only get worse.

The honesty of the biblical record continues to astound me. Hosea’s prophecy summarized the poor leadership of the men who were supposed to be shepherds. By the time of his prophecy, the people had intellectual but not personal knowledge of God. They broke all of the 10 commandments, lacked faithfulness and love, worshiped false gods, and put their trust for the future of their nation into alliances with earthly powers. Hosea said, “they lived many days without king or prince” (3:4) – without any leader who would lead them back to God. Most of the prophets had a particularly harsh word for leaders and even other prophets who speak their own ideas, abuse their power and allow injustice. Micah said that the sun would set on such leaders (3:6). God has shown us what He requires in leadership–to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God (6:8).  

Only Hezekiah and Josiah led the people away from the worship of false gods and that is the point of my musings.  Hezekiah led Judah to numerous reforms. The historian spends 3 chapters (2 Chronicles 29-31 telling of the aggressive actions Hezekiah took to turn the nation back to Yahweh. Josiah was Hezekiah’s great grandson and 2 Chronicles 34-35 describes his aggressive reforms. Hezekiah and Josiah were not infallible. Both had pride issues, but by and large, they led Judah back to God.

The remarkable thing to me is what happened between these two kings.  If a generation is about 20 years, the reforms of Josiah are less than a century after the reforms of Hezekiah.  It seems incredible how fast the nation becomes corrupt.  Josiah’s actions included rediscovering God’s Word, smashing the altars and idols to pagan gods, getting rid of anything in the temple that didn’t honor Yahweh, eliminating prostitution in the temple, and even destroyed altars that the people had built to sacrifice their own children by fire.  When leaders drift away from brokenness, dependence, humility, and attention to God’s word, the people follow. And it can happen in an instant. 

And it can happen today.  As I write this (Summer 2024), our nation is in an election year, with an apparent choice between two very flawed leaders. Almost every day, another report comes of a pastor or religious leader who has committed some immoral act. Like Josiah having to reckon with a shortage of priests (2 Chronicles 29:34), we have a shortage of pastors. Barna research found that well over half of pastors are questioning their call to ministry. When we pastors/leaders turn our heads to the right or to the left from following our Good Shepherd, we become poor shepherds to people. Disappointment, disillusionment, church hurt, and even abuse follow and the people who follow us abandon their faith.  Sadly, many leave not because they feel like God let them down, but because a human has failed spiritually.  

In the New Testament, Jesus looks to the eternal application.  He is fond of the relationship between sheep and shepherds (John 10) as a way of describing the dependence on the shepherd by the sheep. He is the Good Shepherd, the ultimate leader, motivated by compassion (Matthew 9:36). The Good Shepherd is our leader and our teacher (Mark 6:34). Paul understood it when he confidently said to the church “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1). 

I am flawed.  I look back on the 66 and a half years of my life and see the many times I have turned to the right or to the left. Gratefully, the honest of the Bible also tells of the failings of even a man as great as King David.  I have been given a privilege of leadership. But I renew my awareness that all of my strength and courage and wisdom and understanding and discernment comes from following closely behind the Good Shepherd.

On Dolphins and Reassurance

 

Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. 

                1 Timothy 6:17-18

It's been awhile since I visited my blog and much has happened. As I write, it is May of 2024 and the past 12 months have been eventful. I have had a few of what I call "spirit disrupters," those events or relationships that make you go to God and say, "what is going on right now?" 

I intended to retire in 2023, but I postponed retirement in order to guide my church through the changes in the Southern Baptist Convention that may result in DBC (and me as well) not being Southern Baptist. Spirit disrupter.  In July of 2023, I needed an ablation to return my afibbing heart back to rhythm. Spirit disrupter.  In August of 2023, my son Aaron died tragically from a drug overdose. Major spirit disrupter. In May of 2024, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Spirit disrupter.  

I may write on some of those things as retirement (eventually) will give me more time to reflect. This morning, however, God spoke to my disrupted spirit. Again. Like he did four and a half decades ago.  Through a dolphin.

In summer 1980, I was the youth minister at the Rowland Hills Baptist Church in Georgia. I was at camp with my youth group at St. Simons Island.  I was freshly graduated from college with a business degree that I expected would allow me to travel the world, make lots of money, and volunteer my leftover time to God and His church. 

God had thrown a wrench into my plans in that I didn't have any peace with anything but ministry. I had been a little frustrated in my job search -- no "real" offers had come my way. I was a 22 year old part-time youth minister and somehow a group of parents had entrusted me to drive a school bus with their kids down to the Atlantic coast. One morning, I was having a quiet time with my spirit completely disrupted. I knew what I wanted to do and I was beginning to realize what I was called to do. In my perception, one (business) involved prosperity and the other (ministry) involved poverty. 

I was reading in 1 Timothy 6 and I came across these two verses: 

Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. 

                1 Timothy 6:17-18

About the time I finished reading them, I looked up and saw a bottlenose dolphin roll over in the marsh. It was a simple thing, but a confirmation that God had riches I knew nothing about. Nobody else saw the dolphin.  No cell phone existed to capture the picture. It was just for me to enjoy. God provides things for our enjoyment, sometimes to remind us of His greatness, His playfulness, His intimate understanding of who we are. It confirmed my calling to ministry.

Flash forward to 2024. I am again on the Atlantic coast, this time to officiate a wedding in Fernandina Beach, Florida. A family in our church has allowed me to stay in their home and the back of the house is on the marsh. I walked out this morning for some prayer time and to again give all my spirit disrupters to God. I glanced up and guess what? A bottlenose dolphin rolling over in the marsh. Nobody to see it but me. Unusual in such shallow water. But there for me to richly enjoy. There to confirm that I am still called to ministry and despite a really hard year, God still guards my heart.

Thank you Father for using a dolphin to again remind me that You've got this. 

On a Stained Glass Christmas

 I am preaching a sermon series for advent called, "A Stained Glass Christmas" -- this is the idea behind it. Thanks to Dunwoody Baptist Church and FBC Winnfield families for encouragement and much love.

Before I came to Dunwoody in the 80s as youth pastor, I served a church in Louisiana. During my time there, we did a building project (anyone surprised?). We renovated a sanctuary building that was built in the 1920s. We decided to restore and repurpose the old building to preserve the stories of the wonderful history of the church (home of Huey and Earl Long) rather than to tear down the historic building and start over. 

We discovered many things about renovating an old building. The columns were full of bees. The foundation was leveled by pouring more concrete. The roof trusses were so full of termites that the inspector said “the only thing holding this building up is that the termites must be holding hands. And the stained glass windows needed to be completely restored. 

I learned more about stained glass than I ever thought I would know as I watched the tradesmen remove each window and transport it to a rented storefront nearby that had been transformed into a stained glass studio. Each window was disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled using the original lead process. Then each window was replaced in its original location and sealed with a storm glass to preserve it. 

Seems like a lot of work and expense for windows. But stay with me. 

At its most basic level, a stained glass project consists of pieces of glass whose edges are joined together in some manner. There are two common materials used to join glass –copper foil and lead. With each, the glass edges are held in a channel that conforms to the shape of the piece. Stained glass is colored glass and it has been used for a thousand years to create art in windows, using the color of the glass and the sun that God provides to illuminate the story in the window. Stained glass has been used historically in churches, but has expanded to other applications by modern artists like Frank Lloyd Wright and even the famous lamps of Louis Comfort Tiffany.

The craftsman takes small pieces of colored glass and creates a story, an image, a work of art by arranging the glass into designs or pictures, bordered and secured by strips of lead or copper. Sometimes additional details are painted.  The artist doesn't just start putting glass into random places. He or she has an idea in mind, a story that the window must tell.  In addition to artistic skills, the artist must design it in such a way that it can be a chapter in a story with other windows in the same room and also hold up to wind and rain and cold--as functional as it is beautiful as a window.

I have seen incredible stained glass from the Notre Dame in Paris to the stunning contemporary design at FBC Huntsville, Alabama. In Europe, many stained glass windows remain and it is fair to say that they are examples of a major art form from the medieval period. Interestingly, they do not serve very well as windows as it is difficult to see out. However, they manipulate light in such a way as to create beauty regardless of which side of the window one is standing. 

So what? It occurred to me that the various parts of the Christmas story are independent in a way, yet the pieces need to come together in just the right way to tell the story of Jesus’ birth and why it is significant to us. Three of the gospel writers viewed the nativity through their own lens. The Gospel According to Mark has no story of Jesus's birth. Instead, Mark's story begins by describing Jesus's adult life, introducing it with the words, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (1:1). 

Mark does tell of John the Baptist, who predicts the coming of a man more powerful than himself. And each adds details that the others leave out. We need all of the writers, all of the stories to bring together the intent of God the Father in sending His son to us as a baby, to grow into a man and to be the sacrifice for our sin and brokenness. 

Only two of the four canonical gospels, Matthew (Matthew 1:18-25) and Luke (Luke 2:1-7), offer narratives regarding the birth of Jesus. Of these two, only Luke offers the details of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem.  John’s gospel starts at the beginning of the universe, telling us that the birth of Jesus was part of God’s design for mankind from the start. 

From the original idea for the Christmas series: The music of Christmas is always memorable in church.  At DBC, this year, the combined choirs and orchestra will present “The Symphony of Christmas” on Christmas Eve. The five songs in the piece provide the background and the storyline for the series. The titles come from the movements in the music. Each of the messages is a component of the story–an individual piece of stained glass to go into the window that allows us to see the whole story.

Oh and by the way, I love a saying about perspective: “When you look at a window, you see fly specks, tiny cracks, and the accumulated dust and dirt. When you look through a window, you see the world that God made and challenged us to love.”

The point of the series is to look at the beautiful window that God has given us in the story of Jesus coming to earth to live and die so that people can be forgiven from sin. Then we look through the window at a world desperately in need of that message.

On Thanksmas

I write this on the 21st anniversary of my Dad’s death.  Here’s to you, Pop. Glad Mom is there with you.  We miss you both.  We'll still set a place for you, but you are at a better banquet.

We had a tradition in our family for years that we all called, “Thanksmas.”  My Dad actually started the tradition when grandchildren were little. He thought that ‘every kid should wake up on Christmas morning in their own home’ and suggested that we all get together for our family time at Thanksgiving. There were four Jackson kids and we all got married and started families over the course of a decade or so, ending up with 8 grandkids. We also spread out to Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee and Georgia. We also had inlaws. Judi and I loved the tradition. Once Aaron was born, we didn’t really have it in us to travel at Christmas. You may or may not know, but pastors always have a Christmas Eve service that we do and that means that if we are going to wake up in a distant city with our families of origin, we have to drive through the night. 

So the Jackson family invented Thanksmas. Judi and I–and the inlaws and outlaws–agreed that we would spend Christmas with Judi’s Mom and Thanksgiving with the chaotic Jackson clan. So every Thanksgiving week, Judi and I would drive with Aaron and Sarah to Atlanta from Louisiana–usually on Tuesday or Wednesday–and spend the middle of the week with my Mom and Dad and my older sister Carol and her two boys, my younger sister Susan and her husband and her son and daughter, and my younger brother James, my sister-in-law Trish, and their two boys.  For Thanksmas.

Some fantastic traditions birthed from Thanksmas. We would all set up camp at either my parents’ house or my sister’s house.  The basement had pallets for all the older cousins (who now call themselves “the council of cousins” and make most of the decisions for the extended family). Wednesday was for finalizing shopping for the Thanksgiving feast and buying last minute Thanksmas gifts. Friday was for the serious shopping, back when Black Friday didn’t last for most of the fall. Until he died in 2000, my father was the King of Thanksmas, pretty much second-guessing every decision anybody else made, but rarely making any decisions without being prompted. I understand that a lot better now. 

On Thursday morning–Thanksgiving Day–several of us got up really early to go to the Chamblee Marta station to run the Atlanta Half Marathon.  As many as 7 of us ran it one year and the rest of the family took up posts along to route to cheer us on. We liked that tradition. When you burn that many calories in the morning, you can eat whatever you want to for the rest of the day. We got home from the run sometime late morning and started preparations for Thanksgiving dinner.  Everybody had favorites, and everybody had some contribution. Some years we smoked the turkey. One time we fried the turkey. Mostly it was cooked in the oven so we could argue about which dressing was better–the stuffing that was inside the turkey when it was cooked or the stuffing that got cooked separately.

Dinner was sometime around 2 in the afternoon and after lunch we would either nap or play football.  Dad would referee.  I remember the year he died–the day before Thanksgiving–we still played football, but we set a bench up on the sideline to remember him.  After he died, we also set a place for him at our table, even though we knew he was eating at a much bigger table. 

Life was full. Turkey. Football. Nap. Rinse, repeat. As far as football loyalties, we represented by Georgia, Georgia Tech, FSU, LSU, Kentucky, and Auburn (and throw in Southern Mississippi and Georgia State, but they were irrelevant to the football discussion). Somehow we still got along.  After football, we would come inside to nap some more, watch whatever games were on and officially transition from Thanksgiving to Christmas. My sister would have the house totally decorated but not lit up. When we gathered to read “The Christmas Story” from Luke, we would flip the switches to light up tree(s) and garland and officially transition from “Thanks” to “mas.” We drew names sometime in early November, set a price limit and tried to buy something that would be appreciated. We outlawed gift cards when it got to be more common than it wasn’t. Everyone would give their gift to the family member whom they had drawn until all the gifts were given.

As I reflect on those Thanksmas holidays, I remember being profoundly grateful. Maybe it is because the holiday reminded me to be thankful. Maybe it is because we all made the effort to be family. Maybe I looked around the room and cherished all the relationships. Maybe I was aware enough to appreciate that we could buy a turkey, buy presents for each other, afford to travel across the southeast to be together. Maybe because I had a similar gratitude when the family news was good and when the news that particular year had challenges or sadness. Maybe because I wasn’t in charge of anything “churchy” I was especially able to take time to thank God that everyone in the room had access to the message of forgiveness and hope that is the person of Jesus Christ. 

So Happy Thanksmas.