Christmas.  Oh the expectations of this day.  No matter what the next few hours include for you, I’m going to guess they include great expectations.  

The kids have made their lists months ago.  There are certain toys or things they hope to see under the tree.

Parents and grandparents, even we have expectations around what’s going to transpire in the next few days.  Certain traditions we hope to maintain or perhaps, for younger families, begin.  

We have an expectation of how Christmas day should go, what time everyone should arrive so we can start opening presents, how dinner will be laid out, where everyone will sit and certain conversations we would like to have…others we hope to avoid.  

I know, like me, you’d love for this Christmas to be one of the great memories your family talks about for years to come.

Expectations.

It didn’t happen very often but as a kid there were a few Christmas’s past where my expectations got the best of me.  I can remember sitting with my pile of toys on Christmas afternoon feeling disappointed.  

I didn’t get what I wanted.
Or I got exactly what I wanted and the element of surprise went missing.

But I will never forget Christmas of 1987.  My brother and I thought we were done opening presents, and then dad says, “I think there’s one more box back there behind the tree.”  

Sure enough.   One more box for both me and my brother.  We open it together and start digging through the packaging peanuts.  At first it feels like a trick but then we find a small key.  
On the black plastic tab the key read, “HONDA”.  

“What’s this?”  Our expectations had been met.  Our faces had to say it all.  For a brief moment in time we were emotionally stuck somewhere between euphoria and skepticism.
  
“Let’s go to the neighbor’s garage,” dad said.  We stood in the neighbor’s driveway facing their garage and as the garage door slowly lifted, we saw a brand new Honda 4trax, 250cc, quad-sport, four wheeler.  Red, white and blue…tiful.

Our expectations had been blown out of the water.  It was incredible!  Dad took us out by Gale Elementary School later that week and pulled us on a tire tube in the snow.  
I almost died.
It was awesome!

I’ll never forget the feeling of Christmas morning 1987.  
Best Christmas ever!

I wanted to create this same experience for my kids so a couple of years ago I decided to do the same thing.  It wasn’t brand new, but it was a pretty nice used four wheeler.  I kept it hidden in the machine shed for the weeks leading up to Christmas.  I even had the box and packing peanuts ready.

Late on Christmas Eve I went to the machine shed to move the four wheeler to the garage.  In my mind, I could picture their reaction, as they open the box, discover the key that reads “Kawasaki”.  And then I imagine their faces as the garage door does a slow reveal. My expectations are building for how they’ll react to exceeding their expectations.  

As I pull the four wheeler out of the machine shed, I decide to do a little midnight riding.  I’m doing figure 8’s and drifting in the fresh powdery snow.  Just for about 10 to 15 minutes.  It’s a blast!  I’m sure I’m the only parent that plays with their kids presents before they’re gifted.  Right?

I back the four wheeler into the garage, close the door, put the key in the big box with packing peanuts, Jena wraps it up and we put it behind the tree towards the back so it’s the last present to be opened.
I go to bed more excited than all seven kids put together.

Christmas morning, while still in bed, I hear the “thud-thud, thud-thud” of the first kid coming down the stairs.  It’s Sterling and he comes running into our room yelling, “Dad, dad!  There’s tire tracks all over our yard and they lead right to the garage!  

I’d blown it.  
One by one my kids look out the big window on the 3rd floor of our house and see the evidence of my midnight adventure.

So much for my surprise and my expectations for the experience I was trying to duplicate for my kids.  

Expectations.

So, what do you do when life’s circumstances don’t live up to your expectations?  
I noticed something recently about expectations as I read the familiar story of the birth of Christ. 

Look at what the angel says to Joseph in the first chapter of Matthew when he finds out Mary is pregnant. 
“Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.  She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”  

I imagine Joseph was no stranger to the writings of the prophets and the promise of a Messiah that would save his people.  Can you imagine how his expectations for his future family grew with the knowledge that he would be the earthly father figure for the Messiah?  What did this mean?  Maybe he’d never have to swing a hammer again.  Would he be royalty? He could probably retire early.  

If the King of kings will have an earthly father, he may not wear a crown but certainly he’d have a room in the palace.

Instead, a few months later, he’s struggling to find a room in a cheap hotel.   He barely finds a cave in time for his wife to give birth.  And then they use a feeding trough as a bed.

I wonder how long before Joseph thought to himself, “I’m being asked to help raise, provide for and protect the Messiah and I can’t even get us a room at a Motel 6?”  
He had to wonder, “Did I hear the angel right?  I guess, If God isn’t going to throw us a bone on the front end of this deal…maybe I better keep my hammer handy.”

Expectations.   

In the second chapter of Luke we see the Angel say to Mary, “Greetings oh favored one.  The Lord is with you!  Don’t be afraid Mary, for you have found favor with God.  And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.”  

Now pay attention to what the angle says next and discover why it’s no wonder they expected Jesus to rule on Earth in Jerusalem eventually if not immediately.

“He will be great and will be called the son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give him the throne of his Father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his Kingdom there will be no end.”

I wonder how many times in the 33 years of Jesus life on Earth, all the way to what appeared to be the end on the cross, did Mary think, “Did I misunderstand the angel that night so long ago?”

Expectations.

How about you?  Has life ever thrown you a curve ball?

You get passed over for the promotion.
You don’t get the raise.
You lose your job.
Your marriage… How about the expectations we bring into marriage?
You get sick…or worse.
Your child get’s sick…or worse.

Maybe you look back on 2019 and you say, “what the heck was that?!”

Not, what I expected.

Maybe you’re like me. In those moments I pray for clarity.  

Sounds pretty noble doesn’t it.  I noticed something the other day.  I’ve been keeping a prayer journal on and off for about eighteen years.  I went through with a highlighter one time and I discovered for almost ten of those years the overriding prayer request was clarity.  
Over and over again, “Lord, give me clarity.”

We desire clarity, don’t we?  I remember hearing a consultant friend of mine describe a process for organizations that promised “irreducible clarity”.  

I still remember hearing him use those two words used together for the first time.  My heart leapt.  That’s it!  That’s what we need!  Irreducible clarity.  

I’ve discovered since then while clarity is an important priority for an organization, personally, praying for clarity is…at least for me… the same thing as asking God,  “What should I expect?”.

Wouldn’t that be nice?  If God would answer our prayer for clarity?  “Ok Lord, I pray you would give me clarity.  I pray you would show me what I can expect for the next (fill in the blank) season of life.”

It doesn’t take very much effort to discover throughout scripture, God isn’t in the habit of providing…clarity.  Not that He doesn’t.  There are a few.  But it doesn’t seem to be His primary method of operation.

Abraham. Go.  Where?  Just go.

Moses wandering in the desert.  Not a lot of clarity in those forty years.  Look at a map.  It should have taken them three weeks.

Mary, Joseph and then later all of Jesus’ followers and their hopes and dreams for how they thought “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” …should look.

How about Jesus telling some men, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.”  Is there enough clarity in that invitation to make you want to leave your family business?   Probably not.

I don’t know what your expectations are for the next few hours leading up to Christmas let alone for the rest of your life but there is a high probability for misguided expectations.  

And I’m ok with that.  If God just met our expectations, how could He ever exceed them? 

God is good.  Sometimes His gifts are hidden and we don’t even know they are gifts because they’re  wrapped in what feels like difficult and painful circumstances.  

But I write from recent experience, I believe God smiles like a father on Christmas as he reveals His gifts.  Like watching His children’s faces as the garage door slowly goes up and we’re able to look back and say, “what a gift!”
  
Sometimes the greatest gift is the deeper intimacy of our relationship with Him that would have never happened…with clarity.

Can I give you this one simple challenge?

Trust trumps clarity.  

I was talking about this with my kids and apparently a few of the younger ones hadn’t heard the word “trump” used that way.   They asked, “so is that like ‘trust impeaches clarity?’”.

Sure. I’m ok with my desire for clarity being impeached and replaced by a willingness to trust.

Maybe you’re in one of those seasons right now where a little clarity would go a long way and somewhere along the line your expectations for what this season should look like got a little out of wack.  We find ourselves paralyzed by the expectation that because of our obedience God owes us some clarity about all of tomorrow’s moments before we trust Him in today’s.

Here’s my challenge…

Just trust.

Trust trumps clarity.

It’s ok to…Expect great things.

And there is no shame when we…Pray for clarity.

But let me challenge you…Just Trust.

Expect great things.  Pray for Clarity.  But just trust.

 I don’t have this all figured out.  I’m not speaking from any place of authority on this topic.  I’m simply willing to stand on the battle line with you not knowing what the future looks like but trusting the One who does.  

I pray over the next few days we will find some quiet spaces to sit with this question, “God, what does it look like for me to trust You in this season?”

Just trust.

For nearly 20 years I worked in the family glass business downtown Galesburg.  Right on the square.  I loved our location.  
 
I love the sounds. The ringing bells of the Central Congregational church and Knox College’s Old Main… 
 
I love the smells.  The restaurant griddles warming up around lunch.  Depending on which way the wind was blowing I would recognize the smell of coffee roasting at a local coffee shop, or the manure lot of a sale barn. 
 
I love the sights. The fountain in the middle of the circle.  The traffic zipping around the circle. The noise of the traffic and how the first snow of the year always made the busy downtown eerily  quiet.  
 
Sometimes you’d get the perfect combination of snow falling, church bells ringing, and coffee roasting…and for a few minutes, heaven was as close a downtown Galesburg.
 
I love the people.  The Main Street workers watering the hanging plants.  The bankers in their suits.  
 
Nina Mooberry. Nina had to be 100 years old.  She’d walk by our glass shop everyday.  We would save our empty soda cans for her church fundraisers…at least that’s what she told us.  
 
In exchange she’d bake us her famous lemon cake. No icing.  Just a sheet cake.  Every time as if it was the first time we’d heard the story she’d tell us why her cake was so moist… because instead of water in the recipe, she’d substitute it with “Lemon Lime Thoda POP.”  
 
And then there was Sonny. His real name was Gerald.  A black man in his seventies that still delivered the register mail newspaper to the downtown businesses.  Sonny had a smile that would cover 50 percent of his face.  The darkest part of his eyes where also growing white from severe glaucoma. 
 
I don’t know how or when I first met Sonny.  He walked by our shop everyday just before noon with his empty Register Mail paper bag slung over his shoulder.  I think we were loading a truck with plate glass when he stopped on his route to talk. 
He had a severe stutter.  So when he got excited the combination of his big smile and stutter made it nearly impossible to understand him.  Not to discourage his obvious joy we would shake our heads and smile as if we understood and agreed.
 
He lived by himself on the 3rd floor of Whiting Hall right behind the Galesburg Public Library.  But he talked about growing up in a house that used to stand right between the back of our family Glass business and the old Herrington Home, the old Galesburg Orphanage.  
 
He would tell me stories about how sometimes the orphans at the Herrington Home would accidentally kick a ball over the wooden fence that separated his yard from the orphanage. He loved kicking the ball back.  
 
He told me, when he was little…his job was to go into the Willis Steel factory across from what is now Hanson Lumber.  As a little kid he’d go in while it was still dark in the morning and get all of the little coal stoves stoked with new coal so when the workers arrived the factory would be warm.
 
Sonny was mentally challenged to some degree and the stories he would tell and the perspective he had on life indicated that his mother had done all she could to protect him from a cruel world.  
 
Somehow I ended up in his apartment one day. We did a lot of work for Whiting Hall, replacing foggy window units and replacing the balances that would hold these big heavy window sashes in place. 
 
I remember seeing the boxes of hamburger helper piled up on his counter. The burnt crusty pots and pans still dirty in the sink.
 
After that, when he would come by our shop on the square delivering his papers if I was in the middle of lunch, I’d offer to share half of my sandwich. He always accepted.  Occasionally, I’d  buy him is own meal.  So when he came by we’d chat for a little and I’d just hand him a bag with a meal.  He’d take it, put it in his big newspaper bag and take it to his apartment to eat.
 
Years of this, to the point where it became pretty routine for myself and the other employees to welcome Sonny into our glass shop for a quick story and a snack.
 
Sonny had faith in Jesus.  We did talk about that.  But his faith was simple and probably no deeper than “Jesus loves me this I know…for the Bible tells me so” or at least whatever he could remember from his mother’s influence.  But Sonny inspired me.  On my worst days I’d see him walk by with that smile and say, if he can smile at what life has given him…what am I complaining about?
 
One day I got the brilliant idea that I should invite Sonny over to our house for dinner.  I don’t know why I didn’t start a little smaller with just a simple midweek casual dinner.  But for whatever reason, I invited Sonny over for Christmas brunch.  Jena and My parents responded kindly but they had to be a little in shock that we would invite Sonny to invade our very private family Christmas tradition.
 
By this time Sonny was no longer delivering papers.  He’d tripped a few times and because of his limited eyesight.  I’d heard rumors he had walked out in front of a few cars and the Register-Mail had received some calls from concerned citizens.
 
I remember taking my oldest son and going on Christmas Day to pick Sonny up at his Whiting Hall apartment.  Back then you had to go to the back of the building to a little lobby and pick up the phone and dial his room number. He came down.  He was dressed up… a little. He was nervous.  He was leaving the security that his mother had taught him to trust and he was taking a risk.
 
So Sonny wouldn’t be left out of the Christmas fun, my kids had purchased some gifts and wrapped them.  Sonny was 78 in this picture (see photo)…he passed away recently at the age of 90.  Even in this photo I can feel his nervousness in his countenance.  Clara is giving him one of 3 gifts.  He received new socks, deodorant and a pocket knife for Christmas that year.
 


Here’s where I’m headed with his story. I believe for many years Sonny got to a point in his life where he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was “for” him. 
He knew that I would do things “for” him.  
I would buy lunch “for” him. 
He maybe would even go by our Glass shop and look at the sign on the building and feel at an organizational level,  “That place… is ‘for’ me.”
 
But something shifted in Sonny’s heart and mind when we…
Helped into our truck. 
Drove him to our home.
Helped him up the steps.
Ate together at our table … Sonny experienced a family that was “with” him. 
 
Sonny made some choices a few days after that Christmas Day that would put him in closer proximity to   people so he could be “with” others for his final years.
 
It makes me wonder, If it was good enough for God to just be “for” us, He wouldn’t have needed to promise and provide Immanuel. “God with us”.  
 
Consider this statistical take on the life of Jesus, the life we have to model.
 
Jesus spent 30 years seemingly doing nothing. 3 years working with a motley crew of disciples, and then a couple of days near the end of his life fixing something that was broken.
 
But 99% of his life was just being “with”. The 3 years of his ministry was just being “with”.  Even the few days “fixing” was so his creation could be “with” him in eternity.
 
Immanuel.  God with us.
 
“For” is safer.
“With” is risky.  Jesus understood this.
 
There is nothing wrong with “for”. We need to be “for”…more.  
 
For is great.  
 
With… is greater.
 
With > For 
 
I believe the reality of “Immanuel”, God with us, absolutely changes the way we understand and live out the Gospel.  It changes the way we view discipleship. It changes the way we understand our relationship with Jesus and the way we understand our relationship with the people we are closest to and the people we think are most unlike us.  
 
This understanding could turn a church budget upside down. 
It will change what Christmas presents you buy.
It will change the boundaries you set for yourself in terms of technology.
It will change the way you parent…the way you grandparent.
If the right people got a hold of this, It could change government policy.  
 
 
Who knows, it might change where we live or who we have over for dinner.
Or maybe, the way we finish out our lives. 
 
With > For
 
My single challenge for us is to allow this reality to simply invade every part of our lives for the next few days until Christmas.
 
Maybe it’s a conversation starter.  Asking your kids what would it look like to embrace this as an expression of our family this season. 
 
Take an action step.
Do an experiment. 
Visit an old friend or make a new one. 
 
With > For 
 
Do you remember Sonny?  How about Nina?  What are you going to do with this reality this Christmas?