“Merry Christmas,” he said.

“Happy holidays,” she said in return.

“Season’s greetings,” retorted a third.

“Who’s going to the Christmas party?” asked another.

“Shhhh!” said a bystander. “You can’t say Christmas. It’s holiday.”

Confused yet?

If you want to see cultural, spiritual, intellectual, and moral confusion, look at the culture’s use of language. What words are you still free to use? Which ones are now suddenly inflammatory or dangerous? What words are off-limits?

I am currently teaching a group of men the doctrine of Christology–that Jesus the Christ took on flesh in His incarnation, that He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born in the natural way via Mary, lived a sinless life, made an atoning death in His vicarious substitutionary death at Calvary, was buried, was three days later raised bodily (just as Jonah was three days in the belly of the great fish and was resurrected onto the land), was seen by hundreds of eyewitnesses, spoke with His disciples and others, was touched by Thomas, ascended to heaven, and will come again in glory and judgment. In short, Jesus was and is God in the flesh. He is the God-man … 100% God and 100% man. God has come down. He has made Himself known. God is not silent.

And yet what you see happening in the realm of language is man’s salvo of efforts to keep God quiet, to suppress God’s revelation. “Don’t say Christmas.” Really? But I guess you still want to take your Christmas holiday, though, right?

Why? It’s just another day, right? If God really didn’t take on flesh in Bethlehem, wasn’t really raised in Nazareth, didn’t really die a substitutionary atoning death for all those who were to believe upon Him, then what are you so anxious about? Just go to work, don’t worry about believers saying “Merry Christmas,” and admit that you cannot explain the calendar you go by, much less any coherent theology.

Recognize that your suppression of speech reflects your theology. You worship the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

I am by no means making an argument for 25 December being the heart of the matter. What I am arguing for is that God came to His own and men loved darkness rather than light. And that explains what you see in substituting “holiday” and “season” for Christ, Christmas, and the Christ-stamped universe He graciously permits us to traffic upon each day.

My favorite time of day. The sun dispels the darkness. Inch by inch, the frost melts, the birds sing, the early joggers take to the trails and paths. Potentiality is the thought that pervades my mind. Not to waste the day but to use it up faithfully by one’s vocation. Faithfulness is all.

I wish I had paid closer attention in astronomy class when I was a college student. It was one of my hardest classes in my undergraduate years. I could blame it on the fact that I was studying English and philosophy. I was engrossed in the poetry of Eliot and Yeats, Shakespeare’s plays, the early fiction of Joyce, and the works of Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor. And having to sketch maps of the night skies for astronomy class seemed (at the time) like busywork, something to occupy a student’s time, work the professor assigned so he would have more time to work on his book and earn tenure at the university. I did eke by in astronomy class, glad it was behind me so I could devote my time to literature and philosophy. Now, many years later, I want to go back to my astronomy professor and apologize. I want to tell him that just within the last 36 hours, I have looked up again and again at the heavens. I have gotten online and tried to relearn the names of the constellations. I have tried, like a child, to trace the Big Dipper and Little Dipper with my forefinger on these clear nights. I have tried to learn the names of all the phases of earth’s moon. I have tried to understand the whys and wherefores of the Milky Way. I have studied Polaris.

My mind naturally tracks more with mythologies and the ways in which literature uses the heavens, the stars, planets, galaxies, etc. figuratively to comment upon the human condition and our place under the heavens. But I am beginning to understand now, Dr. H. (my former astronomy professor of many moons ago), why you were so captivated by the heavens. I am now, too, but perhaps for different reasons. You used to lecture us college kids on the mathematical precision of the heavens. You told us physics explained everything–that everything was reducible to math. We were children in our thinking then. We imbibed your pontifications about materialism.

But when I walk out now and look up at the heavens, I see the same sky as you but have much different views. And I have some questions for you:

1. Why do you think there is order in the universe?
2. How do you think it got ordered?
3. Why do you trust your own mind?
4. If everything is physical/material, how do you explain your passion to write a book about physics?
5. Why should we believe you if we are all just matter in motion?
6. Do you think it’s possible that the heavens, the precision of orbits and cycles and the lives of stars and planets and galaxies, and the fact of our wonder at their majesty, could be Authored? Are you even open to that possibility?

I know it’s an old joke about how we English majors write poems and stories about the heavens, and the physicists describe the heavens. But is it possible that neither of us has fully explained the heavens? You see, one writer named David phrased it this way: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1).

It is possible, Dr. H., that God exists and that He is far from silent, that He declares Himself, His majesty, His nature, and that creation–the heavens and all of us under them–speaks of the Creator?

I don’t know where you are now, former astronomy professor, but the more I look at the heavens, and gaze with childlike wonder at their vastness, I know even a child would not deny that such a story has an Author.

Some of our soldiers were jumping (as part of airborne operations) at the DZ (Drop Zone) on the west side of the river. To watch them, to be with them and their families (many of whom drove out to view the jumps), I drove west through a scenic part of the training area. Lots of hardwoods. A couple of air fields. UH-60s, C-17s, and C-130s were visible from the road. I watched them take off and land several times as part of training. I wound my way to the DZ and crossed the river. As I approached the bridge, I checked my rear view mirror to be sure no one was behind me. I rolled down my passenger-side window and snapped a couple of shots of the river with my iPhone. I don’t know why, at least not in the ultimate sense. I have crossed rivers on several continents many times and yet each time I’m a kid again at heart. I look down from the bridge and marvel at the power of the water, at the beauty of tree-lined banks, at the smells and sounds of rivers, and I feel my smallness and contingency amidst the grandness of waters.

Most people, I think, would have just driven across the bridge with no thought, not even paused to look–to see the fowl in the tops of trees scanning the waters where shad flashed silver-gray beneath the leaden sky. Trails led down to the water where anglers and kayakers had worn their way to and from the river. I felt it again: smallness. My temporariness amidst the enduring power and mystery of rivers.

A car approached from my rear. I knew I had to speed up or be laughed at for pausing at a river people cross daily en route to work. “Who is this guy? Why photograph this? Good grief,” they might scoff. I’m at a place, however, where I don’t care anymore about why I am captivated. I’m wired this way–to look about, to attend, to learn the names of fellow creatures and creations before me. As I crossed the river, the language of taxonomy washed across my mind like liquid: hickory, cottonwood, longleaf pine, dogwood, swamp oak, pin oak, bream, carp, channel cat, white perch, redeye, shoal, smallmouth, and largemouth bass, turkey vulture, red-tail hawk, mourning doves. The words of the world in the crossing of the river on a cloudy December day where I was reminded once again of the powers of water … to wash the senses and imagination with words that name the world and in so doing make it speakable.

Opening the door to walk outside in the wee hours of this morning I was enveloped within windless fog. As I drove to the running trail for PT, my vehicle’s fog lights shot lances of white light into thick vapor for the drive. Normally I see whitetails grazing beside the roads. Today, however, I saw nothing but a black sow that had been hit by a vehicle as she attempted to cross the road. The deer and wild hogs abound here, so they are comfortable–and sometimes too comfortable, as was the case with this sow–with human contact.

When I arrived I parked and started my warmup on the running path. A runner, going clockwise on the path, passed me. Breathing heavily from the hill he’d just ascended, he appeared–even in the fog and dark–to have run several miles already. I knew him to be a strong runner and he was sweating heavily.

As I rounded curves on the running path, the heaviness of the fog haunted me. I am not one to watch or read the horror genre, but if one were looking for eerie cinematography, today’s predawn hours would have satisfied. I heard no wildlife either. Usually at this time you can hear the frogs in their choir, the cicadas if the season’s right, or birds stirring. But this morning, only silence, fog, the smell of water in the air.

Mornings like these remind me of what I have read hundreds of times–that man is a vapor, a mist. James put it this way: “yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (4:14).

It is humbling. It is instructive. When I know from experience that this thick fog and mist will be burned away in a few hours, and this heavy silence will be stolen by the sound of the day’s labors, many will be tempted to forget this fog, this solitude and silence, and the fact that it is all so fleeting. We have only so much time to do that which we are called to do, and I feel it viscerally. It is as enveloping as this fog.

My knees were hurting today after a ruck earlier this week when I rucked and/or jogged several miles in combat boots. Young soldiers did it with no issues. I could hang with most of them but I paid for it later. My shins did not appreciate running in boots. They have ways of letting me know for the next three days. But today when the sun popped out and the clouds were burned away, and I had checked off some errands and done several quotidian things most folks engage in, I put on a pair of running shoes, but not to run, and certainly not in combat boots, but just to enjoy a leisurely walk for an hour or so—to be outdoors on a partly sunny day. It was quite warm  outside for December, even for GA, but nonetheless pleasant. 

     As I walked, I looked at the houses in the neighborhood where I’m currently residing. Many residents had erected inflatable Santa Claus figures in their yards and strung up lights on their shrubbery and homes. Most of the residents’ houses displayed a U.S. flag from a pole near each home’s main entrance. Many families were doing what I had done earlier in the day—returning from the grocery store or oil change station, or going out to run normal errands that come around quickly. 

     A few weekend runners and walkers were out, too, as were children. I saw twin girls, probably four or five-years old, riding their bicycles without training wheels. The girls shared the same curly brown hair and they both were in Christmas-time red and black and green pajamas. But their bicycles were pink, as were their helmets. Their dad was unpacking military gear from his gray Toyota 4Runner and watching his girls pedal down and back on the sidewalk that ran in front of their home.   

     An hour or so later, I was back at my place. I showered, ate a little snack, checked in with my wife, read some, got my thoughts together for what I’ll speak to soldiers about tomorrow as I’m given opportunity to minister to them. For this particular group I will be addressing, they are about halfway through a rigorous school. They are being tested physically, emotionally, and academically. 

     I’ve watched the class size go down daily since they arrived and began training. It has more than dawned on them that this training is for real, not some check-the-block tab/badge they get by mere talk. No, when I arrived this morning at 0400 to attend the safety brief for this morning’s run, the soldiers were already doing warmup PT (physical training). It was very humid and cool 

 this morning, so when the soldiers exhaled, their breath made clouds of mist in the early morning air under the lights in the PT pit. 

     I watched; I prayed; I felt my age and longed to be young again and not have knee pain, but I remembered to laugh at myself, too. I’m not special. I signed up. I love the pain at least in this sense: it reminds me of the hundreds of miles I’ve put in the countless pairs of now slick-soled boots, and running shoes, and of all the mornings when young soldiers like these are training when most of the world is still in bed for several hours.

It reminded me of one of my favorite books from N.D. Wilson where he writes thus:

“And from it all, from the compost of our errors, God brings glory—a world of ripe grain in the wind.

By His grace, we are the water made wine. We are the dust made flesh made dust made flesh again. We are the whore made brides and the thieves made saints and the killers made apostles. We are the dead made living.”

Yes and amen. 

¹ N.D. Wilson, Death By Living, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2013), 167.

I used my smartphone to snap pictures. To attend. To notice. To appreciate. Gratitude seemed the appropriate response to a banquet. It’s almost as if God Himself had said, Taste and see.

I heard him before I saw him. The leaves are very dry, and the sounds seemed amplified. I had the creek to my north, flowing on my right side. I had just come down a spur to the south. I put up my hammock between two mature oaks where two streams merged below me about fifty meters to the south.

I was still swinging from having gotten in. He came running down the spur on which I, too, had just descended. As soon as he got within about twenty meters of me, he sensed me. I don’t know if he saw me or smelled me, or both. But he knew immediately I was there. In his path. He held his head high, looking right at me. I tried to catch a video of him. For maybe fifteen seconds, we beheld one another. It never gets old. They are majestic to watch. Enjoy.

There are a couple of short videos here:

and here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXeLXGtrHYg

“Let’s go get a real tree,” she said.

“Yes. Let’s do it,” I said.

We had passed a local Christmas tree farm recently on an afternoon drive back home.

“Let’s go there,” she said. “They’re local.”

“I agree.”

So we loaded into the truck and headed out. The weather was as autumnal as its defining characteristics–wind that made your skin shiver; leaves that crunched under our steps; cerulean skies; temperatures in the forties.

The road to the Christmas tree farm is a state highway through countryside. Driving it, you see horse farms, cattle ranches, million-dollar new homes that aim to look rural, and then you see trailers and shanties, too. I love the contrasts, actually–the range of people and types.

We were far from alone when we arrived thirty minutes later at the Christmas tree farm. Trucks lined the highway.

We saw some Frasier firs first. But then she saw the Turkish fir, and was hooked. It was full, smelled as delicious as Grandma’s house on Thanksgiving Day. “This one’s so pretty!” she said.

“Yes.”

“You done looking, already” I asked?

“Yes,” she said. “I’m so glad we came here.”

I told one of the employees we’d found the one for us. He helped me carry it to the kids who shook the loose needles off with a machine. Then two of the other young men and a young woman ran it through the baler. When they pulled it through the netting, red and green netting covered the tree and one of the young men carried it down the hill towards my truck.

I would like to say that I am a handyman and that I had no complications cutting off more of the base of the tree and fitting it perfectly into the stand, when I got home. I wish. But it was less than perfect when I did it. We turned the tree; I trimmed off limbs with my shearers; I used my chainsaw to shorten it, confident I could cut the angle needed to make the tree stand perfectly vertical. After more than a little frustration, we finally got it all to a place where it looked relatively good in the living room.

“I’m going outside,” I said. I went out, raked some leaves, blew off the driveway, played with the dogs–things I knew I could do, things requiring little if any skill.

Now the sun has set behind the ridge; I have fed the dogs; my back hurts from wrestling with the tree; she has gone to pick up some new lights for this year’s tree; and, well, it’s a good ache in my lower back.

Below are some scenes from the day. What’s the upshot? It’s the small things; they’re not small. We don’t do fancy. We do small and it’s okay. Here’s to the ache in my back, the scent of fresh-cut pine in the house, the sun setting over the ridge, and the sap on my pants.

Lady, our Cavalier King Charles, eyed me as I tried to get the tree straight in the stand: