Best Christmas Pageant Ever

Christopher is taking full advantage of going to school.  This fall he auditioned for the annual Christmas play.  This year it was The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, by Barbara Robinson  He got the role of Ralph Herdman.

The Herdmans were a rough bunch of neglected children.  Ralph was the "tough kid."  This picture of all six kids gives you a good idea of who they are.  The kids across the tracks...ones who are quite familiar with the Department of Family Services for all the wrong reasons.  Ralph (Christopher) is the kid standing on the left.

Long story short, the annual Christmas pageant gets turned upside down when the Herdmans show up for the auditions because a church-going kid was being bullied by one of them.  His quick-thinking wit got the bully off his back by telling him there was goodies at church.  The very, very tough-talking sister Imogene wanted the part of Mary.  No one dared audition against her.  She decided Ralph should be Joseph.  You can imagine the horror of the church-going kids and parents at the thought of the Herdmans being in the church play.

All types of mayhem ensued.  Here Ralph and Imogene are fighting over baby Jesus.

During rehearsals the Herdmans were always stirring up trouble.

After the firemen were called because Imogene was smoking a cigar in the woman's restroom, it appeared that the play wouldn't go on.  But the mom directing the play was determined that the show would go on.  Somehow during all the mayhem and confusion, a wonderful thing happened.

The Herdmans figured out the real meaning of Christmas.  Imogene so tenderly loved on the doll that the attendees thought it was a real baby.  (There had always been a real baby, but no mom in her right mom would let Imogene hold their baby even if for a few minutes.)

I have to confess that I stood at the back of the auditorium and just cried my eyes out at the depiction of a transformed life.  These elementary and middle school children did such a beautiful job of showing us one more time of how amazing the grace of God is.

I hope you all have had a joyous Christmas and will seek to be grateful every day for His amazing grace in the new year.  Happy 2014!

He Knows the Number of Hairs....

I warn you now that this will be an atypical post.  I had such good intentions (a theme of this blog) to post about CBT's birthday party somewhere along Thanksgiving time.  This year his birthday was on Thanksgiving so it seemed like a perfect time.  But, I got kinda of sidetracked.

The Saturday of Thanksgiving there was this little football game called the Iron Bowl.  For those of you not from the state of Alabama, there's really no way to describe this game.  I didn't fully appreciate that fact until I moved out of the state.  Just trust me.  There's nothing like it.  I won't go into the gory details of the meaning of this year's game.  Just know that it was a really, really big deal.  That brings us to my being sidetracked.

Alabama lost.  It seems so easy to type now, but right after the game it was hard to even summon that thought.  I spent about ten minutes on social media and then generally avoided all media for about a week.  I confess I am totally sick of seeing that run back, but I digress.  In that ten minutes I saw a Facebook post that said something like, "Don't trivialize my God by saying He cares anything about a football game."

That post really hit me.  (Not really in a "rocked my world" kind of way, but more in a nagging way.)  It seemed all wrong to me, but it has taken a few weeks to work out an articulation of why.  Every time I have thought about posting about CBT's party my mind would immediately go back to that stupid game; hence, no post for a while.

I kept thinking about God and that game.  In my heart of hearts I believe that He did/does care.  Not in a way that He favored Auburn over Alabama.  It just seems extreme to me to say that He doesn't care about something I care so much about.  I have seem Him pay attention to some crazy details.  I mean really crazy.  (I was going to direct you to a post about one such thing, but I just found that my early posts are GONE.  Oh, well, it was a great story.  The gist of it was that right after James started cycling, we went to Guatemala.  Our team leader prayed that God would give something special to James one morning.  Something just for him.  Long story short, that day our caravan was met by the largest bike race in Central and South America.  Way cool.)

So, why would He care about that and not this game?  I've thought a lot about it over the past few weeks.  I think He cares very much about that game, but not really who won.  He cares how that game conforms me more to the image of Christ.  (Yeah, took me quite a while to get there.  Seems so obvious now that I'm typing it.  Guess I'm just hard-headed.)  I do care very much about that game.  Is it an idol?  Hmmm.  I got a bit angry at the end of the game.  Angry/critical spirit?  Hmmm.  Yep, I don't think He cares so much about who won, but I do think He cares a lot....a whole lot about how I react/reacted to the outcome.

It is just a game, but I think He does care about every minute detail in my life.  It's in those details that he conforms me to the image of His son if I let Him.  It's funny, I don't think that trivializes Him I think that makes Him even bigger and sovereign.  Even over football.  It shows He has the power to do great things.  Even to change my heart to be able to say on January 6th War Eagle!