Life, Wonderful.

This is what my world usually looks like in the winter. Nice, pretty.

But not yesterday. No. Yesterday you couldn’t see anything. So much so that it wasn’t worth taking a picture…because you wouldn’t have been able to see anything. The night before brought the snow. And the morning brought the wind. We were snowed in.

Needless to say…yesterday was kind of a grey day all around. Not tons of motivation. A wandering mind.

So last night I thought I would see if my dad would want to watch a movie. His favorite. It’s a Wonderful Life.

Why do we only ever watch this movie at Christmas? Anyway, it’s so good. But I am always so shocked by how brutal it is, how honest it is. They would never allow anyone to make a movie like that these days. And there is this one honest line that got me tonight that I apparently have never heard before.
When Clarence and George are sitting in that bar right after the “change” takes place and the bartender is looking at them like they are two nut jobs, Clarence says to George, “Why? Don’t they believe in angels?” George whispers “Yes, they believe in angels” and Clarence questions back with, “If they believe then why are they so surprised to see one?”

It’s the classic question, really. If they believe, then why are they so surprised?

In a very grey-day fashion, another line from the beginning of the movie struck me as well. “Clarence, you need to go help someone.”

“Why, is the person sick?”
“No, worse. He is discouraged.”

Isn’t that interesting? I think there is a whole lot of truth in it, too.

So maybe the devil was working overtime. Maybe he took advantage of the lack of sun yesterday, but I think I was a little discouraged. Maybe even a little doubtful.

Do you ever wonder if what you believe is really real? When the materialist mind takes over doesn’t it ask you to question, “How could all of that really happen?”

The devil has the advantage of time and space. We weren’t there 2,000 years ago. We don’t personally have any experience with mangers, or bright stars, or crosses.

“We don’t do that anymore.”
We have microwaves and airplanes and iPads.
We know things like that, so anything that is out of the realm of THAT kind of REAL stuff is easy for the devil to make us question.
And discouragement is the best way to get us to question. Because not only do we maybe linger over a doubt, the blah-ness of our attitude makes us add at the end of the doubt, “And who cares anyway? What does any of it matter?”

Success. There is the devil’s success. For us to think that none of it really matters anyway. Because the natural progression for us, if we don’t get a reality check, is to then just stop whatever doesn’t matter anyway.

Like prayer. Or going to church. Or valuing marriage. Or caring for people.

I work in the wedding industry, you know this (maybe some of you didn’t know that. I was a wedding planner, now I design custom bridal adornments), and while my job can be all fun and beautiful and exciting—for what is not fun, beautiful, and exciting about a wedding?—it can also be…not so fun.
Like when you are working for people who don’t, what I would say, “get it.” As in the ones who

don’t realize that marriage is, according to the Bible, the most mysterious, glorious, and fierce showing of the love of Christ to his church, not just some convenient, need-meeting relationship.

But the worst is on grey days, like yesterday, when discouragement pops in and I find myself thinking, “Is marriage REALLY eternal? Is it REALLY gospel? Does this thing I am creating to help make a bride feel more beautiful really have ANY significance? Do I REALLY believe in the symbolism of this thing?”

Or what about when you know you need to pray for someone more, but then you catch yourself and think, “Does it really change anything anyway? Why would I talk to God? Doesn’t he already know my thoughts?”

Does sin REALLY need to be atoned for, we wonder? Are we sure that “guilt” is not just some man-made emotion we feel sometimes? Did animal sacrifices really keep wrath at bay to then be poured out so excruciatingly on this guy who said he was God?

Or what about when our minds get caught up in church on the worship leaders, or how much we don’t like the tune of the song, and we are not at all focused on the fact that we are singing TO someone…because…are we really? Are we sure it’s not all just blah, blah, blah?

And why do we try to help people? Won’t we all be dead in 100 years anyway? Are people really going to live after they die?

Don’t look at me like that. I know you all have thought it. How do I know this? Because we have all been discouraged.

And then I smile. Why have we been discouraged and thought these thoughts that maybe, just maybe, eternity doesn’t exist and maybe, just maybe, this material world has no correlation to some spiritual world?

Because of a spiritual being. Who very spiritually rebelled. Who chose to dishonor a very spiritual God who rules not only all of the spiritual world, but this material one, too.
Oh, the hi-jinks! Oh, the irony! The devil has done his job best when he gets you and me to believe that he does not exist…and that none of this really matters.

Because the truth is, Wolfies, all of it DOES really matter. Marriage really IS gospel, it really IS eternal. Is it scarred and damaged and totally run amuck? More so than it ever should be.

And prayer? Is it REALLY talking to this God who will always know us better than we know him? Yeah, it is.
Worship really does move mountains in the heavenlies, people really do need to be cared for, there really is symbolism to be found in material objects that can affect you spiritually. Yes to all of the above. There are real consequences in both the spiritual and material world for both the spiritual and material things we do.

The other day I read Luke 4 and verse 1 caught me: “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit…” and for the first time it hit me: the same spirit that was in Jesus’ physical body (which is as much of a physical body as mine is), is in me. It has lived inside both of us. It’s like if it was a heart transplant. The heart that was once in his body is now in mine.
Now I know it’s not really a heart transplant, but the thought puts a little flesh to the concept. It brings a little 21^st century to the picture. Brings all this manger and bright star and rugged cross madness into our madness of microwaves and airplanes and iPads. It makes this “Spirit” real.

And sure, maybe some of you think I am “mystical” or something. Thinking that our eternity can be affected by our marriages, or thinking that taking a meal to someone who is sick can give us actual crowns we will receive after we die, or thinking that pretty songs we sing in church are actually us storming the gates of hell. And yes, maybe my mind can’t stop thinking that this material world is actually just a cover for some spy-like, piratical, Lord of the Rings-esque existence we all actually lead in the spiritual world but don’t realize. Call me mystical. I don’t care.  Call me out of touch with reality. Call me hyper-spiritual.

But part of me thinks that everybody thought that about Noah, too. He was WAY too spiritual. Took it all too seriously, no doubt. We forget it was a real flood, that killed…like…billions of people.

And don’t for a second tell me that Simeon (Luke 2:25-) didn’t cause quite a socially unacceptable stir in the temple as he runs over to this baby and pulls it out of its mother’s arms declaring the he is the one they have waited for!! Glory BE! It was socially unacceptable then, and it would be today.

Forget 2,000 years ago, forget no electricity, forget far, distant lands that are in our imagination but we never believe we can touch, forget that we all kind of think none of this stuff really happened...but remember that it all happened in the same Egypt…and the same Israel…and the same Rome…that today has microwaves, and that we can get in an airplane and go to; this stuff happened to real people, who lived in real bodies and ate real food and had real jobs. All of this “spiritual” stuff that we read about in this spiritually-discerned book really did happen here in this material world on this same green planet.

The craziest thing about this time of year, kids, is that all of the stories are true. Spiritual things happened in a very material world that affected all of those people very spiritually.

And it’s still happening today. The same Jesus who lived in Israel, who spoke the world into motion, who will tame wolves, who ate real food, who had a Spirit inside him that can be inside you, is the same one who tells us to be on our guard against discouragement, and to expect his coming. Because if we REALLY believe, then why are we surprised when we see him?