Keep Your Christmas Cards...and Pray!

Undecking the halls, throwing away boughs of holly, and cleaning ashes from the open-fire-roasted chestnuts are about as much fun as having a root canal.  Last month’s joy of getting the decorations out can be muffled quickly this week by thinking about getting it all back in the boxes and in the attic.

For weeks, the Christmas cards came flooding into our mailbox.  With each trip from the mailbox, we got so much joy hearing from friends around the country and seeing family photos from throughout the previous year. 

Oh, the time and energy that went in to making some of those Christmas cards.  The thought of trashing them is just too much to bear!

Another December 25 has come and gone.  Decorations have all been stowed away, but this year’s Christmas cards will remain with us throughout the New Year.  As each day of 2011 passes, we will look at last year’s cards again and again, and our family will pray for those who wished us Christmas greetings in 2010.

We keep our Christmas cards in a homemade “Prayer Box.”  Our Christmas Card Prayer Box is an essential part of our evening dinner table ritual.  Our boys wouldn’t even think about eating at night until we pulled out the Prayer Box.

We certainly won’t win any home decorating or craft awards.  The Prayer Box is simply a diaper wipes box with piece of construction paper taped to it which says—"Pray Without Ceasing.”  What lacks in creativity is compensated by the lessons on intercession which we are all learning every night.

At dinner, a different boy gets to reach into the prayer box and pull out a Christmas card.  Before we dig in, we pray for our food and for the folks on the card.  When two-year-old Isaac pulls out the Christmas card that Mr. Bill and Mrs. Brenda sent last year, our mealtime prayer becomes even more special as we pray for his Sunday school teachers.  Sometime, the friends we pray for may be sick or having a difficult time.  Pulling out cards from our cousins always brings them a little closer to home.  Occasionally after we pray for a particular family, one of our boys will say, “We should call and check on them.”  Watching your children think about others is such a joy.

Selfishness and prayerlessness go hand in hand and there’s too much in today’s society that encourages children to focus on themselves.  The Prayer Box does just the opposite—it gets our minds off ourselves and helps us pray specifically for other people.

Don’t throw those Christmas cards away!  Recycle them.  In fact, redeem them and use them for a godly purpose in your family’s life.

If you sent us a Christmas card this year, know how thankful we are for you.  Know also that our little tribe of six will be praying for you throughout the year!

Pastor Todd

An Increasingly Colorful Christmas

Art Linkletter made us all laugh when he interviewed children for Kids Say the Darndest Things.

 

As a pastor, I’m finding that even adults say the darndest things.

Being a white Southern Baptist preacher with a white wife, three white kids and a black kid in a small-town First Baptist Church makes for interesting looks at the grocery store and curious conversations with folks around town.

We adopted our fourth son from Ethiopia.  Among many other things, you guessed it—he’s black.  Now, his momma’s white.  His daddy’s white.  His brothers are white.  His grandparents are white.  His aunts and uncles are white.  His cousins are white.  And the list goes on.

Couples who adopt from another race immediately make themselves a biracial family.  No one goes into such a situation lightly.  There is so much about the present and the future to consider—especially when you live south of the Mason-Dixon!

One lady told me that she thought anyone who adopted children—especially black children—was “inviting trouble.” 

Didn’t God “invite trouble” when he chose to send His Son into our world?

Bring it on.

I was asked one day if my wife and I were going to “get Benjamin around black people so he knows where he came from.”  Talk about not knowing how to respond.  As if simply surrounding Benjamin with other black kids would give him a greater sense of identity and help him feel more rooted in this thing called life.

When we were in the process of adopting Benjamin from Ethiopia, we started a blog entitled “Making Benjamin a Brady.”  (http://makingbenjaminabrady.blogspot.com)  That’s what we were doing—making him a Brady.  He’s been home for over 6 months now and we’re still making him a Brady.  We’re making all our kids Bradys, and we’ll be working on it until the day they walk about of our house.

We live in Paducah, Kentucky.  Most of our friends have white skin.  We spend a lot of time together as a family, and church is a big part of our lives.  I want Benjamin’s primary identity growing up to be his family.  I want him to know of God’s love for us, of his parents love for God, of our love for each other, and of our love for all our boys.

I want Benjamin to realize Martin Luther King’s dream of a land where men are not judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

I want Benjamin to know that he was born in Ethiopia.  I want to tell him about his mother’s death which took place during his birth.  I want to tell him about our conversation with his father the day we got on the plane to bring him home.

I want him to know that tears well up in my eyes if I look for too long at the picture of his father on my desk.

I want Benjamin to avoid stereotypes—for him to realize that this world is not black and white.  I want him to realize that our country is not made up of blue states and red states.  I want him to understand that what you see is not always what you get.

I want Benjamin to realize that the words of the song are not just empty words, but that they are real.  Indeed, Jesus does loves the little children—all the children of the world.  Red and yellow, black and white, they are all precious in his sight.  Jesus loves the little children of the world.

I want Benjamin to know of God’s great love—a love which knows no distinctions and entertains no discrimination.  I want him to know that in Christ, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female” (Galatians 3:28)

Three or four decades from now, Christmas may be a whole lot more colorful than it is now.  I’m sure we’ll have some white grandkids. There may be some black grandkids coming over for Christmas.  There might even be some of those kids who are called “mixed.” 

It doesn’t matter, because man looks at the outward appearance.  God looks at the heart.

It may be too simple, but I think a loving home life where Christ reigns supreme will do more for Benjamin than encouraging him to see life in a racial and superficial way.

So, to answer the question:  No, we’re not going to “get Benjamin around black people.”  We’re going to do our best to get him around God’s people, and if those people are black, then so be it.  If they are white, so be it.  If they are green, well, we’ll get him around them too.

In our day, there will always be some issues for trans-racially adopted children.  But what an opportunity we have to show Benjamin (and the rest of the world) that his life is not about the color of our family’s skin, but the faithfulness of our God.

Pastor Todd

The Pope on the Church

The greatest persecution of the church doesn't come from the enemies of the church on the outside but is born from the sin within the church.

                                                              Pope Benedict  XVI








Pastor Todd

A Christ-Centered Christmas

What kind of childhood Christmas memories do you have?  A favorite gift?  Christmas concerts at church?  Watching the annual Christmas parade?  Racing down the hall on Christmas morning to tear into the presents under the tree?  Eating a holiday meal at Grandma and Grandpa's house?

Regardless of your Christmas memories, it is safe to say that your parents shaped your holiday experiences.  And the same will be true for your children.  The way you lead your children to celebrate Christmas will create memories which they will take into adulthood.

Kids do not need mixed messages about Christmas from their parents.  Children deserve caring, clear, and pointed parenting, especially during the holiday season.

Think about it.  Confusing signals abound for kids during the holidays.  Children in today's world already have a difficult time distinguishing between fantasy and reality.  However, Christmastime often blurs even further the line between what is real and what is not real.  Multiple manger scenes may grace the landscape of your home, but until you start celebrating Christmas like a Christian, your children may have difficulty understanding the significance of the holiday.

Excessive materialism, frenzied activity, gluttonous gatherings, and yielding to society's expectations may cause your child to wonder if you really believe what you say you believe about Christmas.

We all have seen the front yard manger scenes where Santa Claus is standing around Baby Jesus along with Joseph, Mary, the shepherds, the wise men, and the animals.  Could it be that such an image does more harm than good in the mind of a child?

We certainly do not need to jettison all the cultural traditions of Christmas.  Kids need the experiences of roasting chestnuts over an open fire, and riding in a one-horse open sleigh would be the dream of a lifetime.  But your kids need to realize that Christmas is not primarily about trees, ornaments, stockings, lights, presents, or parades.  Kids need to know that Christmas is about Christ.  And kids will not realize that Christmas is about Christ unless they see that your Christmas is about Christ.

Do not allow mixed messages about the meaning of Christmas to get into your kids' heads.  In everything you do, make sure that your kids know that Christmas is about Christ.

Pastor Todd

Heart Training

As a pastor of a bunch of folks, a husband of one woman, and a father of four boys, I am realizing with each passing day the profound importance of the heart.  I am convinced that in a family, in a church, and in a society, nothing is more important than the heart of a man. 

This fall, our church has been focusing on The Heart of the Matter http://www.fbcpaducah.org/resources-audio-video.html.  In addition, Tony Woodlief's recent work, Somewhere More Holy has been used by God to encourage, challenge and refine me.  Here is another excerpt:

I guess in all this homeschooling and training and handwringing over whether we're getting it right is a desire not just for our children to be well-educated, but to have good hearts.  We are working out how best to train them--in our classroom and in every other room as well--not only to help their intellects flourish, but because part of building a home, we are learning, is training our hearts and the hearts of our children to seek God where he will be found.  Wendell Berry argues that schools ought not to focus just on imparting skills, but on cultivating humanity.  "For human beings the spiritual and the practical are, and should be, inseperable."  Training up the heart is more important than teaching the mind, adn this is what we are wrestling out each day, on the battlegrounds of our own hearts as well as theirs.  "I would rather have a boy of mine stand high in his studies than high in athletics," wrote Teddy Roosevelt to his son, "but I could a great deal rather have him show true manliness of character than show either intellectual or physical prowess."

Pastor Todd

Joy in Marriage

Marriage is a daily dying to self, which is hard to recognize with popular images of lifelong romance and mutual satisfaction.  Endurance has been the way of man since the Fall--finding joy not in the absence of suffering, but in the midst of it.  When Christ said, "Take up your cross and follow Me," he wasn't talking about a cute little gold cross that some people dangle from their chests as a signifier of their spirituality.  Christ was talking about the sort of cross with weight and jagged splinters to which each of us nails his pride, his self pity, his selfish wants, his dreams of how the world ought to treat him.  Marriage is, for many of us, an essential part of our sanctification.  In it we die, every day, for other people--for our spouses, for our children.  Can joy be born in this?  I can tell you that the answer, miraculously, is Yes.  But not unless you endure.

Somewhere More Holy, Tony Woodlief

Faithful Friends and a Great Bible Teacher

We had lunch today with Olin and Joyce Bryant--dear servants of God.  The boys love the Bryants--and Isaac is especially fond of Mrs. Joyce

This afternoon, I am thankful for Joyce's diligence, creativity, eagerness, and faithfulness as one of FBC's Sunday morning Bible teachers.  Joyce went to great lengths this past Sunday to teach from Ephesians 6 about the Christian's armor.

Pastor Todd

loving God, loving people...measuring our love

Our love of God

will never be greater

than the love we have

for the person we love the least.



Pastor Todd