Thursday, December 17, 2020 (today’s lectionary)
Birthday boy
Jacob called his sons and said to them, “Come and listen, my sons, listen to your father.”
We bought a live tree for Christmas in 1980. After Chris was born and Santa came we planted it outside, where our dogs BJ and Bear used it for various purposes. The three of us lived in a farmhouse on a hill near Lincoln on my dad’s “extra” farm. It was cold on the hill, and after a $300 propane bill one weekend while we were gone to Evansville at Christmas, we graduated to kerosene heaters in every room.
When Chris was two, we drove to Springfield to shop on Christmas Eve. I bought the car from a friend for $100, and there was a pretty good-sized hole in the floor on the passenger side. A storm blew up, and blew our long country driveway mostly shut. So we stumbled through the snow, turned on our kerosene heater, and settled into our warm, California king water bed. That night instead of going to Grandma’s house, we ate like royalty in our own house, the food Margaret’s sister Villa sent us for Christmas.
We moved to Waynesville, and Chris wrote a poem (in cursive!) for us when he was in second grade (or maybe he was a little older):
My goodness, my goodness
The bells are all ringing,
I do not know when
I’ve been so excited. …
The turkey is sitting
All safe in its pan
And I am behaving
As calm as I can!
Love, Chris
We moved to Urbana. In third grade, Mrs. Rainer assigned homework to write every numeral in order from 1 to 1,000. Chris freaked out. We suggested he start slowly, one number at a time. He made a sign for us, that he held up from time to time.
“I NEED HELP!” And we helped him. But he did all the work
Chris had a younger brother, Marc and sister, Andrea. For another assignment, he cast us all in roles:
Athlete ME
Honest one ME
Artist ME
Politician BROTHER
Martyr DAD
Caregiver MOM
Baby SISTER
Brain ME
Star ME
Loving DAD
Trouble BROTHER
Giver ME
Support MOM and DAD
Listener DAD
O God, with your judgment endow the king and with your justice, the king’s son. He shall govern your people with justice. He shall defend the afflicted among the people and save the children of the poor. Justice shall flower in his days, and profound peace.
At Christian Campus Fellowship, where we were ministers, during Lent of 1990 we signed up a day at a time for a 40 day fast and prayed for a revival in Champaign-Urbana. Chris signed up for day #1.
In 1993 our friends invited Chris to “chaperone” their younger son Patrick on a plane to the Virgin Islands. Chris was 12, Patrick was 11. Chris wrote a journal during that amazing trip.
On the plane was fun except my ears hurt. All the food is very expencive because we are on an island. I swam in salt water for the first time. It tastes just like it sounds, only saltier.
The roads here are dangerous! There are strait up roads with hairpin turns in them. We came very close to hitting a truck and rolling down a cliff. Then we came back to the hotel and watched part of a movie, and here I am.
Chris and I took four trips together during his twelfth year. We read The What’s Happening to My Body! Book for Boys, complete with pictures. We watched movies and stayed in motels, swam in the pools, and read a chronological Bible. We finished it, and Chris went back to Waynesville, where he was baptized, celebrating his own Christian bar-mitzvah.
Chris was growing up. He delivered papers on his bike for five years, but he sent a letter to his customers before school started in 1995.
I write regretfully to say I am giving up my paper route after 5 ½ years of service. I am going to be a high school freshman this year and don’t want to have a paper route taking up my time during some of the best years of my life … thank you for being such great customers for all these years. I am really going to miss you.
We gave Chris a “promise ring” a week later. After a steak dinner at the Beefhouse in Covington, Indiana, he made a DO and DON’T list.
DO
Devotions
Pray
Have “good friends
Be accountable to someone
DO NOT
Watch bad movies
Drugs, including alcohol and cigarettes
Sex
Bad language
Have “bad” friends
By the time he was a sophomore (in just a few weeks he would be driving a car he bought with paper route money), Chris’ Christmas list had become far more sophisticated. And long! Just a few items:
Discman
Car stereo
My own VCR
Letter jacket
Suit
Obsession cologne
Electric razor
Big mall shopping spree
Car battery cables
Cybergladiators software
Sonic CD
3D puzzle
The last two Stephen King books
All our kids had paper routes, and so all our kids had money. They tithed 10% to Christian activities, saved 20% short term, 20% long term, and that left them 50% to spend each month. Everyone contributed when we bought our first computer in 1990 for $1700. It had 256 K of RAM (that’s K, not GB). In 1995 the next one was a Gateway, with 8 MB RAM for $3659. And in 2001, we bought our first laptop with 128 MB RAM, refurbished for $390. Chris has bought several computers since. Gateway’s slogan in 1995? “Feel like a kid again.” And again, and again, and again.
How do I know all this stuff? Saving and sorting. Stacked in boxes, there are words and papers that spark memories.
A note Chris gave to us the day he got married …
I think about my life and I cannot believe that I am as blessed as I am … It is my prayer that one day I will be able to love my own children the way that you have loved me. (And he has!) Thank you for all the hard times, the sacrifices, the blood, sweat and tears that you gave to raise me to be who I am today. I look at my life and I see you guys in everything I do and everything I am. I love you both so much. I always have and I always will.
I’m not sure if it was Chris who made the collage we found in one of our dusty boxes, made from pictures cut out of magazines, with the headline “Bethlehem on a Budget.” In the top corner, a smaller headline: “My teachers told us over and over again that there was no God. Because they felt they had to keep telling us, I knew he must exist.”
May his name be blessed forever. As long as the sun his name shall remain. Let all the nations proclaim his happiness.
In the back of that mind of yours, Chris, you are always thinking. And for that, all those young people you have pastored over the last twenty years THANK YOU!
(Genesis 49, Psalm 72, Matthew 1)
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