TOGETHER

This word–together–has such frequent use but so little appreciation in our current culture. We build individual entertainment, individual worlds of alone time in a crowd. Sometimes, I feel that we no longer know how to be “with” others. We are in their presence, under the same roof, but we aren’t together. It happens in churches, but I think it happens in our families and in our friendships. I think it often happens in our walk with Jesus. Even when we are practicing spiritual disciplines like Bible reading and prayer, it’s so easy to “do the deed” without “knowing the Deity.”

I found myself in that mode in the first hours of my study retreat. The gloom of storms shrouded this usually delightful time. I found myself immediately kicking into “study” mode. Christmas is rushing toward me from the horizon, so I shift into production mode. And then I caught myself. I have five days to listen, to process, to “wander” with Jesus, but I feel this urge to “produce FOR Jesus.” The question that has confronted my heart for the last 24 hours is the Christmas question: Do I really want to be WITH Jesus? And then He gave me a memory from long ago that captured my attention and focused my heart.

Snowstorm at Christmas

I grew up in the “push-me/pull-you” world of extended family gatherings. We never stayed home. My early childhood memories of Christmas had nothing to do with Jesus. They involved cramming the car with gifts, clothes, hunting gear, and our family because we always left town to make the journey to our grandparents. (I’m not knocking that! As a grandparent, I certainly want to see my family and want THEM to want to see ME!) It was stressful. It was full. We went and helped do the farm work between holiday features, and my father and I usually squeezed in a few hours of deer hunting.

Against that backdrop, one Christmas was changed because of a snowstorm. It was like none other I had ever experienced. We lived just south of Lake Texoma, and our location was at the end of a 10-mile-long stretch of deep water. We often received more ice and snow than surrounding towns, but this particular storm left us with ice that was then covered with a foot of snow. My parents decided not to risk the 3-hour+ drive.

It was the first Christmas I ever felt I was really TOGETHER with my own nuclear family. It was unrushed and uniquely “hushed” by the thick blanket of snow that had enveloped our home and community. I remember walking out on the front sidewalk and being awed by the peculiar silence. Snow is an incredible sound insulator! So, instead of our frantic coming and going, we had a week of “staying.” We were together–just we four! We played cards, we ate some great meals, we read, and we were together. It was my favorite Christmas of my teen years, and I have sought to build that kind of Christmas experience with my own family.

This Christmas Season

Did it ever occur to you that when Jesus came, it wasn’t JUST to rescue us from sin? He came to be WITH us, to KNOW us, to LOVE us, and for us to be WITH HIM. The great reward we think of as “heaven” has as its main, clear characteristic is exactly that: we will be WITH Jesus! Together with all the others of time and history who have trusted and loved Jesus, we will be WITH HIM. Jesus calls to us, Follow Me, and we immediately shift into His obedience as our mindset. But are we shortchanging ourselves into thinking this is just more religious action than being WITH Him?

This season, will you consciously choose to be WITH your family? Will you choose to be WITH JESUS as we celebrate His coming? Will we invite Him to invade our homes and hearts and savor that He chose to ABIDE in us?