December 24-26

Started out waking up and wrapping presents, but not presents of mine. Every year at the mall a group of friends wrap presents on Christmas eve as a fundraiser for the Mustard Seed food bank. Its a great event to be sure.
The time flew by. I had a good time and wrapped presents with a fury.
Afterward we went to visit my Grandpa. When i say we i mean my immediate family save one. He has been moved into one of those homes where they tell you not to let anyone with a walker out the front door. I don't blame them for trying to escape.
My Grandpa was lost behind a sea of alshimers, drugs, and the decaying body and mind that i guess would come naturally with too much time with no change and too much change all at once. I'm convinced some part of him knew what was going on, that his heirs were there to see him at christmas. A warm-souled Jamaican set the musical backdrop to the scene where he was playing christmas carols and hymns fused in a medley of smiles and eye contact to the immobile and mostly unresponsive group of elderly.
My Grandpa shed tears when i left.
Its something that you don't appreciate a life while its there the same way you do when its gone.
I hiked up a mountain and camped overnight on boxing day so it wasn't 'till I got back that I found out he was gone.

Every Christmas seems to etch its own identity on the sketchbook of my memory with a distinct experience or reflection. I didn't really know what was unusual about this Christmas until it happened all at once.

I think this Christmas I saw life as more than a day, more than a moment, more than an objective. I literally only gave 1 and 1/3 presents this year. And happily i didn't get any dvds. instead, a camping sack, a toque, a book. Things that somehow said life was more than 1.5 hours of escape on an evening after work.
A Life of work will be tied off in a 1.5 hour ceremony on saturday that will say only a outline of what it really was. Maybe if were lucky we'll all leave wondering how to live a legacy as well. To leave gifts that really say something.

Risk Factor

I was thinking about love.
The way i see History in relation to our lives is as a playing field of epic proportions.

I think God has called us to play a role in our own redemptive destiny. He shows us love and lets us dispense it. He lets us become sacrifices to him, playing out the lives he designed us to thrive in.
this is more or less my belief and my view.

I was thinking about love, how it seems to take one more element than sacrifice and action- and i wonder if it has something to do with the tree in the garden of Eden.

If you tell someone that you love them, and I mean with all the depth of a classical wedding vow, how are you not entering a risky zone? (Call me mistrusting if you want. Call me cold and embittered and tell me i have a fear of intimacy if you must but do hear me out.) You may trust them to always love you back like you love them, but what if they don't? What if they change? What if they Leave? What if they die?

Does love take an element of having to gain something to loose?

I have a friend who is about thirty and has traveled all over the world. His way spells experience. His job is jumping out of planes to fight fires and his hobbies are surfing, hiking and kayaking. My kind of guy. He has clearly got nothing to tie him down. He has nothing to lose.
As cool as this is, I can't help but wonder if, with nothing to loose, if he has anything truly great to gain. I wonder if you can make a really really deep impact on someone else's life unless they become something to loose to you. I don't know. I'm hypothisising.
As an aside, maybe what people mean when they say to have the heart of Christ is to realize the love That Christ had for the world and that each one is something of great value to him. I don't think i can love the world on my own. Maybe one or two or ten tops. Maybe we need to remember that it is Christ's love that fills us and to shake off your shoes when you leave?

This last paragraph was off topic meanderings, but i'm sure if there's one place where this kind of "gaining to lose" love is meant to exist- if only to help us understand God- is in marriage and family.

I was reading this book by my friend Don. Well, i guess he isn't really my friend, in that we've never spoke- but his name is Don. He pointed out in his book that the most epic movies involve a character who has to be self sacrificial- probably having his life on the line- to help the many or several significant people whose lives depend on him.
I think I'd like to live an epic movie- so to speak. Does it make a good story having gone to the moon and back if i've never put my life on the line for somebody else? I don't think so.
The Bible says that "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." John 15:13 (NIV)

This quote brings me back to the macroepic. God is trying to get us back with the accumulation of history Being Jesus and his salvation. His salvation that has been avaliable to all but rejected by so many. That's loss! That's risk! If anyone deserves rejection issues I guess it's Christ- but He knows what He wants. I want that too.
His world crawls with somebody's to lose in this ultimate love epic.
Maybe if i adopt the heart of Christ I can work for him.
Maybe if I mimic Him I will live an epic.

Maybe love takes gaining something to loose.
Maybe love takes the risk factor.

People say they fall in love. I think that I'll have to jump first.