Today on the radio, the talk show host asked his listeners, “What would you tell your younger self?”  For me, it depends on how young are we talking.  In junior high and high school, I was rebellious from the things I was taught as a child about God and how I was to live my life.  In fact, I wasn’t sure God even existed.  When I entered college as an undergraduate I was still real concerned with being cool but there was a deeper part of me that knew that there was something missing in my life.  I was more concerned about what other people thought of me.  Looking back, I should have been less concerned about what other people thought of me and being cool, so to speak.

I did start paying more attention to the spiritual part of my life.  It was during that time that I started reading the Bible in a modern translation and seeking whatever was missing.  During this time, it’s hard to explain, but some of the stories became more and more alive and real to me.  At the time, I started attending a Bible study, actually a couple of them.  The Bible studies participants’ were different culturally but they both focused on what the Bible said about God, His Son Jesus, and me.  One of the Bible studies was composed of mostly African American students.  The other was mainly Caucasian.  I enjoyed both.  Pastor Leo Barbee of Victory Bible Church led the Bible study called Harambee, which is Swahili for “let’s pull together”.  He always had insightful things to share and it was great to have him as someone I could talk to, get advice from and share with. Plus the friends I made there became life long friends and helped support me while attending a predominantly white university.  Even when not many attended Harambee, he always made himself available.  Mike Jordahl of the Navigators, campus Christian ministry, was the other mentor who shared with me in that other circle of friends and brothers and sisters in Christ.

Since then I’ve learned a lot through blood, sweat, tears and God’s grace.  And now, I’m a Christian minister ordained ten years ago at Mount Calvary Missionary Baptist Church just outside of Atlanta, Georgia.  I’ve decided that I while I’m here in Kansas, I want to make a place for African American (and other) students to learn and study how God’s Word gives insight, comfort and strength for life’s hardships, struggles, and disappointments like we did in Harambee.  Just like Pastor Barbee was there for me, I want to be there for others.  So I can share what I would tell my younger self.

My Dad, John Williams, a WWII and Korean War veteran, decided to settle in the late 50’s in Junction City (JC), Kansas, the nearby army town next to Fort Riley, Kansas. He met my Mom, Yuson Williams, in Korea, married her and brought their children to live in the U.S. During my college years, I learned from Chico Herbison, someone else with Black and Asian heritage from JC, that Fort Riley was a “compassionate fort” that the U.S. government set up to send families of interracial couples. Black soldiers who had met their wives in Asia and Europe were sent to compassionate forts, like Fort Riley, to ease their transition back into a society that did not accept interracial marriages, and in some cases outlawed them. Thinking back, some of my friends were black and Korean, black and Japanese, black and French, and black and German, just to name a few.

Chico was older than me but I met him while he worked at KU working on his PhD research on the very topic of compassionate forts. If I remember correctly he said that there was about seven compassionate forts in our country. Prior to that revelation from Chico, I always thought it was normal to grow up in a small Kansas town where it was normal for black soldiers to have met their wives in Europe or Asia and to settle there. I went to school with many of their children, played basketball with them, went to church with them, and blended in with them wanting to be accepted like everyone else. (Those of you from Junction City, can you name the ones you remember or know?)

Let’s remember the men and women who back then and even to some extent today returned with foreign wives, had interracial children, and had to face racial prejudice against interracial marriages in the 50’s, 60’s, and beyond because they were not as readily accepted elsewhere. I am grateful for having the opportunity to have grown up and gone to school with the children of many of these veterans in Junction City. I am thankful for all veterans who have served our country and especially those who did it without complaining even though they had to fight for acceptance for them and there families when then the returned.

 
Arrange your iPhone app icons to remind and train yourself to focus on what’s significant and important and not just the urgent things.  Start with the top level apps and work your way down daily. (Apps above are just an example and should be personalized according to your own priorities and significant aims for your life.)

 
Have you ever noticed when glancing at some one else’s arrangement of App icons on their phone, that they usually reflect the way the way they live and interact with others?  Until recently, I had my mail app on the second “page” of my apps on my iPhone because I didn’t want to see how many unread messages I had accumulated on all my several email accounts.  But recently, while preparing for my family’s New Year tradition, I realized that I can arrange the icons on my phone to help arrange my life so that I won’t miss out on the significant things in my life.

Every year, since I can remember, my wife, kids, and I have started out the New Year dealing with the past, reflecting on the present, and setting our goals for the New Year.  We spend time having our family Communion time, but before that we take time to clear our consciences with each other and with God.  After a brief prayer, we two by two go to another part of the house to talk about and ask forgiveness for offenses over the past year between each other.  Then we come back together and write out a personal list on our own in private of sins that we have committed against God or struggled with the past year.  We come together and read about God’s promises to forgive our sins (I John 1:9) and then we burn the list, cementing in our minds and spirits that we are forgiven and they are gone! (Hebrews 8:12. Ps 103:2).  

Next we read about Jesus when he was almost a teenager in Luke chapter 2 keying in on verse 52. This verse says Jesus increased in Wisdom, Stature, Favor with God, and Favor with Man.  In other words, He grew and developed Intellectually, Physically, Spiritually, and Socially.  We then write goals for the New Year for each of those four areas.  And this year, I decided that I would arrange the app icons on my iPhone’s first screen with them grouped and arranged in this order so that I can meet my goals in these four core areas:  

• First level: Apps that deal with my Spiritual Development including Worship, Meditation, Reflection, and Prayer
• Second level: Apps that deal with my Stewardship including Physical Health, Planning/Time, Finances, and Creativity
• Third level: Apps that deal with my Intellectual development including Learning, Reading, Writing and Math
• Fourth level:  Apps that deal with my Social development and interaction including Communication, Arts, Mind, and Tools

The First Level apps deal with things that are Significant: things that matter the most and for the longest (even after I pass away into Eternity).

The Second and Third Level apps deal with the things that are Important: things that really matter.

The Fourth Level apps deal with things that are Urgent:  things that matter now.

The problem we often face is we are often spending our time on our iPhone, or smartphone, on the Fourth Level urgent things and don’t make time for the First, Second, and Third level, or the Significant and Important things.   So now, when I begin the day, I don’t jump to the fourth level apps, like email, news, or social media, I start at the First Level apps, for those things that are Significant and empower my life: worship, reflection, meditation, and prayer.

Why not rearrange and group the icons on your iPhone, or smartphone, and arrange your life for what matters most for the longest time and insure you aren’t letting the urgent things make you miss out on what’s Significant and Important?

“No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.” Philippians 3:13-14 | NLT

Sounds pretty bold and unbelievable, doesn’t it?  That Someone would offer you the chance to live forever.  Could anyone do that and why?  First of all, why?   By this time, you’ve probably seen the latest installment of the Star Wars movie, the Force Awakens.  The most emotional and shocking moment to me in that movie was when a father tried to reach out to his son because he loved him so much but the son was rebelling and rejected his father’s efforts to reconnect with him and accept him back as his son (I’ve left out the details in case you haven’t seen the movie yet).  If no body hasn’t told you yet, that’s what the Christmas story is about.

I, and many others believe, that God created everything that exists including you and me.  In fact, in the Book of Genesis, it says He created us in His image and in a close, intimate, Father/child relationship.  But since those early days, the first man and woman rebelled against God, and history shows God doing everything He can to restore that perfect relationship with him.  I don’t have time to write the whole story to you but I encourage you to read it yourself.  I would suggest reading the Bible in the New Living Translation.  For those who like the old English, the King James Version is a good one.

When men didn’t listen to God, he raised up a special group of people that became a nation based on the faith of their leader.  Yet God’s intention was through this nation He would raise up Someone who would deliver and provide all with the opportunity to be adopted back into His family.  We could be intimate with God again.  We could one day live with Him forever, even after our physical bodies die.

It’s sounds pretty improbable, doesn’t it?  Even for someone like me, who grew up with a non-church going father and a Buddhist leaning mother, it sounds pretty improbable.  Even for someone like me, who as a child learned more about this Story and accepted it but then rejected it, not sure if God even existed.  Even for someone like me who was trained as an engineer and scientist.

But I came to a point in my life when I knew that there was something that was missing, something that was making me not really feeling peace inside.  That’s when I started to seek to find and know the Truth.  An unlike Santa Clause, this Person decided to speak to my spirit when I decided I was going to pursue the Truth, even if it meant facing up to the own personal darkness of my internal life.

You see, a lot of people look at a person that’s in the news who claims to know this Person, and immediately put them in a box that’s political or religious.  They immediately judge that human person and say, “that’s not for me” without ever getting a chance to know or talk to the Person, God Himself, for themselves.  The Darkness we see in the news every day and the hurt, pain, and death it causes in people’s lives keeps us from seeing the Light.

The fact is that there is no one that is perfect.  If we admit that to God that’s the first step.  But the second step, is believing that He has a solution for our broken relationship with Him.  That solution was for God Himself to become a man yet still be God, live a perfect life on earth even though it would end up having Him suffer and die.  But He, God’s Son, died in our place.  The Bible says He was like a sacrificial lamb that was slaughtered and sacrificed for us, to pay for the penalty of our sins.

History documents the birth of God’s Son, Jesus, in the Bible.  The Christmas story is when Jesus was born to a virgin, Mary, so He didn’t carry the genetic sin nature that was passed down from men.  His Father, was God.  But the Christmas story by itself is not enough.  The story of Easter was the factual account of Jesus being put to death and then rising from the dead after three days, to prove that He had provided forgiveness of all our moral failures and shortcomings, and to prove that He could raise us up from the dead so that we could live together forever with Him.

So this Christmas, and the days after, there may be a yearning within you.   A yearning for something more.  Or should I say, Someone more.

“If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” Romans 10:9.

 

Christmas songs blaring loudly in crowded shopping malls attempt to make us feel happy and jolly but deep down we all struggle with the problem of pain.  However, Christmas also does bring a hidden message that there is a solution to the problem of pain.

A relative of mine was recently remarking to me about a co-worker that had bought a brand new car.  The car looked stylish and sporty on the outside but on the inside various sensors and warning lights were going off.  The cost of the repairs were in the hundreds and sometimes in the thousands of dollars.  I know the feeling, I’ve had a used car that seemed to have the “check engine” light go off on every other ride I took it on.   I wanted to reset the light but not really deal with the cost of repairing the root cause of the warning.  During this holiday season, many of us will be attempting to “turn off” the “check engine” lights deep down in our hearts and spirits and dull the “pain” we are experiencing by getting all the gifts we can buy or receive, gorge ourselves with food and desserts, and sometimes even worse: turn to excess alcohol, prescription drugs, pornography, or illicit activities.  We want to experience the highs we are “supposed to” this “jolly” time of the year but come crashing down emotionally and sometimes even physically afterwards.  The “check your life” light was temporarily reset, but the emptiness causing it didn’t go away.

If you read real close to the original Christmas story, you see a couple in a social, relational, financial and emotional dilemma. Joseph was facing some tough questions in his relationship with his fiancé, Mary. “Did she cheat on me?”, a young, engaged man asks.  “How are we going to afford this trip to deal with our taxes?”.  He arrives at the destination and finds himself, his bride to be, and their new born Baby temporarily homeless.  “What am I doing in this dump?  I thought at this point in my life I would be able to take better care of my family, I’d have a better position, and be able to afford the finest vacations”.  He suffers from self-doubt, the pain of regret, and the discomfort of not having enough money to buy better accommodations for his family.  But somehow, there was a bigger plan for his life.  The Baby that was sleeping in a dirty, wooden box was going to literally change the world.  The pain he was experiencing had a bigger purpose as long as he didn’t give up.  He just needed to keep pushing forward.  His life had meaning when he realized it was to be lived for those closest to him, to those most vulnerable to the pain and suffering the world could inflict on him.

I wonder if my Dad, John Williams, felt the same way.  His youngest child, me, had to sleep in a cardboard box as a baby.  Feeding six kids and having a wife that barely spoke English was tough for a recently discharged soldier looking for work and finding some as a garbage collector.  But he kept pushing on, never giving up, even when the pain of “breaking his back” just to put food on the table threatened his emotional and physical health.  I don’t know how he did it.  But I remember how he would bow his head as though he was praying.  Sometimes he would say to me that sometimes he felt like a motherless child.  Coincidentally, my Dad, John, was born to his Mom, my grandmother named Mary, on December 25th.

You see, the Christmas story, is the story of the God the made us and created us, did something to deal with our suffering and had a meaningful purpose for our lives.  He showed those who would notice, that He suffers, He feels our pain and cares enough to give us something of greatest value.  The Baby, his Son, grew up suffering as we do, being rejected by the people He loved and belonged to, and then was tortured and put to death with us on His mind and heart.  He bore our pain and our failures so we could rise again…forever.  If you seek Him this Christmas in desperation and honesty, you will find Him.  Better yet, He will find you.

“For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. The government will rest on his shoulders. And he will be called: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”