Sock it to me Jesus

They were working fine....

Friend!

Has it been a good week?  I was thinking about you last night as I decorated our Christmas tree.  We were a tad late in purchasing one this year but it is very nice to have a Christmas tree in the house again.  

We pulled the decorations out of the garage and set to work.  Each year I am faced with a mystery.  In January, when the tree is taken down, I check the light strands, coil them and place them gingerly in a plastic bin.  The mysterious part is why these lights never work when I take them out of the bin 11 months later.  I simply don’t understand.  Sure enough, two strands of last years lights no longer worked.  I didn't  touch them so how did they break?  To make things even more perplexing, only ½ of a carefully stored snowflake light strand was working.  The first half lit up, the second half refused to come out of hibernation. Why? What am I doing wrong? 

When I voice my amazement at the darker side of Christmas light storage, my man gives me a lecture about how the lights are not made to last, poor quality…ya da ya da…. only three dollars…ya ya ya.  He feels it is his annual duty to deal with my vexation. I’ve heard it all before but it still makes me cross. 

Worse yet, I can't throw out an almost functional set of Christmas lights! It’s so wasteful I can’t stand it.  I think about the reams of lights in landfills, sitting there, not decomposing.  I worry dreadfully that some duck named Bernice is going to happen across my Christmas lights from 2001 and get them stuck around her feet.  Granted, for the first few days she might view them as an upscale ankle bracelet, but what happens when Bernice needs to fly somewhere and is entangled in my lights from Christmas past?  It haunts me.  

So much so, that a few years ago, instead of throwing out a broken strand of lights like my hubby told me too, I hid in the garage and chopped the entire green strand into two inch pieces. For nearly 6 months my family had indestructible twist ties on their bag lunches.  They couldn’t figure out where I had purchased such satanic home supplies. I couldn’t tell them.  My guy doesn’t need to know everything about the woman he married.  Sometimes, you need to cope alone.

It was a blessing therefore, to hand off the Christmas lights to my teens, effectively removing myself from my annual Christmas light angst.*   I sat on the sofa watching the girls work until my little one handed me one of my Christmas treasures.  Most families in my world have a favorite nativity.  A couple of my friends even collect them, which is an admirable if not space consuming endeavor.  Carved olive wood from Jerusalem, stone pieces from Bethlehem, treasures handed down from Grandma, these nativity pieces are steeped in symbolism and meaning.  A cultural cornucopia of Christian Christmas symbolism. 

The Jesus from my nativity….not so much.

Behold, sock Jesus

Yep.  That’s a sock Jesus. In case you were wondering.  

This masterpiece was brought home by a 3 year old, who placed it gently under my Christmas tree.  I will save the story for another day.  All you need to know is that I madly love this sock Jesus.

Last week I confessed I often want a Santa Jesus.  I thought this week we could talk about sock Jesus because He is in high demand these days.  Sock Jesus is an easy going fellow who smiles sweetly at most things - well, everything really.  As long as you are happy and I am happy, sock Jesus has nothing much to say.  Sin becomes irrelevant which is too bad because the fact He condescended to enter this mess is significant.  However, sock Jesus doesn’t worry much about sin because he’s too busy being happy with everyone for everything. 

Truth isn’t important to sock Jesus either.  As long as we agree to get along, truth isn’t needed.  You can tweet what you like and make up your own reality as you go.  Sock Jesus doesn’t tweet because of the whole lack of arms thing, but if he did he would mostly tweet pictures of craft projects.  Sock Jesus doesn't challenge you like your  friends who speak the truth in hard times, love you in the pit and hold you accountable.  Friends like that don’t smile like He does, they’re too busy trying to enforce some warped form of altruistic legalism on a grace filled world.  

All in all, sock Jesus is pretty great, unless you find yourself in a world where souls break, people hurt and life goes wrong.  When that happens all sock Jesus can do is cover up stinky things, like funny looking feet.  You need Emmanuel when life gets hard.  “God with us” is the way to get through when you unpack some broken items in your Christmas box.    

So I’m praying for any broken things you might encounter this month my friend. That as you seek to accommodate a less than perfect Christmas, you will experience the real Jesus.  The one who can forgive you in your sinfulness, comfort you in your pain and bring you joy despite your sorrow.  

I’m thinking of you this week,

xoxKaren

* Totally untrue, I’ve hidden the broken lights so they can’t be thrown out. I’m trying to figure out what to do with 60 plastic snowflake light covers.