Bleary-eyed and still breathing...

I am rather bleary-eyed.  Amos is still breathing.  I know this because I have been unable to stop checking to make sure he was actually still breathing ... unless he is moving or snoring.

The vet said today that the activated charcoal probably protected him from the large overdose of Celebrex since he has had no vomiting or diarrhea.   I guessed last night at a safe dosage and gave him half a Tums.  She told me that if I could get to a store, to buy Pepcid instead, but to keep supporting his stomach for a week.  If he has no other symptoms, I can wait until his regular check-up in May.  But if I am worried, in two-four weeks, I could have kidney and liver function blood tests run for a rather non-economical fee.  The worry wart here would much rather run the tests, but I am not sure that is the best stewardship of my meager and dwindling retirement funds.

Funny that ... the activated charcoal.  If I did not have the misery of dysautonomia wreaking havoc with my digestive processes, I would not have had activated charcoal in the house.  In many and various ways I have come to think rather differently about blessings.  I know there is the adage: every cloud has a silver lining.  But that is just a popular proverb or something. It is not the Word of God.

However, the Word of God tells me that every good and perfect gift come from our Father in Heaven.  It was good that I had the activated charcoal.  It was also perfect timing that I had just ordered another bottle of it.  It is good that my Creator fashioned a puppy who has now four times (once with the pit bull attack and thrice with consuming dangerous things) exhibited an extraordinarily resilient intestinal fortitude (pun intended).

I will admit now, at this point, that the reason Amos is currently VERY fluffy is not merely because I was searching for a specious excuse for what I know will surely be a weight gain, but rather because when I apply the scissors to his person, I end up seeing the scars remaining on his body, and they distress me so.

He is not over the pit bull attack.  He probably never will be.
I am not over the pit bull attack.  I oft wonder if I ever will be.

While this might seem like a wild reach in transition, those scars and my reluctance to see them makes me wonder if reluctance is at the heart of why--it seems to me--the Church in America seems oblivious to the violent assault against Christianity that is underway.

Until I became a Lutheran, I would have had no idea that this is the third day of Christmas.  For me, it would have been over.  Just as I learned about Advent, learned to savor four weeks of contemplating (and celebrating) how it is that Christ came/comes/will come again to us, I am now learning to savor twelve days of contemplating (and celebrating) the wonder of Christ's birth, of His humanity, of His willingness to walk in our fallen world.

In the Large Catechism, Luther writes that Baptism is, in short, so full of consolation and grace that heaven and earth cannot understand it.  But it requires skill to believe this, for the treasure is not lacking, but this is lacking:  people who grapsh it and hold it firmly.  Therefore, every Christian has enough in Baptism to earn and to do all his life. (39-41)

I wonder, if asked, Luther would say the same about the humanity of Christ.  His human nature is the focus of large chunks of text in the Christian Book of Concord.  Some of it I wonder why writing such was necessary.  I wonder why people had to refute in very clear, detailed arguments the belief that His humanity was not as important as His divinity, especially with regard to justification.  I mean, to me, it is quite clear:  the Law was for man/human, so for it to be fulfilled, a man had to fulfill it.  A God-Man is the only one who could do so without failure, every jot and tittle of the Law obeyed in both letter and spirit.

But, as I contemplate the impact living in a fallen world has on my own body, I marvel anew that God would even deign, even for a moment, to live in human form in a fallen world.

Today, to be blunt, I found myself screaming, fainting, and then screaming again just to have a bowel movement. Not because of its consistency, but because of the nerves it was moving past, how they were responding in that particular moment.  Needless to say, I have been struggling in spirit ever since. The pain eventually faded, but I ask myself oft of late, Who would want this existence?

The answer is Jesus.  He wanted it.  Whatever suffering He had in his body for 33 years surely paled in comparison to the suffering He endured at the end of His life in this fallen world.  But it would be wrong, I believe, to think that the passion was His only suffering--the passion and His 40 days of temptation.  Knowing how sin has distorted and ravaged all of creation, Jesus still wanted human life for us, for me.

So, I think about Amos' scars and how it pains me too much to look at them and I think about the fact that Jesus was born and it is His birth not family or gifts or any other reason that Christmas is celebrated.  If you really are celebrating the enormity of His birth, I am not sure twelve days is long enough!

I think about Amos' scars and Jesus' birth and I think about this article that really joined those thoughts in my mind.  It is an OpEd piece entitled Beyond the War on Christmas.  It is no mistake, to be sure, that we are the Church militant.  I do not believe it is an exaggeration to even mention a war on Christmas.  Christmas.  My goodness, setting out a nativity display has become an egregious perfidy committed against society and the government!  SIGH.

In the article, the author points out how what we are really facing is a war on Christianity, using examples of different groups who systematically attack Christianity from various angles.  To me, this is not news, but it seems to me that we, the Church in America, do not really seem to be looking at that, facing it.  We focus on singular issues--such as abortion or same sex marriage--but do not actually see the larger picture.

The author concludes:

Perhaps these groups should read the section of the First Amendment concerning religion more closely. The First Amendment reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The position of secularists appears to be that any religious symbol displayed or language spoken somehow constitutes an “establishment of religion.” The mere public mention of religion is apparently capable of scorching the sensitive ears of those who deny his existence.

But such a position certainly inhibits the free exercise of faith – assuming, of course, that faith is something more than an archaic ritual to be practiced every weekend and shelved on all other occasions. (Not that the words of the Constitution matter to the secular left.) But if any public mention of God is forbidden, documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address should be purged from the public record as well.

I cannot see how a nativity display is establishing a religion.  Really, I am fairly sure Christianity was established the same day the earth was created.  If you wish to quibble with that, then surely Christianity was established the day of Christ' birth, some two thousand years ago.  It was absolutely acknowledged as being established since many of those who came to America were fleeing religious persecution, including persecution for Christian denominational differences.

Now, over two hundred years later, we have come full circle.  Only the persecution is not being prevented by the government but but rather promulgated by it, with the legislative and executive branches of our government preventing Christians from exercising their faith.

Only, to me, it also seems that these little cease fires happen each time a "national" tragedy occurs.  For then it is perfectly acceptable for even the President, himself, to call upon America to pray and to proclaim that he and the nation will be praying for the survivors and the families and friends and neighbors of the victims.  How, seriously, is that okay but a moment of silence at a high school football game or at the beginning of a school day so utterly wrong?

The article was thought-provoking for me.  It reminded me strongly how, in Africa, the assault on the Church was so visible, and yet, until the past decade or so, that same assault was hidden, for the most part, here in America.

It is no more.  The War against Christianity is everywhere you look ... if you dare to do so.  

That it is the case grieves me as does seeing the scars on Amos' body.  His scars remind me of a brutal assault, but they remind me that he is forever changed.  The America in which I first joined the Church 34 years ago is not the same, is forever changed.  The freedom I enjoyed to openly read the bible and pray publicly and even wear t-shirts unassailed and without condemnation is gone.  The acceptability of my choice to do so is gone.  The respect of/for the Christian faith is gone.  That ... that staggers me.

I am not one of those who disregards the actual beliefs of our founding fathers and declares that America has always been a Christian nation.  It was not.  It has not been.  But it was founded as a nation where the government would protect freedom of religion.

The author believes, and I most certainly agree, that Christianity is now exempted from that protection.  Surely the war is only going to grow more violent and more bitter, with greater and greater suffering and loss.

I appreciated the article, but I also do not wish to face this change, face the war.  The very thought wearies me.  I know ... KNOW ... that suffering can and does become a blessing for those who are Christ's.  When the Living Word and the Sacraments become your lifeline, your refuge, and even your sanity, you begin to understand that blessing and can, in a strange way, rejoice in it.  

Of course, in the throes of misery and even its aftermath, that blessing can become blurred by the experience.  Screaming, earlier, I was not even for a moment thinking of the blessings I have received, most particularly the clarity and the comfort of the sweet, sweet Gospel.  I was very, very insensible and focused only on the pain. It began with a whimper and ended with a whimper and was filled with inarticulate cries to God for ... well ... not for any one thing.  I just cry out.

When it was finally  over.  I returned to my day, to my life, and worked very hard to look away.

I suppose I wonder if all the hard work on issues such as abortion and same sex marriage--not unimportant things themselves--is the body of Christ in America's way of not looking at the reminders that it is Jesus who is being killed, who is being destroyed.  His life, His marriage to His bride.  In America.

I am, for the first time, not dreading that there are actually 12 days of Christmas.  For, as I wrote, I have learned that it is okay to have feelings other than being jolly or happy leading up to or during Christmas. I have learned that being merry at Christmas is actually about being merry about Christ's birth ... and all else that followed(s) ... for me.  

Even as I think about the war on Christianity, and find myself fretting, I also find myself turning to another bit of comfort from Pastor Brown's blog, The Church's Job:

It's interesting, because I will hear over and over people talking about different things that the "Church" needs to do. It needs become a moral force in society, it needs to feed the poor, it needs to do X, Y, and Z. And then of course, there are the Church bureaucrats who will come in and make up new rules for how the Church can make all these things happen.

The Church has one job. It is to listen. It is to listen to the voice of Christ Jesus, her Husband.

The problem is too often the folks in the Church are not content to let the Church simply listen. Instead of just living out their own vocations, they want to make their own vocation the roll or duty of "The Church". They want to use the Church as a tool - perhaps to enforce their own ideals of right or wrong, creating rules for others to live by and saying, "Ah, but the Church says." Misses the point -- what does Christ say? Some want the Church imprimatur for their own works of love and mercy -- but again, why is that needs? Why do you think the rest of the body must do the work of the hand, or the foot - be whom Christ has made you to be and walk in the works He has prepared for you.

The Church's focus is to be this - to hear the life giving Word of Christ. To receive His gifts. To delight in the fact that He has washed her.

Now, do individual Christians from within the Church have things to do? Of course, we are in the world, and thus we are given to love our neighbors. But again - that's you, that's me, that's our own thing. I am not the Church -- and it's folly when I try to act as though I am.

The comfort from this for me is two-fold: 1) I am not weird or wrong in my deep and abiding longing to hear the Living Word, and 2) No matter the state of war, the Church, as husbanded by the Holy Spirit, will not cease to fulfill its job.  No government can prevent or prohibit the work of the Living Word.

Just as the Church has been established from creation, the Church militant has survived since the fall.  When all else falls away, it will remain. All praise and glory be to our triune God.

But it is okay to grieve and to be frightened of the consequences of living not merely in a fallen world, but also being a Christian caught in the middle of a war where hostilities are clearly escalating.

Lord, have mercy.  Christ, have mercy.  Lord, have mercy.