Hanging ornaments on the tree… and being living trees ourselves

You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. – 2 Corinthians 3:2-3

Each morning at breakfast, Rebekah and I hook in to any number of resources for our devotions. One of which, this year, happens to be my Christmas book – In My Heart I Carry A Star. Well today one of my favorite stories came up, in the chapter titled “Go Tell it on the Mountain.” It’s the tale of “The Stripper Reindeer.”

I think the best explanations can be found in the following two posts:

My 2012 post, “Ugly Ornaments and the Reach of the Good News.“
2016’s “Jesus Came for All the Ornaments.“

The short version of the story is our annual tradition of sending a let’s say “unusual” ornament to our friends Tim and Kelly Black. It has been a lot of fun over the years and now the collection has its own tree.

At their best, Christmas ornaments are not merely decorative they are exegetical. The best example of this is our Haitian angel who – in the spirit of the collection we have gifted Tim and Kelly – preaches inclusion and compassion and who reminds us that the Good News is for everyone.

Our trees tell stories. Sometimes the stories are carefully crafted, but often they are unintentional – and what we include as the main focus reveals more than we have necessarily intended.

Here in the new Maul-Hall I love the idea Rebekah came up with for what she calls “The Bell Tree.” It’s the small tree in the dining room and there are bells from almost sixty years of our personal histories, from the cow-bell I purchased in Davos, Switzerland in 1968 to the tin-foil bell one of our children made in the 1980’s to the stained-glass bell given to us by friends in Pensacola to the collection of ceramic bells Rebekah found in Dresden, Germany.

These bells ring out the good news that has been central to our lives since before we can remember.

The pig on the main tree that represents our commitments to fighting poverty by introducing livestock to impoverished peoples. The photo ornament of our daughter Naomi as an infant reminds us of who our children are to us. The clothespin reindeer from young adults in Pensacola recalls our love for the scores of families we mentored in faith….

I believe that everything we do in our lives, every day, has to do with how we tell the story of God’s invitational love through Jesus. We are, as Paul points out in Corinthians, God’s message, “written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts….”

How we live, how we work, how we play, how we spend our money, how we utilize our resources, how we talk with other people, how we handle disagreements… it is all a testimony to our faith. So the Christmas tree is an opportunity to tell the story too.