Well, here we are again, at the best and worst time of the year. Christmas. I love it and I hate it. I listen to endless hours of Christmas music (www.pandora.com is wonderful), but refuse to hear musical triteness like "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas."

Christmas is depressing because, for most people, it's a tawdry orgy in honor of materialism run wild. It's an event unworthy of those bearing the image of God. For others, however, it's a time marked by hope and excitement at the dawning of a new day.

Despite this paradox, it's perhaps my favorite time, because it marks - admittedly inaccurately - what is the most astonishing event ever: God becoming a man. It marks the day when hope was born, a day when we began the journey from darkness to glorious light.

I spend a good deal of my time with a community of refugees, a couple different ethnic groups from Burma. Many are professing Christians, some from an ethnic group that is well known among evangelicals as Christians.

I love these people, and enjoy them a great deal. However, I have struggled with their Christianity, which too often seemed to me a name only. A "Christian" was a nice person, someone who God would see as a "good boy" or a "good girl."

I decided to do a little informal research, so I asked a friend what I thought was an easy question, at least for a professing Christian.

"Who goes to heaven?"

"The kingdom of God is not mere words, but power" (I Cor. 4:20 (paraphrased)).

I have struggled for years with this statement of Paul's. If the kingdom of God is power, where is the manifestation of that power among us? It's hard to find. Are we not in the kingdom? I read credible reports from other parts of the world that sound like the next chapter of the book of Acts. But here....

Reading the gospels, I am struck by the actions of Jesus, as he healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, raised the dead, set free those oppressed by demons, and more. Demonstrations of power. And, significantly, he said these things were signs of the arrival of the kingdom. People knew he was legitimate and that the kingdom had come by the acts of power they saw through Jesus.

It's a tough question, and one where nearly everyone has an opinion. However, it seems to me that most of the responses have not been carefully considered. Is abortion right, whether it is legal or not? Or is it wrong? A sin? Even murder? Or is it just another choice? And whichever side you come down on, why?

If you have easy, immediate answers, you probably need to think longer and more carefully. This is a very important question, because the answers we give affect many other parts of our lives.

I've long been fascinated by the saying, older but wiser. It suggests that getting older means getting wiser.

But I have concluded that age and wisdom are not necessarily linked. There are many cases where age does equal wisdom, certainly, but there are also many folks of advanced (or advancing) age who are no wiser than when they were children. Perhaps that's why there's another saying: There's no fool like an old fool.

As I have gotten older, I have thought about this a good deal, and about the "accomplishments" in my life. "Accomplishments" is in quotes because, while a few are positive and praiseworthy, many are not. Perhaps you understand.

Some years ago, in an Old Testament class, I decided to write a paper on a theology of wilderness. The professor asked me to explain my reasoning.

I decided to write, I said, because it seems to me that we spend a lot of our time in a wilderness. The place may be spiritual, mental, emotional or relational, but in some important aspect of our lives, we often feel lost. We're wandering who knows where. Perhaps you know what I'm talking about.

Remember the thing about innies and outies? Sure you do. It's about whether your belly button protrudes outward, or is indented inward. I suspect every kid has compared with others.

Did you know there's another kind of innie and outie? Unlike belly buttons, this one is important. It's about how you read the Bible, whether you try to draw truth out of the text (outie) or read your own attitudes and beliefs into the text (innie).

Which are you? Outie is better, but innie is more common by far.

A strange title, isn't it? I have been thinking about some unhappy situations while reading Necessary Endings, an excellent book by Dr. Henry Cloud, and the title above popped into my mind. I think it was the name of something I read back when I was a boy. It's a strange title. How can something be pleasant and miserable at the same time? Seems impossible. But it isn't. Consider:

Have you ever been in a situation where you felt miserable? Of course. Everyone has. But did you know not all misery is created equal? Some misery is temporary and moves us toward a goal. That's good. But other misery goes nowhere. It just sits there letting us hurt. Sometimes in this misery, we get into this kind of swamp where we only hurt, and worse, we don't do anything about it. We sit there, suffering, and becoming convinced there's nothing we can do about it. We learn to be helpless.

"Bubble-wrapped people." Sounds a little weird, doesn't it?

It certainly did to me, though bubble-wrap is not a new idea. We all know "bubble wrap," a plastic packing material with small air "pillows" in it. It's used to surround some object to isolate it from what's around it and protect it.

But people? Did you ever think of bubble-wrapped people? Probably not, though they're not uncommon, walking through life securely protected from the evil and pain in the world. I think to an extent, at least in western culture, most people live with some degree of insulation protecting them from whatever they perceive as a threat.

A lot to think about today, one set apart for remembering those who gave their lives in service of the country. Truly, the American people and even the world owes a great deal to them. Without their service and sacrifice, there would be no freedom, here or elsewhere.

And yet... Is freedom really the result of military action alone? Is there a place in the purpose of this day to remember the true source of freedom? Is there a place to especially honor the one true and living God, without whom there would be no freedom, here or anywhere? Because, truly, the state of the culture of a people is based in the God or god they profess to worship. And only in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of the Bible is there freedom. And even more, the highest levels of freedom come in those people who truly know Jesus as Lord and Savior, people who, interestingly, dwell in the nations shaped by reformed Protestant Christianity.

Thank you, Father, and thank you, Jesus.