I have a ready gift for friends this year – my new book, Night Shift: Crossing the Cultural Line for the Kingdom. It is off the presses and getting into the hands of eager readers (or so I hope!).

For many friends, this is a lean year for giving, a year of hardship and pain.  For our respite foster kids in Morrison's Child and Family Services program, this year blurs among so many.  As always with the marginalized, the past four years of economic turmoil is like so many waves thrashing above their already drowned heads.  And yet, for many others, a lifetime of progress has suddenly dissipated.

As I see people in need crowding by the droves into our food program sites every time the doors open here in Portland, Oregon, I am reminded of one of my favorite biblical passages where Moses writes that if we obey God, there need be no poor among us. And yet, though the poor are mentioned scores of times in the Scriptures, the only verse some Believers seem to know is the one about there always being poor people, thus supposedly justifying their inaction to heed Moses’ commands to bless the poor.

In chapter 5 of my book, I talk about this passage in Deuteronomy 15, how this relates to our mission as Believers in the twenty-first century. “We are called to be in on the Master’s plan,” I write, “declaring and demonstrating the whole gospel to the poor, even though the poor are always with us.” Strange how 2,000 years after Jesus spelled out the mission for us, we still struggle to agree on just what that mission is, let alone obey it.

But this diversity of opinion is to be expected among we who are followers of Jesus. Not all differences are the result of sin. After all, God wrote diversity into the warp and woof of the human race (another theme in my book). Thus I am excited that an organization in which I have joyfully served the past three years has just decided to change its name to the Oregon Center for Christian Voices, emphasis on the plural. For Christians who serve a God much bigger than all of us put together, it should be no surprise that no one of us or no one group of us can speak alone for God.

Amidst so many controversies that wrack the body of Christ these days, I am reminded of Paul’s response to the first great theological tension that struck the New Testament Church. Though the conclusions were more extensive than Paul’s summation, he wrote his friends in Galatia, “All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along.”

When we get in there and get our hands dirty serving the poor (be that poverty spiritual, physical, material or whatever), we draw closer to the Master and discover that we tend to make this Christ-following thing far more complicated than Jesus ever meant it to be.

That is what makes the Christmas narratives in Matthew and Luke so riveting: while all the world about is caught up in power plays and pompous pageantry and posturing, the Christ child comes to identify with the lowly and turns all that strutting on its head. While we trample all over each other trying to come out on top, Jesus dives into the bottom of the pile and lifts us all up.

My church calls itself Mosaic, an ever-faithful reminder that we who are broken pieces come together to shine as a thing of beauty before God and in the world. I find it easy to partner with others who accept my brokenness along with theirs, fellow travelers on an authentic journey of faith.

So I reflect on all this, grateful that my book has been released, grateful that I have a job when I didn’t have one six months ago, grateful that I am gaining in health from a very crippling period of depression, and especially grateful for a loving wife and four wonderful kids who will all be home for Christmas. Robert serving in the U.S. Army and headed to Afghanistan, Stephen a math major at George Fox University, Hope about to graduate from high school and wanting to train to be a nurse, and Hannah a sophomore at Lincoln High School. Oh and then there are the garden, the pug, two cats and five laying hens.

My wife kept asking me what I want for Christmas this year. We finally agreed that we wanted a date together. A hike in the mountains or woods. A quiet conversation by the fireplace. A cup of coffee (for her) and hot chocolate (for me) at a local shop. And we’ll still compete to outdo each other with a few treats in the form of stocking stuffers.

As I see how oppressive, systemic and complicated are the needs of those I serve at the Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon’s Northeast Emergency Food Program, I am stirred with a spirit of gratitude and humility. Grateful for all I do have. Humbled that I have been so blessed.

A most wonderful celebration of our Savior’s birth to each and everyone one!