“Paul, can you come to the lobby? There are two teenage girls down here who need someone to talk with.” Paul Jones led the Christian Life Commission for Mississippi Baptists, based in the Baptist Building in Jackson. When the receptionist paged him, he had no way of knowing he was about to have one of those experiences that confirm all over again the nearness and reality of a great and gracious God.

“Jane here is pregnant,” one of the girls said. “Help her.” Paul said, “I’m not going to help her get an abortion if that’s what you had in mind. But we can definitely help her.” The leader was belligerent and said, “Let’s get out of here. I told you we wouldn’t find any sympathy here.” And they stormed out.

The next day, the pregnant girl, Jane, returned. “You said you could help me,” she told Paul. “How?” Paul said, “Tell me your story.”

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Recently, I sat in Frank’s Barber Shop—the closest thing I know to Floyd’s establishment in Mayberry, N.C.—thumbing through a magazine while my grandson received his quarterly shearing. An article in Esquire from December, 2002, (one of Frank’s newer magazines) caught my attention. The editors listed “36 ways to improve the world.” Some were brilliant, several were tongue-in-cheek, and a few were outrageous. Here is a sample.

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We changed our church’s Christmas pageant this year. Normally, we cover everything about the life of Jesus—His birth, His ministry, His death, burial, and resurrection. This year, we decided to focus strictly on the events surrounding His birth.

A few days before the first performance, our church receptionist took an unusual call. A woman on the other line wanted to know if we were presenting the pageant again this year. Gail Smith assured her that we are. Then, the woman said, “May I ask if you’re going to include the part about the crucifixion of Jesus?” “I don’t think so,” said Gail. “I think they’re just doing the part about Jesus’ birth this time.”

“Good,” the caller said. “You see, we’re from another faith, and we always enjoy your Christmas program. But the part about Jesus’ crucifixion offends us and makes us uncomfortable. We would prefer the story without the crucifixion.”

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“….the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age understood; for if they had understood it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” –I Corinthians 2:8

There are more things going on in our universe–above us, underneath us, in the spirit world surrounding us–than we can imagine.

God is always at work. The hosts of Heaven are constantly serving Him in ways we can only imagine, and in ways we could not begin to imagine.  But so is His arch-enemy at work, along with his minions.  We see this in Scripture.

Bear in mind that Satan is the enemy is all that is good.  Anything that would benefit mankind and bless God’s creation, he works to undermine and weaken.

But God is not stymied by Satan. God loses no sleep worrying about him.  Satan’s doom is settled, his fate is sealed, his days are numbered.

“On earth is not his equal,” said Martin Luther about the devil.  We are no match for Satan, true.  But through Christ we are more than conquerors.

God is constantly handing the devil defeat after defeat. We see it in life and we see it throughout Scripture.

Case in point:  The First Christmas. 

Here’s some background to the story.

1. Satan did not know what God was up to.

First of all, understand that Satan is a created being. He shares none of the attributes of Almighty God—not omniscience, omnipresence, nor omnipotence, meaning that he is limited in knowledge and space and power. When it comes to predicting what God is going to do next, he has to rely on what he can figure out, what he remembers from the timeless past when he resided in Heaven as a favorite angel, and what he reads in Holy Scripture. Since the Holy Spirit does not enlighten his understanding, he sees as the world sees, not with the mind of Christ. Once we understand this, a hundred puzzles fall into place.

2.  Satan was fooled.

The Apostle Paul pointed out that had the enemy known what God was up to, he would never have crucified Jesus. One might say that God pulled the wool over the devil’s eyes and fooled him. On that first Easter Sunday morning, an imp rushed into the presence of his satanic majesty, interrupting the two-day celebration over the death of Jesus. The demon breathlessly announced that the tomb was empty, the body gone, and the soldiers looked like they had seen a ghost. Satan spewed out his champagne and cursed. He had been had and he knew it. He had played right into God’s hands and was defeated.

3. Satan was often fooled in Scripture.

Sometimes in biblical history, we see that the Lord manipulated Satan, as in the cases of Job and Joseph. Sometimes, God gave him a good comeuppance as at Mount Carmel when Elijah defeated the prophets of Baal in a fire-calling contest. At other times, the Lord used subterfuge to fool His enemy. Christmas is one of those times.

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We had a Baptist bar mitzvah the other night. Nicholas’ parents decided that his hitting the advanced age of 13 was significant enough to commemorate with some rite of passage. They invited some men from the church and the ministers and a couple of Nicholas’ buddies for refreshments and a time of sharing. Each man addressed Nick on “what I wish someone had told me when I was 13.” Most of us can go for hours on that subject. Fortunately, we didn’t and the entire event lasted about an hour. Nicholas held up well.

I told Nick what happened my 13th year. At the lowest point in my family’s life, we received the greatest blessing, one that came disguised as a death.

My dad was jobless, the coal mines in our area of North Alabama not hiring. Our family of eight had left the depressed coal-fields of West Virginia and moved into a rented house owned by an uncle, across the hill from our grandmother’s home. Two years later, the six children had nearly worn out the clothes bought up north during better times. As the fourth child, my hand-me-down clothes grew more and more thread-bare. Either I had no coat or none I had the courage to wear, so on cold wintry mornings I stood outside waiting for the school bus in short sleeves, telling anyone who would listen that “when we lived on the mountain in West Virginia, now, that was cold!”

We grew vegetables in the field behind the house, and neighbors shared their produce. Dad joked, “We might go naked, but we won’t starve to death!” It was weak comfort to a 13-year-old.

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Expectations are relationship-killers. The wife expects her new husband to be the Prince Charming of her dreams. The boss expects the new secretary to read his mind. The congregation expects the new pastor to reverse the declining attendance, preach inspiring sermons, and attend every social occasion. The pastor expects the members to support him, keep down dissension, and respond to every challenge he throws their way. I expect the 3,000 plus who read this article to click on “respond” and tell me how it was precisely what you needed today.

It sounds so noble to have high expectations. Like we believe in one another. But it’s a trap. The person who expects perfection of me has set us both up for disappointment. I am not perfect, and anyone looking my way to find it will leave in frustration. I am, however, encouraged to find Scripture dealing with this subject. Lately, I’ve been camping out in the vicinity of Luke 6 and 7, making discoveries about our misplaced expectations and the rightful place to direct them.

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Peanut was crying as Bryan led him home. He had been misbehaving and refusing to cooperate with the teenagers leading the backyard Bible club — a shortened form of vacation Bible school — so as the leaders had warned, Peanut was not allowed to stay. Minister of Students Bryan Harris had him by the hand, leading him up the sidewalk toward the humble house where he lived.

“Please, Mister Bryan,” Peanut begged. “Don’t take me home. If you take me home, my mama will notch me. Please don’t take me home.”

Bryan knew Peanut from other excursions into this poor section of Columbus, Mississippi, known familiarly as Frog Bottom. The child was always in trouble, never wanted to cooperate, and caught enough reprimands for a dozen children. He was poor, but all the children were poor. Today, Peanut was wearing nothing but a pair of raggedy cutoffs that came almost to the knees.

Through his tears, he said, “If you take me home, my mama will notch me.”

Bryan said, “I don’t understand. What do you mean ‘notch me’? Whatis that?”

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We are not the first to inhabit this earth. Others came before us. They left behind art treasures and air pollution, medical discoveries and epidemics, prosperity and famine, porno houses and churches.

The British architect Sir Christopher Wren designed a town hall building for the city of Windsor. Upon completion, municipal inspectors rejected it. “There are not enough pillars to hold up the building,” they protested. No amount of evidence and argument would change their minds. Finally, Sir Christopher ordered four additional columns installed, each identical to the others except for one thing: none touched the ceiling. The authorities were fooled, the lord mayor was satisfied, the bill was paid, and the four useless columns stand to this day.

Every new generation arrives with a set of blueprints in hand for its own distinctive structures. Out of egotism and idealism, but mostly from ignorance, its children search for the structures erected by previous generations to demolish in order to clear away space for their own. They may push at anything standing—“challenging authority” we call it—to see what is weak and what is strong. Like the original columns of Windsor, some of the structures they find are load-bearing and essential to the safety and well-being of society. Other structures stand like Wren’s unneeded columns—strictly cosmetic, there for appearance or pleasure or for a need that no longer exists and may be dismantled and replaced without harm to anyone.

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In the middle of another masterpiece, Leonardo da Vinci laid down his brushes and oils to answer the knock at the door. There stood a neighbor who was having trouble with the water line at his house. He wondered if the great Leonardo—a genius who seemed to know something about everything—could take a look at it. The artist walked away from his easel, picked up his tools, and followed the distressed man home. We assume the pipes got repaired, but alas, to this day that masterpiece stands unfinished.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge is said to have had gifts rivaling Shakespeare. On one occasion in the summer of 1797 while in poor health, Coleridge awakened from sleep with a lengthy poem filling his mind, the verses already worked out and needing only to be written down. He feverishly set himself to writing each line before the poem slipped away. Then, there came a knock at the door. Later in his notes, he refers to his visitor as “a man from Porlock” and gives no clue as to why he came or what took place. He returned to the poem an hour later, only to find that while he still retained a vague recollection of the vision, the rest had vanished like the morning mist. The work is Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan.”

Interruptions. What to do with them. They are the bane of everyone trying to get his work done—and the means of Heavenly visitations when we know how to recognize them. Therein lies the dilemma: how to discern whether the interruption is an opportunity or an obstacle. Will it take us from our work or bring us to our real work?

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