When You Must Lay Down Even Your Righteousness

[These ponderings were written several weeks ago, and they are just that--ponderings. They are more questions than answers, but here they are.]

When you end up prostrated with weakness after a very busy weekend when you just kept going because you had to...

 you feel like you can relate to the ashes left over in the driveway after the hayride.

 Or the chaff and bits of straw from the hay bales that had been tossed from one trailer to the other.

 You remember about the story told in church yesterday about Mary offering her alabaster ointment,

and how the religious folk scorned her for it, calling it a waste.

And your daughter comes with the phone--

from someone who needs wise counsel.
(What a joke to call this number for that!)

 There in the middle of your nothingness and weakness is someone who is struggling.

How far do we go with yielding all our rights and desires and opinions to someone else?

What are we supposed to do when we are at loggerheads?

I don't know anything about that!!!!!!!!

It's one thing to yield to God all the bad things in our lives, our sins and baggage and hurts and so on.

We can even surrender our talents, gifts, graces, etc.

 But sometimes God asks one more thing.

He asks for our righteousnesses--the godly part of our upbringing, our religious opinions, our traditions that are so right and good.

He wants those offered up to Him.

 It is one thing to offer sins to God.

It is quite another to offer our righteousnesses. 

Paul had to give up his own righteousness in order to receive the righteousness of God.

He was a devout Pharisee, of the tribe of Benjamin, a blameless keeper of the law. 

And he had to give it all up and count it dung--worthless.

 Sometimes we have to surrender to the Lord that which is very precious to us--

our goodnesses and righteousnesses.  

Sometimes our traditions and ways we were taught about them can be at complete loggerheads with others.
What is the fine line between giving up our own righteousnesses
which are of ourselves,
and keeping the righteousness which is from God? 

Here is an example.
There are many families who feel that the way most Americans celebrate Christmas is materialistic and worldly at best, greedy and selfish at worst. That is the way I was taught. We did not have a Christmas tree, tinsel, or gifts--just caroling and cards and singing.
I, along with many other Christians, was taught that having a Christmas tree was equivalent to having an idol in the home.

For many it is a righteousness to refrain from celebrating Christmas in certain materialistic ways.
We have friends who do not celebrate it at all. 

But what happens when you get married to someone whose Christmas traditions differed?

For these families, it was righteousness to set up a tree in honor of Christ, decorate lavishly, bake all kinds of goodies and exchange gifts. And the more the family extends, the more the celebration bulges at the seams.
To them, this is love. This is Christ's birthday and this is how we show love to each other.
This is righteousness.

The first recognize that Christ did not come into the world with tinsel and bows,
but in a poor stable, with poor shepherds the first ones to see him.
It is with pangs of conscience that they decorate a tree like the idol Jeremiah speaks of in Jeremiah 10, with gold and silver, and participate in the shopping binges and gift exchanges.

What to do when a spouse or extended family feel hurt when you don't want to participate in the gift exchanges, or attend all the parties, or fulfill all the expectations?

It would be nice if there could be a simple, convenient compromise that both husband and wife agree to, and all extended family approve of.
Is it really fair for one spouse to expect the other spouse to just give up what he or she feels is right in order to be cooperative with the other?
Is it right for one family to just expect the other family to surrender their desires and feelings and opinions and even convictions in order to please the other?

For many years before we felt we needed to make changes,  when my children were younger, I had surrendered my personal feelings, and focused on cooperating with my husband and extended family's desires, by showing love in the way of the other side's traditions.
For me, for ten to twenty years, this was part of my gift to Christ.

It had not always been easy. 
It had not felt very righteous to buy gifts for people who already admit they have way too much stuff, or who have to exchange your gift at Walmart anyway for something they prefer.

It seems like a waste, and giving in to the spirit of indulgence and greed, rather than a show of love to buy gifts for children who are glutted with gifts from multiple gift exchanges at Christmas time and whose parents agree they already have way too many toys.

But if what seems to be a waste is offered to Christ, for the sake of harmony in the marriage,

that is like a flask of alabaster--which some disciples, relatives, and even your own inner critic may fuss about and scorn--

but which Christ knows was a major sacrifice on your part. 

And on the other hand, when the other side gives up their very quiet but very obvious insistence on their own way, their own long-standing traditions, "the way we've always done things,"
this is a flask of precious ointment, too, is it not?
Even when he or she is sure his way is perfectly righteous and not at all materialistic or just following the way of the world,
even if it is not based on just not upsetting someone in the extended family,
if he or she is instead willing to make changes,
to cooperate with a spouse pleading for simplicity and self-sacrifice in family traditions in order to please Christ,
 to find a way --through taking turns, or some kind of compromise perhaps,
 that brings peace into the marriage and home--

that is a flask of alabaster ointment.

What a waste, to give up what have been cherished traditions! What a waste to give up what we think is righteous! And there will be those disciples, relatives and inner critics who do not understand and will scorn the waste.

 But when a husband and wife work to come together to what they believe God wants for them individually and a family, 

it all really boils down to one thing--

a deep surrender of our all to God--regardless what the most religious person around us thinks.

And on the phone, tears were shed today--I listening to a heart breaking because of confusion over how to do what was right and how to work through difficulties--at their own personal cost if necessary.

It is not easy to surrender to waste one's life, one's valued opinions and desires and background, one's traditions or hard-earned money, in order to please Christ in ways that others do not understand or agree with.

 ***

And as a daughter brings a bowl of hot chicken soup, 

the mom knew that God had allowed weakness and difficulties in her own life--

so she could relate to the other person,

so she could encourage another person that what is really important is not which way we choose to celebrate Christmas, or how much or little money we waste on stuff for gift exchanges--
or on the other hand the waste of giving up long held traditions at the expense of upsetting people we hold dear,

but whether we offer our surrendered choice,
that which seems like a waste,

 to God--

Him knowing we did it for the higher sake of harmony in our marriage!

Because God comes before everything and everyone-- even a spouse.

But a spouse comes before parents or extended family. 

And harmony in marriage comes before either side just getting his or her own way.

There is order in God's design.

And sometimes uncertain things or matters of opinion must surrender to a greater good.

God can give us no end of other creative ways to celebrate Christmas in simple, beautiful, restful, self-denying, Christ-honoring ways, and all of those will be a fragrance, too!