Driving Through the Snow

The other day it started snowing, and it just kept snowing and snowing. It's really beautiful outside, and I've even been brave enough to venture out in the snow several times, including once to look at Christmas lights, which were incredibly pretty against the snow. Once you get used to driving in the snow, it's not so bad, and, for whatever reason, I have a lot of fun digging my car out of the snow in the morning, watching the ice melt off it while it defrosts.

Yesterday, my trip to and from church was pretty slow and steady, but I was glad to see that other people were venturing out in the snow, enjoying this beautiful time of year. While I was driving home, I sat behind a car that had a few bumper stickers. One of the bumper stickers said:

"Regime Change Begins at Home"

You know, I'm not really sure what kind of change the person driving the car wants. Maybe he and I would agree on a lot of things or disagree on a lot of things. Personally, I'm not really political, so, even if we disagreed, I wouldn't raise too much of a fuss. Of course, that could also be due to the fact that I avoid conflict like the plague.

But, I had to think that, even if we disagreed on everything else, I'd have to agree with him that any sort of real change begins at home, among family and those you're close to. You see, I've been giving a lot of thought to change and to ideals lately. I guess it's that we're in the Advent season, and this is a season that's all about change.

A change in the world, as Christ came in fulfillment of prophecy. A change to a new way of understanding the commandments. A change for all of us after the birth of Christ, as there would now be new hope for the atonement of our sins, a possibility of redemption.

The really strange thing, though, is that all of these changes rested on the birth of a baby, the entrance of a new life into a family. How simple is that? Babies are born everyday. And yet, that is how God chose to come to earth, in the form of a baby.

You see, what intrigues me about that bumper sticker is the same thing that intrigues me about how God chose to come to earth. In a real sense, Christ's coming to earth was the greatest regime change the world would ever know. He was God on earth, and yet, He didn't choose to come to earth in a form that anyone would expect. He didn't come as a king in the traditional sense. He didn't appear to people in a form that they would unthinkingly respect or venerate, like we might with royalty or the very wealthy. We have to remember that part of that was fulfillment of prophecy. As Isaiah 53:2-3 tells us:

"2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

3 He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not."

But, I have to wonder why? I mean, this was God. God on earth. If He really chose to come to earth as a human, why would He not choose to make Himself the most powerful human on earth? Someone who could reach everyone? Someone who could force the allegiance of everyone? Someone who could establish a law and enforce it? And, I especially wonder, why make Himself someone like the person described in verse three--despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering? Again, He is God. He can do as He chooses. Why choose to enter the world as a child, as a part of a family?

I guess I have to go back to the bumper sticker because, really, where do the changes that affect our lives actually happen? I mean, surely our lives are affected by large governmental changes, but it seems that they're even more affected by the relationships we have, and, in turn, God is able to use us as agents of change when we are in relationships with both Him and others, when we are in a state of being real with people and showing them God's love through ourselves. Perhaps I mean to say that who we are is more affected by those around us than it is by the changing shifts in laws and regulations.

And Jesus came to change not just the law but how we interact with the law, to affect how our hearts and minds upheld the law, rather than just how our bodies were able to fulfill certain obligations or avoid certain things which were forbidden. You see, God gives us a standard of right and wrong. It's a standard that is absolute, and we are expected to follow it. But, Jesus didn't call for simple avoidance of the bad; He called for a complete change of heart. As the Apostle Paul would later write:

"Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will" (Romans 12:2).

But the renewal of the mind is not something that happens because I happen to read something that tells me one thing is right and another thing is wrong, or tells me to do the good one while avoiding the bad one. Knowing the rules only changes what I do, not what I feel or believe to be right or wrong. So, while I might be doing the right thing, it wouldn't be because my mind was renewed. It would be because I'm good at following directions.

So, I guess I'm back to thinking about why Jesus would appear to us in a form to which we could relate personally. Had he come as a ruler, we would have followed His commands out of obligation. Had he appeared as one who was charming or attractive, we would have followed His commands out of blind adoration. But, He came to us as a baby who would grow up to be a man "with no beauty or majesty to attract us to him." So, we follow His commands because He--in relation to us as a brother, friend, teacher--showed us that His commands are very good.

And, these commands are something that really seem to necessitate a family or a community of friends to help them to make sense. It's that sort of community that allows us to come together in love, in an understanding that even when we do have differences, we must turn to God to give us an answer to the dispute, to show us that it really might be that neither of us is right, but that He is always right. That's a hard thing to do.

We want so badly for our ideals to became reality, but we have to remember that it is only through family and community, a real not imagined ideal reality, that we can begin to let God change our lives and the lives of those around us into the ideal we long for. It is not through our own intellect or reason or arguments that change can occur; it is only through the love of God. It is only through the miracles and redeeming grace of God that we humans begin to recognize the importance of those around us, to see our relationships with friends and family as God's means of affecting change in all of our lives.

Regime change really does begin at home, in the relationships that help shape us into who we are and hopefully into who we were created to be. God grant us the humility to allow such change to take place through our lives, as we turn in constant reverence to His will.