I have a friend named Julie who lives in Holland, Michigan. I met her through a virtual prayer circle that was launched a year ago.
We gather each week to pray for those in leadership positions, including pastors, principals, mayors, governors, judges, and of course, the President. We also pray for each other; and over the course of a year, that has included illness, accident, displacement, and disappointment.
Julie lives in a large senior community in a building of some 100 units. Outside the door of each unit is a shelf, and residents are free to use these shelves to display whatever strikes their fancy.
Some feature seasonal things, like Halloween and Christmas. Others use it to promote political loyalties. Julie says Trump has prominent space on many shelves.
“I love your post,” one woman said to Julie, using a term we normally associate with Facebook to refer to her display about joy. “I want you to have it,” Julie replied and gifted the entire presentation to her neighbor.
“I try to post things about joy or love,” Julie explained.
Once she baked more cookies that her social group could eat. Someone said, “Put the rest on your shelf.” So she did, wrapped in plastic and offered to the world. “They were all gone pretty quick.”
I don’t have a shelf outside my condo here in Hendersonville. As a matter of fact, as of January 10, I won’t have a condo either, as my landlord texted last Saturday to say he had sold the place. To someone else.
If I had a shelf, I would have been tempted to post something snarky or downright mean. Too many of us do that sort of thing, especially on our digital shelves. The people that read and respond are not necessarily our neighbors. They could be even people we dislike. Which encourages displays rude and ugly.
It makes a difference what we post: on the shelf outside our home, on a page in cyberspace, even on our face shading our countenance to convey a message of pleasure or disgust, of friendship or rejection.
Thomas Massie is a U. S. Congressman from Kentucky. Last week he posted something on his cyber shelf. It was a Christmas photograph of his family: a wife and several young adults. It is the sort of thing that millions of people do, a tradition of Thanksgiving, Christmas, or some other holiday when everybody comes home to eat, talk, and smile like friends.
Only this one was different. Each of the seven people in the photograph was smiling and holding a weapon. Not a small weapon. A large weapon. An automatic rifle. In the background stood a Christmas tree. The tag line read: “Merry Christmas! PS: Santa, please bring ammo.”
Santa is, of course, Saint Nicholas. He was bishop of Myra in Asia Minor and is now the patron saint of (among others) sailors, merchants, repentant thieves, and children. He rose to fame because of his legendary habit of secret gift-giving. He is the historical model for our Santa Claus.
I’m not sure a bishop of the Church would be delivering weapons to anyone; and I am certain the Lord he served did not distribute such things either. “Put away your sword,” he said to one disciple who wanted to solve a problem with violence.
The Representative, some sort of Methodist himself (his Wikipedia article proclaims), was using his shelf and the season to send a message to his voters. “Discard what just happened in Oxford, Michigan, and gift someone a gun this Christmas.”
Oxford is 170 miles due east of Holland, and it was in Oxford that a father and mother bought a gun for their high school son, perhaps about the age of the daughter that sits between Mr. and Mrs. Massie in their Christmas post. The son took that gun to school and killed four people. Both the son and his parents have been charged with murder.
It makes a difference what we put on our shelves.
A smile on the shelf of our face sends a message, one the world needs to see and receive. A smiling face cuddling a weapon of mass destruction sends a very different message, one not even the Lord Jesus himself would understand, much less embrace.
But a shelf with a star, a steeple, and the spirit of joy shines just the light we need today.
