John Fischer The Catch

The heater blew. Okay, literally it burned out. Sunny California is not sunny right now and it is not warm. It is cold, cold, cold… 49 degrees worth of cold – inside.

So yes. I admit. I am a pansy. But this is the land of fruits and nuts, for heaven sake, and while I am a New Yorker and thus understand what is to be really cold in spite of warm jackets and cozy mittens, my blood in So Cal is running very thin. So yes, it is true as John reports, to keep up with the Catch member calls and emails I apprehended the portable electric heater and closed myself in the only bathroom in our house for three days.

John on the other hand emerged from our bedroom into the bathroom with layers of sweaters, thermal underwear, and two pairs of socks. He suggested I do the same. I was close to concurring until he gave me a dear hunter’s hat, flaps down. Before he recommended I stuff my clothes with crumpled newspaper, I asked that he leave the room and lock the door behind him.

All snuggled in my self made cocoon, I took a call from a woman who is without a home. I know her. She lives on the grass under trees in the park, and during the day she sits on benches on the Promenade. Burdened by bags and backpacks and pushing her shopping cart spilling over with all her earthly possessions, she appreciates the kindness of strangers.

This woman is our neighbor, our sister or mother – you or me. And while there are many conditions that caused my caller to slide into homelessness, she has been deteriorating on the streets for years. She is you. She is me. She is every woman who is homeless everywhere, sleeping outside under a blanket of stars. And tonight she is cold. And as I am presently without the normal comforts of home, still “suffering” with a door to lock and covers to keep warm, I can’t imagine how cold.

So why tell this story and where is the hope? What can we gain from one woman’s story? Two things: The reason for telling you about my friend is that like Job of the Old Testament, she has never, ever given up.

The second reason is told in another story of someone who is also among our Catch membership. Her name is Shelly. She presently is homeless living with her young son in Chandler, Arizona. There are many parts to her story that I will wait for her to tell, but there is one that will reach your heart and run right down to the bottom of your toes and back again to where the feeling began.

Shelly saw to the video John and I recorded on what I thought was a practice session that he posted on YouTube. In the video I recommend as I have numerous times before that no one should be left alone during the Christmas season. I suggested that those who find themselves alone should contact their community shelter to ask how they might volunteer, believing that if we step into the dark lives of others who are hurting, our fear will dissipate and perhaps even our own loneliness.

Well, Ms. Shelly watched the video, heard my recommendation, and on December 25th she acted on it. In her words: “I was reminded that no matter what, reaching out feeds everyone.”

Her little boy and her sought a man sitting on the curb and gave him a snack. “I was moved to do this because of what you said, ‘To do something to make someone else’s Christmas Day better.’”

Out from her own life she made sure she looked him in his eyes. She touched his poverty by laying a hand on his shoulder; it was important to her that he felt like he mattered to her – that he was not invisible. “I hate that feeling.”

Shelly writes that he was really shy but said to her, “You are amazing.” “No,” Shelly responded, “you are amazing, even if you do not feel like it right now.”

In my opinion the Lord Jesus Christ visited this man with Shelly being the carrier. I know this because she continues to write: “Marti, I want to tell you that the way I felt leaving his company was incredible. I didn’t expect to get that much out of it myself, but I felt connected to the world and proud, and filled with all that we think Christmas should be.”

Her letter concluded: “It was awesome to be a part of a planted seed. Who knows where it goes from here? Maybe someone saw me do that so they will do the same for someone else; maybe he will be inspired to move forward and find a better life for himself; or maybe it was just a very cool experience…”

Over this year we have walked around the Catch site together, getting to know each other. One member put it like this, “There is no wall between us and the Catch. … We’re in this community; we’re going down this path together.” That means that you and I and those we serve are being made visible. We are all having our eyes opened to see each other in new ways.

Still, it’s a fight to come out of our semi-hiding state of being. People we are not familiar with can make us uncomfortable. We pretend we don’t see them. It’s easier to turn away. It’s a relief. But once we allow ourselves to be visible, and we don’t look away or through someone or beyond them, we start to see ourselves in people everywhere.

Might I suggest the next time you look at your husband or your children or your neighbor or Shelly, look them in the eye. Touch your own poverty and someone else’s by a hand on a shoulder. Tell your son and daughter that they matter. As Shelly advises, tell your neighbor that he is not invisible, because, as Shelly tells it, “I hate that feeling.”

We all do, Shelly… we all do.

Shelly is in need of our help. Community services are activating on her behalf, but what she really needs is a few friends. If you live near Chandler, Arizona and are available to come along side her, I ask that you call me at 949.500.3490.

KEEP THE CATCH GOING IN 2013.

Believing in the impossible makes it real.

That is Marti’s statement, not mine. She is the eternal optimist. I am more like Tom, the doubter. But in spite of myself, the Catch Ministry has become a real, viable, significant and completely functional Internet ministry. Praise the Lord!

Through the Catch we are becoming a touchstone and point of identification for Internet ministry to people around the world as well as in our own backyards.

While this grapevine process increases readership and has an impact on the way we spread the gospel, the Catch derives at this time its sole support from committed supporters and its function as a virtual community.

Present tense
Our heater gave out. Our furnace just burned up and while I thought we might go without replacing it by layering sweaters, Marti has wrapped herself in blankets and refuses to come out of our only bathroom, where she sits in front of a small electric heater while holding court online and by phone. Inspection revealed a crack in the inner wall (potential carbon monoxide hazard) and an inadequate duct system (including some dangerous asbestos) pieced together for over 60 years. Solution: throw in another $2,000 furnace like I did 8 years ago (we now know how long that will last) or choose an entirely new heating system for over $6,000 that will be safe and clean and good for the next 25 years. As a demonstration of my commitment to this house and a literal statement of faith I chose the latter. Marti is now out of the bathroom.

We didn’t make our 4th quarter financials. Throughout the year your gifts have adequately supported the ministry with only the fourth quarter falling short or at an $18,000 deficit.

Nor did our annual campaign bridge our 1st quarter responsibilities developed by a professional fundraiser. Our first quarter plans did call for an increase in expense for outsourced assistance but that is being tabled until after we gain your valuable participation. Therefore it is hoped you will continue to support our 2013 first quarter requirements to continue the existing ministry.

And – our house is up for foreclosure on January 8. We have applied for a loan modification and as we await the Bank’s response, which has stretched into months as further documentation has been requested, the foreclosure date looms. While we welcome any deduction in our monthly payment or interest rate (we are able to pay our monthly mortgage rate today), we must be prepared to provide the bank what we previously owe. Together with your contribution resting in an escrow account, a friend of the Catch offered out of nowhere a substantial loan at no interest toward the amount due. Another Catch member recently told us that as she sat down to write a check for $1,000, the Lord suggested she consider $2,000 and she followed His lead. Totaling these miracles together we remain $14,000 short of what is required before a January 8th foreclosure date.

Thus the urgency of this our final appeal of 2012. For those who want to read on there is a brief look back at 2012 and forward to 2013. For those who have seen enough and want to get out their checkbooks or donate online, now would be a good time! (Checks dated for December 31 will be receipted for the 2012 even if received after the 1st.) Don’t delay. There are only hours left for online donations. Checks can be made out to The Catch Ministry, Inc., and mailed to 1278 Glenneyre, Laguna Beach, CA 92651.

2012 highlights
As committed supporters and prayer warriors, you have made the Catch Ministry a viable significant ministry with overwhelmingly wonderful results. Some of the life-changing highlights include:
 
Seekers who tell us that they appreciate the Catch Ministry’s honest expressions of faith and its availability to discuss their questions. Atheists who donate.
 
Every day the Catch Ministry is looking to extinguish the gloom with the abounding light of Christ for numerous people throughout the world who are accepting the Lord into their hurting hearts – one person at a time.
 
Many, many disenfranchised believers are reacquainting themselves with the Catch Ministry’s Gospel of Welcome; connecting and in many cases for the first time to community churches; extending themselves into the marketplace and becoming available for Christ to rise among them, and assuming their responsibility with their neighbors, walking alongside them, listening to their stories while walking one another toward the light.
 
After first recognizing the poverty found in their own homeless hearts, our Citizens tell us that the Catch Ministry is helping them to treasure their families again by affectionately caring for those who are starving for love right under their own roof.
 
Countless hours are spent mobilizing our national network trained to provide immediate emergency assistance to those with urgent needs; handling crisis after crisis springing from untouchable topics, managing traffic in traumatized people, aiding women without homes, and standing by our hardened members needing first to separated truth from suppression. You are apart of these people’s journey to forgiveness. You confirm their restoration and, as invisible witnesses like us, you validate the reconciliation between the individual with the Lord and then the individual with his or her family, and then finally the individual with the body of Christ within a church setting.
 
I celebrate with you how far we have come.
 
A look to 2013
Newly identified Elder/Leadership
And I can honestly say we have only just begun. Our newly identified Elder/Leadership are holding the Catch Ministry accountable to the ways and means of the Lord and stretching us farther than ever before and as the Lord directs. In our unreleased 2012 Catch Ministry end-of-the-year report we will share the Elder/Leadership’s requests to all of us in support of expansion and its success.
 
All I can say at this time is I am confident you will welcome with us the Catch Ministry’s 2013 New Year and its continuing endeavors.
 
Do not lose hope
On behalf of the new Elder/Leadership and Marti, I ask that you prayerfully consider it a responsibility if not a privilege to financially support the Catch Ministry according to your capability, which includes its pastor’s daily needs. Your support allows the Catch Ministry a greater ability to focus on the ministry’s citizens, as in the following passage:
 
1 Corinthians 9:14 – “The Lord commanded that those who preach the gospel should earn a living from the gospel.” Simply put, this means that those who work in the ministry of the gospel should be free from having to earn a living by other means. (See also 1 Timothy 5:17.)
 
Therefore, I encourage those of you who have supported us in the past and already recognize the value of this ministry perhaps more for others than yourselves to continue to be generous and encourage other members to do the same. In doing so, you will set us free to minister without distraction.
 
Thank you for a year to remember the union of our spirit with the Lord’s Spirit to make us new persons in Christ – God’s grace from Christ for you and for us. God’s desire is for us to walk daily by His grace and freely return glory to Christ. In these pressure-filled times when we are called to keep the faith in dark days, may we stand for the truth amidst the forces of darkness. Amen!
 
Still believing in the impossible,
John and Marti

You’ve got to just come apart over this. This is the most unbelievable thing God has done. It has to be God because no one would ever have thought of this. No religion could propose it. No government could command it. No human being could ever think of it, and even when we try to think about it now, we don’t get it, or we get so little of it that we wonder if it’s really true.

If you thought up a god, would you have him take on the form of his own creation, go to them to save them, and have them reject him and kill him? And then would you raise him from the dead and have his resurrected being witnessed by over a hundred people, yet unconfirmed by science, so it would be disputed for the rest of human history. And then would you have his church begun by a rag tag team of followers with little credibility and no social clout?  See what I mean?  It’s preposterous. It’s unthinkable.

It’s enough to prove its true. Besides, on top of everything, who would make forgiveness of sins and the eternal life Christ brings something he hands out free? No one, because I know enough about human nature to know that if we had anything to do with this, we would make people have to work to get into heaven, and we would manipulate the requirements so we could control who gets in and who we doesn’t. (We shake our heads over the indictment Jesus gave the Pharisees as those who hold the keys to the kingdom and use them to keep people out, without realizing we do this every single day in our minds.)

Imagine someone arranging religion, to put himself on the outside of it, and then bringing a savior for him and his other outsider friends, and then carry them right on into the lap of the living God? I don’t think any human being would in his or her wildest imagination come up with this. But this is exactly what God has done. He let Religion condemn us so He could send His Son to join the human caravan in order to save us.

There’s really only one thing you can do when you really get this…

Rejoice!

CLICK HERE FOR A FREE DOWNLOAD OF JOHN’S SONG: REJOICE!

Wise men from ancient east brought gifts, angelic choirs rejoiced, shepherds bowed low, animals bleated, God was born. Just like that. It happened in time and space in the little good-for-nothing town of Bethlehem. The magnificence was because it was God, and something had to be done to mark the moment and attest to its authenticity. But the lowliness of it was so that He could come in us, in the messy, smelly stall of our humanity.

Had He come in grandeur, He never would have come in me.

How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given                           So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of His heaven.

CHRISTMAS CATCH GREETING

HISTORIANS SURMISE THAT ON GOOD FRIDAY, two days before Easter Sunday in 1727, devout families gathered on a spring evening at the Church of St Thomas (Thomaskirche) in Leipzig, Germany, where Johann Sebastian Bach was the school cantor and choir director. That night there would be special music in two parts, one part before and one after the sermon. That music was Bach’s newly completed St. Matthew Passion, some three or more hours of sacred music for several soloists, a chamber ensemble, three choirs (two adult and one boy’s choir), two orchestras and (initially) two pipe organs (it was customary to have a very large one and a smaller one in the more substantial churches).

By the end of this mammoth evening of edification, the congregation would have experienced a slow march through the events of Matthew chapters 26 and 27, from Jesus’ prediction of his death to His burial – with a substantial, early Reformation sermon inserted between Judas’ kiss and the interrogation before Caiaphas. All night Christ suffers want, temptation, betrayal, rejection. He experiences as no one else could the condemnation of the Father. He undergoes torture and heartbreak, expends and endures and exhausts His resources in a passion of obedience to the point of death and even hell. These events have come to be called The Passion of Christ.

But this is not the only Passion in the life of Christ, indeed, it’s hard to imagine anything He did or that surrounded the historical event of His coming to earth as not being a passion. What if we spent Christmas Eve in labor with Mary, heaven itself mystified, like those sober churchgoers in Bach’s time spent their Saturday with Christ in the grave and neither on earth nor in heaven? When you string together the pregnancies of Elizabeth and Mary, the visitation of angels, the struggle of Joseph to believe the woman he was engaged to marry was pregnant via the Holy Spirit, the journey to Bethlehem, the angelic choir: “Sing in exaltation,” the visit of the shepherds, the mystery of God in the form of a vulnerable baby, the attempt of King Herod to find and murder the newborn “Jewish king,” the wholesale slaughter of all Jewish male infants under 2 years old by the Roman emperor, the moving star in the heavens, the no longer moving star in the heavens, and the visitation of the kings, is there any less passion in these things? The human birth of God is a Christmas Eve Passion, and a profound mystery into which even angels long to look.

Marti, with some more thoughts on passion…

Passion – I love the word. But whenever I say it everyone starts to squirm.

Passion means to me to take chances; to celebrate; to create a life worth living. To be passionate is whole-hearted-ness. To momentarily dismiss the security guards of our cerebral matter to experience Passion is everything.

Don’t roll your eyes at me. And don’t be scared. The thing about Passion is to have the right Object, the one-you are passionate-about; to trust the Creator of the Universe that there is no shortage of worthy people to love, that one leads to the other up and down a Jacob’s ladder of goodness from God to us. Find a heart’s desire for which passion will always result in the right direction, if not always the perfect outcome – it is a step on that ladder. You can know everything and be wrong, you can know nothing and be right; Passion for what is good and the source of all good increases goodness, the sense of who God is, wherever it goes regardless of whether its path ends in exaltation or crucifixion, or anywhere recognizable at all.

Passion overcomes the barriers we are forever stumbling over. Passion makes our darkness bright – and who truly enjoys the utter loneliness of the self? Passion turns inside out our unloveliness into rapturousness. And isn’t the reflection a thing of beauty?

Experiencing passion creates energy – not the Red Bull kind but the genuine life-giving kind. We are not talking about nervous energy but life-producing energy, that can be felt down to the bottom of your toes, and at the same time is transmitted out to such a high degree that anyone who wants to can pick it up and run with it too.

The power of passion allows us to see who we really are, who we are becoming and who we are never going to be if we let go of it. Passion separates what is said and what really is.

Passion is willing to take risks and you cannot take risks without it. Fear – real disabling fear – cannot live in the same room with passion. One has to go – and you are a fool to let passion go just because you were once burned, went for it and failed, and/or loved and lost. Passion doesn’t get along with nays sayers, soulless reasoners and arrogant egos, all friends of Fear.

Passion can prick itself on the thorns. But when it bleeds, passion will always fall to its knees with exaltation. Passion cries, sings, inspires, welcomes change, loves, understands with empathy, encourages others to feel, and compliments conflicts.

Something is coming –
Out of the Darkness
Joy to the world – Passion is born!
This Christmas Eve – Passion is held in our arms and felt in our heart forever and ever and into eternity.

THE WORDS “JOY TO THE WORLD” WERE FIRST SUNG to a significantly joyless world. The faithful who witnessed the crowning event were few in number, negligible of impact and crouched under the thumb of a powerful hostile government. The forces of pagan mysticism and cynical humanist philosophy had joined to make a pincer movement on the human soul, while increased knowledge, communication and pervasive cosmopolitanism carried this deadening convergence into the smallest villages and towns. People were beginning to panic, public discourse became cynical, birth rates dropped, economies collapsed, famine and disease and conquest reared their heads. A civilization had passed its flowering and was proceeding into decline. In a few years the governor of Judea would answer God Himself with the phrase that sums up the pinnacle of human wisdom, then and now: “Truth! What is truth?” A few years after that, Jerusalem would be destroyed; a few years later, Rome would follow.

Some of us are old enough to remember when it seemed things would be a certain way forever – when being a Christian in America meant bringing valid arguments on a level playing field to a free and protected marketplace of ideas. In 2012 this is becoming an immoral, unpatriotic and in some respects illegal gesture. You can be disqualified from some professions (e.g. education, journalism and the sciences) by your faith. The same pincer movement is in effect, and our spiritual experts and guides at CNN and PBS are serenely explaining Christ away every year in their annual Christmas programming, along with the conspicuous absence of Christmas carols on shopping holiday playlists.

It was into this context, into some late stage of civilization’s inevitable march into the cold, sterile and dark, that angels appeared in the sky and announced tidings of great joy that shall be unto all peoples. And God, being Who He is, made sure succeeding events played out in an incomprehensible way that only a fool would pay attention to.

Great joy. To all peoples. Here. In these times. Now. We are trying to express news so powerfully joy-inducing that the worst day in the worst times can’t suppress it. We want this, badly, for you and your friends for Christmas this year. Go tell it on the mountain, over the hill and everywhere; go tell it on the mountain that Jesus Christ is born!

An important message to all Catch members from John

Though the light of that first Christmas continues to lighten my heart, the edges around it are dark and heavy. Yes, the worst times can’t suppress that light, but they can try, and try they may. Many of you keep asking about our house and thinking you have missed an announcement somewhere along the way. There has been no announcement because I haven’t figured out a way to tell you that we are still in foreclosure proceedings with the bank with a January 8 sale date looming. I have not wanted to disappoint you because you have given so much and I desperately want us all to have a win. But I have now realized that in telling you I am not burdening you. At least you won’t feel burdened unless you want to, and if you want to do something about this it will be because you can and you choose to, not because I am burdening you or robbing you, which is far from me. So I realize that in not telling you, I am not giving opportunity for those who want to help to do so, only because I am hiding the truth.

Over these last few weeks, I have tried to state only positive messages about our future and how we need you to help us move forward (and we do – and there are exciting plans ahead including a new board to help us get there that you will meet in the next few days), but there will be no forward until we cover our arrears. (I could make a joke about that, but this doesn’t seem like the time.) So consider this a laying bare before you and a total surrendering to God to lead through your choices to respond or not as the Holy Spirit directs. What more could I ask or hope for?

For those who wish to contribute online use the CONTRIBUTE link above, and yes, all gifts are tax deductible. Checks may be sent to The Catch Ministry, Inc., 1278 Glenneyre, Laguna Beach, CA 92651.

WE ALL GO THROUGH THE SAME ASTRONOMICAL YEAR, and here in the northern hemisphere the warmth and light of the sun are dwindling down to the winter solstice, just before Christmas Eve. Even as the traffic at the malls gets denser, streets elsewhere are emptying out. And as brilliant light displays and islands of holiday noise spring up, the places between get darker and quieter. It is a schizophrenic sensation, if you are not too busy to notice it, this growing silent dark and sporadic noisy brightness.
 
The traditional religious year already turned on December 1st with the season of Advent (adventus – “coming”) – a very serious time of fasting and extra services for churches that observe the ancient religious year. But for all thoughtful Christians the Christmas season turns our mind toward the Event in Bethlehem that foretold so many other events. Coming… ending… beginning… time gets a little dizzy with all this, and comes to a stop for a while like a clock that has run down.
 
This dark and light, coming and ending and beginning time is a good season to refresh the perspective that draws us together. For we believe that to truly live and truly speak to the world, a radical and biblical “advent” of our own is required. We have to show up in the dark, not as light sources ourselves, but as reflectors and bearers, exposed by light and exposing it to others. None are worthy of God, and none are worthless. All who show up are welcomed, and bring their stories to the supper.
 
Here at the Catch Central it is a both-and situation. Our lives are overrun with people ready for the party lights as well as people looking to be thrown a rope in the dark. Both types run into each other on the bridge over the ravine that leads up to the tiny house, and the crowd is regularly incongruous.

We are drawing by faith on next year’s provision to keep that bridge up, and to have food, light, warmth, joy and solace in Christ’s name for those people at this end of it. As always we are starting 2013 from nothing, and as always your annual year-end donation is our door into the future, as a family and as a ministry. (This year we are wrapping up some of our favorite things to send to you – a new song, a poem, a story – to thank you for your yearend gift of support. More to come!)

IT MAY NOT SEEM LIKE IT NOW, BUT THEN, IT NEVER DOES. Advent begins with a tired incredulous laugh, like Zechariah’s must have been when the angel foretold the birth of John the Baptist. Will a new prophet come forth out of these old bones? The bones are old again today, and for America in December of 2012, the year ends in ashes. Christmas will not heal the political and cultural divides, will not ease the suffering of Sandy victims on the east coast, nor solve the debt crisis, nor bring peace to the middle east. Nor will it make America love her Christian heritage more.
 
The Light, however, descends to shine forth in darkness. It is not the cold light of our flatscreens, smartphones and laptops, which for the most part knit a shroud of misery and cynicism over our heads. The Light is not liquid crystal sparking to electronic signals, but is flame; whether a candle, a fireplace or a star, it burns. It comes into the world because the world is dark, and, though the world remains a dark place even by this light, the darkness of the world does not overcome it.
 
The Light comes first to those unlikely ones who look for it the most in the dark – a star in the night sky to the traveling wise men, a heavenly choir in the night to the shepherds. Advent reminds us that Light is always, always on its way, and that darkness only presages it. It may be that the saturation of the airwaves by personal technology has annihilated the airspace that in the past accommodated great surges in the gospel on the earth. It may be that the soil of our public culture becomes ever more acidic to the gospel. Darkness is real, and expensive to faith; but it is the setting for Light to appear.
 
So, it is dark. And Something is coming – and it will be surpassingly wonderful. Keep your eyes open for it; be one of the ones looking for it. It is always arriving, has never stopped arriving, is on its way again to us who look for it, and it loves impossibility. Remember how it started, in the darkest time of a weary world.

We have turned to each other through the unlikely medium of the Internet out of hunger for Light, plain and simple. We are so thankful for you! You are our home, our encouragement and goad, the ground of our ministry to hundreds of people you can’t possibly know. You have made your home with us and invested faithfully. As we mark the end of the year in these Advent messages, we ask you to renew your end of year giving, to us and to yourselves, for the Catch to take a strong stand in 2013. The world needs us now, more than ever.

Most of this letter was written prior to the horrific events of this last weekend. We felt it was a fitting word today when answers aren’t enough and words don’t suffice.

I have made a friend over the last years with the Catch. Her name is Kathy. She has experienced tough times, is fighting through to her faith, and is what I call a true seeker – she is searching for real answers. If you knew her like I have come to know her you would come to the same understanding that I have: This is a woman who is not going to stop for anyone or anything until she finds what she is looking for.

Still she has found enough sun to keep her attitude warm and in time to appreciate the rain, enough happiness to recognize the smallest of joys, enough gain to satisfy wanting, and enough loss to appreciate all that she possess. And as a military officer, she has found enough “Hellos” to get her through so many “Good-byes.”

But she still hasn’t found what she is looking for.

This woman has served our country, and I know you join me in acknowledging that we do not know what she has been up against, but we know that she is braver than most of us.

She has asked herself to do more under ridiculous circumstances than you or I would ever expect of ourselves. She has served to protect and defend. She acted. She performed. She has exceeded beyond what was expected of her. She has expectations too, that are simple enough, but which John and I must jump or stretch to even begin to attain; and she has one good, heart-stopping, probing question after another, and a real interest in real attempts to answer them. She is the number two son of the parable – the one who riles up at his father’s commands, but afterwards sees the sense of them and does them. While the number one son has all the right words, but never does anything.

Kathy is my hero. She is our hero. Yet she tells me – this military officer facing into her own acts of bravery and those of others who have served by her side – that my 13-year-old son is her hero! She believes that Chandler, like many heroes, has never been awarded a medal, ribbon or badge simply because his acts of personal heroism have gone undetected.

Yet she still hasn’t found what she is looking for.

So listen and learn with me from someone who still hasn’t found what she is looking for.

Kathy and Chandler have shared an invisible relationship over the years, gleaned primarily from the Catch daily writings. She writes that he keeps her grounded with his spunk, innocence and love for his family. She loves his fearless downhill skating, even after being injured. “He just makes me happy,” she writes. “I also love his child logic. He says it like it is without all the hoopla. I feel a connectedness to him that I can’t really explain. I just know that when John writes about Chandler in any capacity, my day is brightened because of the obvious love that is pouring out from all of you for all of us.”

What has this person found – who hasn’t yet made a nest in Christianity and who has traveled on and off the marked path? This person who ignores prescribed joys and safeties, and is perhaps more delighted with Chandler than she is with the baby Jesus? This person who is acquainted with declared war, walked right into it on purpose, as well as the undeclared war all around us – the one we feel so strongly about when it breaks in on our nightly news, when tragedy strikes and blood flows in streets and in elementary school classrooms not accustomed to these things?

She is the most valiantly Christward person I can think of with scars and pains to show for it. Though trembling in her unbelief, she is also drawn to the light like a newborn. I know, though I do not want to say, that Christ himself accepts her adoration in the person of Chandler and whomever else she delights to love. She must believe, because of the living water springing up in her. So many of the first lessons that are old and dull become clear to me whenever I hear from her – lessons from when Christ said where the kingdom of God was (not in the temple), and who God pays attention to, and the great difference between living each day He gives us and imagining the same perfect, sanctified day over and over again. She reminds me of Jesus like a bucket of cold water dashed in my face.

And why do I write you about her? Because she is heroic in her belief/unbelief, and God knows we need heroes right now.

But she still hasn’t found what she’s looking for, and who among us can say we have?

Love,
Marti

“GHOST of the Future!” [Scrooge] exclaimed, “I fear you more than any specter I have seen. But as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with a thankful heart.” That’s the spirit, Ebenezer. You are altering the future already. The old Scrooge would never have responded in this way.

The essence of the final visitation in this classic story by Charles Dickens is to show Ebenezer and us what his future would look like if he does nothing to alter his present course. It is a powerful tool for change, and given the fact that he is viewing only shadows of things to come, and will miraculously soon discover he still has Christmas day ahead of him (“I haven’t missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can.  Of course they can.”), he will set to work immediately to make sure that he will be remembered in a better way than was shown to him by the hooded spirit of Christmas Future.

Think of it. What about your current course: Are you happy with it? If you died today, how would you be remembered? Is there anything you’d like to change about that while you still can? I would venture to guess that there isn’t anyone who wouldn’t have some changes they would like to make if they could. (I have a mountain of them.) Well, we do and we can. We all have a second chance. Indeed, every day is a second chance. There’s still time.

Think of every day as a second chance to change the course of your life for the better. Throw open that window and find out from the fine lad below that it’s still Christmas Day – still time to buy that turkey for someone you know who can’t afford it; still time to make that donation you turned down earlier; still time to join in the festivities with someone you love; still time to dance.

Our daughter, Annie, alters the course of people’s lives every day she works as an Emergency Room doctor in a gang infested poor neighborhood in southern California, and she does it, not only by the right medical treatment for which we believe she has a divine inspiration for, but by the way she looks in her patients’ eyes and treats them with value and respect be it criminal or victim. She has a second chance today and she would like to use it to thank you too in this her Christmas greeting [see below]. And be sure and come back because Chandler has something to say, too.

Yes, and then there is Chandler who at 13 years old is the answer to our prayers in the past and our hope for the future with his own wish for you in the present [see below].

Finally, next week will be special for what we have planned for you. You won’t want to miss a single Catch. Christmas is coming; Christ is already here. Rejoice!

And don’t forget, YOU have a second chance today. Open that window. The Spirit has done it all in one night. Look at every moment as an opportunity to alter the course of your life for the better. The power of the Holy Spirit is in you. Let Him work through you.

Scrooge was better than his word.  He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father.  He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.  Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms.  His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.
 
He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.  May that be truly said of us, and all of us!  And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!