CrossPurposes 300 An invoice for your life...

CP 300 An invoice for my life Many of you who are around my age – 75 - will remember the magic of Disney comics like Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. Donald had three nephews, Huey, Dewey and Louie, who were members of the Junior Woodchucks, a precursor to the Boy Scouts of America. I mention the woodchucks because I recently came across a strange, sad story about the man mostly responsible for starting the junior Woodchuck movement in North America. Ernest Thompson Seton was born in 1860 in England to Scottish parents named Thompson. His family emigrated to Canada, near the city of Toronto. From a very young age he spent much of his spare time in the woods near his home. Out there in the woods he became a self-taught naturalist as he observed, studied and drew all the animal bird and plant life around him. He eventually became a renowned artist and an associate member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. What only a few people knew was that what pushed him into the woods from such a young age was that he needed a safe place where he could avoid his angry and abusive father. Get this: On his 21st birthday, Seton’s father presented him with an invoice for every single financial expense incurred during his entire childhood and youth, including the fee charged by the doctor who delivered him! My mind can hardly take that in. Your father presents you with a bill for every dollar he ever spent on raising you? In his autobiography, Seton wrote about the incident in detail. At the time he had no money to his name so he could not pay his father. He immediately got a job and used the money he made to leave the household forever. He never spoke to his father again. Can you even imagine handing each of your children a bill for all costs associated with their childhood? Yes, I know all of us might admit there is something human about the inclination to remind people how much they are indebted to us, especially if they seem ungrateful. But present your child with an invoice for every penny spent? More shocking than surprising and totally sad. How about the Lord God Almighty? What would it be like to be held to account for every ‘debt’ I might have with him! I can’t tell you how grateful I am that my heavenly Father didn’t and doesn’t take that approach, even though he was and is justly entitled to. O yes, I acknowledge I had and have impossible debts with him. But right here we can see what the coming of Immanuel is all about. He came to position himself between the Father in heaven and the mass and mess of humanity. Through his life, he personally picks up the invoice for all our debts, and clutches it to himself even as he is keeping that appointment on Calvary Hill. Almost the last word he speaks before he dies tell us the meaning of Christmas. Tetelestai! In the Greek language of the day, these are the very words a merchant would stamp on a bill that has been settled. Paid in Full! Tetelestai! It is finished. Your account has been cleared. Give thanks, with grateful heart, that he enables us to own that truth in our hearts and with our lips. Fred