The external power of capitalism is very closely kin to the imperialistic power of the Old Testament, the power that Jesus’ teachings tried to refute.

In Old Testament days, the kings and warriors believed that God was on their side. They evoked God’s power and even wrote about how they believed God had spoken and caused miraculous things to happen in order to destroy their enemies. Ironically, the people who claimed to be on God’s side didn’t always show that in reality. How convenient it was, though, to declare that God was on their side and to sculpt the story of the Jewish people to mount the evidence that would show this.

Jesus came along and debunked all of that. He focused not on what we think of as power at all. Certainly not the Zorro kind of power that protects some people and not others. Jesus message was that the power of God is within people who recognize this to be the case.

It’s the kind of power that can do all things possible WITHIN us and sometimes changes within us can result in changes outside of us. Yet real power doesn’t come from external sources. It starts deep within us, in our souls.

The sad thing is that we often have covered over that power so much, focusing on the external things or magical events, just as people have done throughout the centuries, crediting God and blaming God and arranging so many “miraculous” things that we can see with our own eyes, that we cannot even imagine the Power that Jesus was trying to help us find, the Power that is already within us through God’s grace.

It is this realization coming to earth, helping us to discover that we already have all that we need-- that is the True Magic of Christmas!

An early December episode of “Aliens in America,” Raja asked the Tolchuk family to help him understand more about their spiritual life. Especially at Christmas, a season he was having difficulty fully comprehending as a Muslim.

As always, the show was a delightful mix of hilarious irony and wisdom that comes because of Raja’s gentle spirit that comes across along with his incredibly mature philosophy that stands in such charm contrast to his host family, the Tolchuk’s, who are filled with so much hostility and are extremely skilled at selfish manipulation as they struggle with issues raised because of Raja’s humble presence in their lives.

Raja has a servant attitude, always seeking to learn and grow. He seems to understand, especially in this episode, a lot about what Jesus came to teach us when it comes to power.

The Tolchuk’s scramble to find their old church, only to discover that it’s been turned into a fast-food restaurant! In the process, they discover painful realities about how much they had preserved within themselves a belief system that worships external power. In the process, it becomes clear how much we all need to change if we are to align ourselves with a power that is important.

My most memorable Christmas came in 1955. With the arrival of what I came to call “our Korean Christmas gift.” My little sister wasn’t wrapped in shining paper. Or anything bright and colorful. She came on a jet plane. First to California. Dressed in one of those old-fashioned, paper-thin baby dresses that were common dress for summer infantwear back then. It would have been sized “3 months” if there had been an American manufacturer involved. For Lydia, though almost 15 months old, weighed 14 pounds. She could not even turn over!

It was the dead of winter with beautiful snowflakes falling to decorate the evening when a stewardess walked across the runway carrying this vulnerable baby who had been placed, just the day before, in a sturdy box just large enough for them to call “a bed” and loaded along with scores of other infants and toddlers on a plane without seats. These children were known as “war orphans” because so many of them were fathered by American soldiers who had abandoned their convenient lovers, leaving them and their children destitute and treated like trash, once the war was over.

Somehow my parents had been forewarned that they needed to send an extra change of clothes, something warm, along with a heavier blanket for her arrival. And so she came on a snowy night. With no instructions. To families who knew nothing about the culture and didn’t know the importance of many things that we know now (and are still trying to learn) about caring for such children who come from afar. The thought that they might have a child so fragile that she could die the day she arrived--that was something that apparently never entered my parents’ minds. Nor the agency’s. These children were desperate, and their new parents held high aspirations with little understanding of the issues or challenges ahead.

My mother wrote last week that December 17 always seems like Lydia’s birthday. It was a new beginning for all of us. For this dear child, who would never be able to reconstruct her past as much as she’d like, never be able to find her biological mother, nor the father who tossed her aside for whatever reason and with whatever feelings he might have experienced, this woman who now wonders  how she possibly coped in an orphanage where the kids were forced to live on rice water, it was time to catch up on a lot of things.

I sent her a little Christmas angel this year, with a note telling her that she has so many times been, for me, like an angel in my life. One who came as such a blessing, to a family that had very, very little left to share materially. Yet, paradoxically, we had everything we wanted!

Come January, if you ask most kids about their Christmas, they’ll talk about what they got from Santa Claus or their parents. That’s the first thing that comes to mind for children. That’s where they go with the word association that comes with “How was your Christmas?”

It’s so hard, in a capitalistic world, to not focus on external things. After all, we depend on sales being up almost as much as we depend on electricity. Having lived in a world that didn’t care about either, I’m torn between what I’ve known most of my life and what I knew in my adopted country of Malawi. Always aware that I have a wider array of choices in my awareness because of that international experience that seeped into the fragment of my being.

Since returning to the United States in 1987, I have tried to live a somewhat counter-culture existence when it comes to the holidays. Instead of joining the rush of shoppers in December, my preference is the hibernate. Partly because I’ve never liked procrastinating. Or crowds. Nor do I really like a lot of rituals. I’d prefer that every day of my life, at least in some small way, be filled with something I do differently than ever before.

So December is a time to reflect for me, to keep things as simple as possible most years, to look at all the things I do not need, and to focus on relationships and self-improvement so that the coming year will be filled with the hope created by the spiritual renewal that was what I believe Christ really wanted to bring to us.

A few days ago we experienced power failure in many parts of the Midwest. Electrical power failure that is. A power most of us cannot begin to understand, but we use it every day. It makes life convenient. Without it, we find our existence altered.

Yet people existed without electricity for most of history. They would have laughed to even think of the possibilities that exist for us because of this very scientific invention!

It began effecting our family first in Oklahoma. While their family never lost power, close neighbors did. So their comfort and survival became a concern of our daughter who was trying to meet the needs of her own household. Schools were closed. I think some still are.

A few days later the ice hit Kansas City hard. Our son took time off work to care for his preschool daughters, using the time to bake and decorate sugar cookies. Until their power failed!

That’s when the family had to draw on their own internal power--the power of problem-solving. To stay warm and sustain themselves, a fire was built in the fireplace where the girls curled up together and slept all night, perhaps making memories that will remain in their young minds as treasures of togetherness. No doubt, knowing that family, with a fair amount of humor, too, somehow. And gratitude that they all were able to get safely to school and work the next morning, where there WAS power.

Strangely, as I waited for news and watched the weather predictions and reports of spotty power failures here in Iowa, I began thinking of what power has to do with Christmas.

Not the electrical power, of course, but power to change things. Especially to change us. Power to change us so that WE become the change that we long to see in this world. Including the power to accept the things we cannot change. To adapt to those things and find joy in spite of whatever the circumstances.

It occurred to me that the most blessed Christmases may be those when we are drawn closer because of the unexpected, unfortunate, or even the unwelcome challenges that life brings us.