Finding Our Way Back at Christmas..

Merry Christmas

Thank you, first of all: If you are reading this, you’re probably one of the people who saved us this year, so I couldn’t let these moments go by without thanking you and wishing you a Merry Christmas.

The farm, as I have written, has always been a very fragile proposition, even from the very beginning, but this summer was very dark indeed.  The ravages of cancel culture (legal bills) and the debt we went into remaining open after Covid began to catch up with us.  We made a public call for help, and thousands of you answered.  Pastor Jack Hibbs of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills put out the word, and you responded by buying dinner theater tickets, booking field trips and giving us more than $45,000 in donations.  (We are not a non-profit. You can’t deduct gifts to us, and that says something very profound about your generosity.)

The irony?  We’re growing. Even some of the public schools who once boycotted us are coming back, but, in California, there’s an old saying, “you can have a great small business in California; you just have to start with a very, very big business.”  We have to come up with $50,000 in property taxes every year just to keep our land, and that’s only ONE of the big bills.  In other words, in California, you have to be so profitable you can stay ahead of all the various pirates reaching for your wallet.

Anyway, I won’t bore you with the accounting.  Just know this: Riley’s Farm would not be here without you.  I know “literally” is incorrectly used, but that is literally true.  If it weren’t for people like you, I would be in Tennessee, writing novels in a trailer, and Mary would not be working from 5 AM to 7 PM in the bakery.

Christmas and My Prayer Life

One of the problems with running a business that people love has something to do with false glory.  We love America, and we love its history, and we love its traditions, and we do things like close on Sundays.  We sing “Amazing Grace” at the end of Sleepy Hollow.  We pray before our dinner theater events.  We get some attention because we vigorously ridicule people who aren’t grateful for our American heritage, and I know — from countless testimonies — that people are grateful we use our platform in this way.

BUT, we are not saints.  The Riley family have been known to fight with each other like mountain lions–jagged fangs and all.  Despite Mary and I having a very solid marriage of 37 years, I think a few of our children would have preferred a couple of quiet, ever-positive, “happy wife, happy life” types from a Focus on the Family promotion.  (Mary is Greek and I have at least a little Irish blood, so we’re both known to say what we think, sometimes at the top of our lungs.) As a Christian, I am solidly behind C.S. Lewis when he wrote, (paraphrasing), “if you saw a saint, you would be awe-struck by his holiness and scandalized by his humanity.”  I have the humanity part down, in other words, even if I’m still working on the holiness part.

The “finding our way back” part..

I think all of this is important to confess for two reasons:  A few of you heap such praise on us, I want you to make sure our labeling is accurate.  We are sinners saved by grace, just like most of you.  When I lament revisionist history, or drag queen story hour, or gender-fluid child abuse, it’s not because I’m a saint.  It’s because I’m a sinner given an ounce of common sense, in a world fast losing the old “Christian common sense.”

The second reason: as much as I believe we need to be involved politically, I don’t think America will be saved — really restored — until we acknowledge our sins before Christ, until we begin walking with a heavy fear of God’s wrath and greater appreciation for His love.  When I read about Somali immigrants stealing BILLIONS of our tax dollars, or election fraud on a scale difficult to imagine, or members of congress gaming the stock market, or college coeds bragging about their abortions, I ask myself this simple question: “can we ever hope to make America great again,  if we don’t make her good again?”

I honestly fear the executive branch turned back over to the Democrats, not because I think Trump or the Republicans are uniformly virtuous, but because, from what I can tell, the Democrats are completely without any spiritual anchor.  They would happily jail people like me, for no reason at all, and celebrate with cocktails.  We are beginning to see some version of what Dostoevsky explored in the The Brothers Karamazov as brother Ivan wonders, “Without God and immortal life? All things are lawful then, they can do what they like?”  It’s a serious question: what happens when ALL of our leaders lose their fear of God?  Does anyone really think Tim Walz gets down on his knees and asks God’s forgiveness for allowing billions of dollars in taxpayer fraud?

So–keeping jackals like Tim Walz in mind–my prayer life at Christmas, and always lately, is this: “Lord, turn us back to You.  I see no hope without a truly BIBLICAL revival.”

On Christmas Eve, that may sound ominous, or too heavy, but it’s really just a kind of explanation.  God came into an evil world to save us.  He arrived at a time when men killed each other in the coliseum, for sport, at a time when sanctimonious Pharisees could witness healings and call them the work of the devil, at a time when slavery was the worldwide assumption, at a time when the king could kill all the babies in Bethlehem to secure his throne.  The world we live in RIGHT NOW, as evil as it may be, has been made better by God coming into a condemned world and saving it, century by century, for the better.

May the work of the GREAT COMMISSION go on.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Categorised in: Culture, Farm Journal

This post was written by Jim Riley