Skip to main content

Christmas

             It’s Christmas. Happy Birthday, Jesus.

                As I’m getting ready to do all the stuff I’m going to do, I’m feeling a little uncomfortable. I’ll go to church (unless my head won’t let me) and sing songs of praise. I may bustle about and make another dish to take to dinner. After said dinner, I’ll probably go to visit friends to watch whatever movie they picked out.

            But let’s say it was your birthday, and throw in a little more of what is “normal Christmas” for people. You wake up and the kids are all excited about what gifts they’re going to receive. You go to what should be a birthday party, and find that once your friends and family greet you, they talk to each other more than they do you. They go home and get ready for a family or another community celebration of your birthday, where the focus is on who brought what dish, who is wearing what, and how much effort getting ready for your birthday dinner was or how much they spent on presents for everyone but you. I’m not trying to make anyone feel guilty. I see the same things in myself, and I don’t have the same level of human interaction as some of you.

            Over the past decade, I’ve heard about an Icelandic tradition involving giving books on Christmas Eve that the recipient then gets to spend the day reading. I love the notion, but if I get a chance to pick up a book today, it’s likely to be by Agatha Christie, and Jesus probably won’t have a role. On the positive side, I’m listening to Christmas music, at least some of which has to do with Him.

                And with that, I’m going to share my Christmas Concert, so that maybe we can both spend at least a few moments celebrating Jesus’ birthday on Jesus’ birthday. Merry Christmas!


Christmas Concert

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

Listen To Him

              The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him . (Deuteronomy 18:15)           Today, we switch from Jesus’ claims of “I am” to prophecies made about Him. My Bible platform is starting in Deuteronomy. I’d start in Genesis, where we would learn that the one who would save us would be a descendant of Eve (Genesis 3:15), of Noah (by default), Abram and Sara(Genesis 12:1-3). Isaac (Genesis 17:19), Jacob (Genesis 25:23), Judah (Genesis 29:8), and David (II Samuel 7:12-16). There were also references to a new covenant (Jer. 31:31-34; Ezek. 36:22-32). In addition, there were prophecies about when and where the prophet/Messiah would be born and what would happen to him.           Of course, naysayers will claim that Jesus’ life was retrofitted or reverse enginee...
Post a Comment
Read more