Posts Tagged ‘Christmas’

Thank you, Google, first of all, for providing free airport WIFI in Baltimore. I despise airport WIFI charges, and Boingo is one of the worst offenders, but when we arrived for a layover enroute to New Mexico, we were delighted to find the message that Google has partnered with Boingo to provide free WIFI in the airport for the holidays through January 15. That’s today. We snuck onto the worldwide web at the 9th hour on Google’s good grace and dime. Thanks, Google!

Last Christmas

This is the first time in 17 years of marriage that we’ve not been in New Mexico for New Year’s. Due to our move to Virginia, our annual holiday schedules/traditions have had to be adjusted. We’ll get there later today and spend a few days in Hobbs with Carolyn’s family for our last Christmas of 2009 (or is it our first one of 2010?).

We are super grateful to Carolyn’s folks for their generosity and grace which consistently make trips like this possible. I guess we should also thank Southwest Airlines for partnering with the credit card company that her folks use that results in free tickets. Either way, we’re very, deeply thankful.

Laughing all the way

If you’ve been following our journey so far on Twitter (mine or Carolyn’s), you’ll notice that our kids have been assaulting our funny bones with one-liners. Just in the last 30 minutes, Adelyn has observed that the reason airline tickets are expensive is because of the moving walkways in the airport. She also noticed a very youthful army guy decked out in fatigues. Whether it was his boyish appearance or his height (not much taller than she), we don’t know, but she busted out with, “What? Is he like the drummer boy or something?”

Sam’s humor has been more slapstick. And annoying. But he manages quite well to keep me smiling through my grimaces. With effortless ease, he consistently manages to stick his elbows in my side, include my bald spot in every conversation, and roll his eyes at my humor (thus suggesting that it isn’t funny which we all know is not true). I just don’t know how Carolyn’s family managed with her all those years, because it’s so obvious that Sam is just like her…

Over the river and through the woods

We’ve got quite a journey to get to grandma’s house today. I’ll keep you updated as I’m able through layovers and Google’s goodness. After driving to Raleigh-Durham last night, we’ll stop in Baltimore – Little Rock – Dallas – Midland. We don’t get off the plane in Little Rock, but if you’re there today and reading my blog (which amounts to my mom), wave and we’ll wave back.

On a curious note, it was one year ago today that Captain Sullenberger safely landed  his U.S. Airways flight in the Hudson River after it was crippled by a flock of birds hitting one of the jet engines. I would rather keep it “over the river and through the woods” rather than vice versa.

You know the Rolaids commercials about “How do you spell RELIEF?” And they respond with “R-O-L-A-I-D-S?” Well…. last night I was preaching away in our second December Nights celebration at the BCM at Virginia Tech. It was packed. We had a special worship team in from Brentwood Church in Lynchburg led by Nic Carver. The stage was set for a momentous evening.

Until I reached my conclusion…

Let me back up a little.

We’ve focused our evenings around the Advent themes. Last night was about Peace, and the message was “Peace Follows Release.” We began by allowing Linus to read Luke 2 -our focal passage:

The interesting thing about that passage is how the King James Version says “Peace on earth, goodwill to men.” Most modern translations recognize that another alternate meaning is essentially “peace on earth to whom God is pleased.” In other words, God’s peace is conditional.

The angels weren’t pronouncing world peace at all, after all.

In fact, that little baby that they announced would later pronounce “Do not think I have come to bring peace to the earth…” (Matthew 10.34)

Was there a discrepancy between the promise of the angels and the mission of the Messiah?

That was the theme of the message. We looked at what Scripture describes as the person who pleases God. Hebrews 11.6 says, “Without faith, it is impossible to please God…”

The apostle Paul says in Romans 5.1 that since we are “justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

It is the person of faith that pleases God, in other words. Peace on earth is promised to those who in faith believe and love the Lord with all their hearts, minds, strength and souls. Peace on earth is not an amorphous promise. It’s succinct. It’s specific. Peace is promised, yes, but only “among those with whom he is pleased.” (ESV)

Those who release their lives to Christ find peace from Him. It is only through faith – trusting God instead of ourselves or others (or our things) that we find release.

And here’s where the Rolaids analogy comes in.

I played with the word RELEASE in my conclusion. I rarely do this, and it’s cheesy, but I used each letter to represent what we should release to Jesus.

R – Relationships. As Jesus said in the Matthew 10.34 passage, we should not allow any earthly relationship to compare to our love for Him.

E – Expectations. All ______ (anger, frustration, worry, anxiety, etc.) is the result of unmet expectations. We need to release our expectations to the Lord.

L – Lesser Loves. Anything good that demands our attention, time and effort is still a lesser love when compared to Christ. We need to recognize them for what they are – idols – if they come between us and our allegiance to the Lord.

E – Ego. Our pride and our relentless commitment to ourselves needs to be released. James 4.10 urges us to “humble ourselves before the Lord, and He will lift you up.”

S – Stuff. I know it’s not sophisticated or eloquent. But we all let stuff interfere with our love for God. Our possessions, our time, our checkbooks, our financial goals. We must release these in order to discover the peace that comes from God.

E – Experiences. Whether it’s past successes or failures, fantastic heights or stunning hurts, we cannot allow our experiences to define our obedience. We must release them all before the Father.

There you have it… except for the “A.” The A was “Attitude. We cannot allow a skewed perspective or negative viewpoint to hinder us from following Christ in faith. Our attitude can dramatically alter our ability to enjoy God because it reveals we cherish our emotions more than our Messiah.”

However, last night, I just missed it in my notes. Completely.

Most folks didn’t catch it (or were gentle enough to overlook it). Others were quick to assume that was the Arkansas spelling of RELEASE. And they pointed that out with great glee.

Fortunately, the Lord used it anyway. (I hope and trust.)

It’s not really important that you can spell “release” in all actuality. It’s just crucial that you can do it.

It was one of those weekends as a leader that you anticipate/dread with equal measures of enthusiasm and uncertainty. Our church had an opportunity to host the Glory in the Highest concert tour here in Blacksburg. After deliberation and an email survey, we jumped at it.

There were more than 900 folks at the concert Friday night, and we surpassed the break-even point. While it was never a financial-only perspective for me, I knew that there might be those in our church who would look at it that way, and I was grateful that those results might assuage any concern they had.

One person told me at the concert, “Congratulations on the success of this event.” The comment was made in reference, I perceived, to the amount of people in attendance. And the comment broke my heart in a way. Success at such an event is never measured in terms of numbers and attendance. Biblically, we can only view success as to whether God was glorified and honored in the context and whether we are faithful and obedient.

Jesus Christ was clearly painted as glorious, majestic and worthy of worship and honor from the stage by the artists, and because of that, I was deeply grateful to have been a part of the event. My prayer is that folks who attended, helped and prayed for the event were encouraged to discover that life’s ultimate joy rests in an authentic love relationship with the Father.

Snowy Saturday

We awoke Saturday a.m. to a thickening layer of snow on the ground. It snowed steadily most of the day, finally clearing up around 4-ish. It was simply beautiful, and my kids leapt out of bed, dressed with no sense of grogginess, and were outside in a few moments. If only they treated school days like that…

It was surreal and beautiful. Most of the snows we experienced in Arkansas came after December. One of our church members related that this snow “really didn’t count” as a significant snow. It was more of a dusting. (It was 3-4 inches!!). Man, are we unprepared! My toes have been icicles since last week when the temps started staying stubbornly in the 20s at night. I wore two pairs of socks to our worship service last night.

I had planned to avoid the snow play. However, after helplessly watching two different fathers on our street laboriously build Frostys, I was eventually guilted into creating our own version of a frozen snow human. Sam and I pelted one another with snowballs for a while before my one hand was frozen solid (I had on a nice mitten but couldn’t find its match so on the other hand, I was wearing a cotton glove I use for subzero scooter rides).

Carolyn was out shopping for most of the day, and when I learned she was returning, I told her to look for our snow creation. When she pulled up, she said, “It’s dead.” It had fallen over. Bummer.

Finally… December Nights

Now you see why this was a “Big Weekend.” Our church moved its worship services to the evenings during the month of December. We have creatively called this “December Nights.” It’s…

a wonderful, warm and inviting December of worship and celebration of Christ’s birth! There will be NO MORNING WORSHIP SERVICES during December; instead, we’ll be meeting each Sunday at 5:00 p.m. at the BCM at VT for “December Nights.” This is a superb opportunity to invite friends, neighbors and coworkers for 1 hour of contagious joy involving worship and teaching! Come celebrate Christ with us in December!

We experimented with December Nights last year at Journey Church, and our congregation there loved the break in schedule and the ambience. This past Sunday evening was our first DN here. We met at 5:00, enjoyed some hot chocolate and cookies, and then we sent out a large group into the neighborhoods around Virginia Tech to sing Christmas carols.

They returned, frozen, but cheerful, and then we enjoyed a time of worship and teaching centered around the Advent theme of Hope. As folks exited back into the frigid night air, and we cleaned up the BCM, I was thankful for all that happened in a few days.

It was a big weekend.

Here’s our annual ElfYourself video. We’ve been practicing for months:

Invite your friends, and help us spread the word! You can buy tickets here.

While Caro rolled out of bed early for a Black Friday trip to Wal-Mart (where she claims she bought nothing), the kids and I snoozed our lives away until mid-morning. In fact, Caro had apparently come back and left for work at the Gift Shaker to face hordes of eager shoppers from the other side of the counter before I’d ever lifted my eyelids.

I do recall her asking me if I wanted to go to Wal-Mart this a.m. at 4:30-ish. However, it is so foggy that I cannot even remember whether I gave her an intelligible response. 

As soon as I’d downed a few cups of coffee and the kids had enjoyed a couple of hours of being kids, we began excavating the attic of Christmas stuff. I figured that we could have the bulk of Christmas supplies, lights, etc. down and set up when Caro got home as a surprise for her.

Sam and Adelyn were remarkably helpful the whole time the attic was involved. They never slowed down helping cart stuff up and down the rickety pull-down stairs. I think that perhaps they were hoping for a magical wardrobe to be concealed somewhere over our heads that might be their entrance to another world and an escape from this one.

As soon as the attic stuff was done, their enthusiasm cooled. Sam did get the tree assembled and helped me with the lit wreaths across the front of the house. Adelyn began sorting through/playing with Christmas ornaments. And it was then that Caro came home. Where did the time go?

We spent the rest of the afternoon decorating. I kept trying to throw away old Christmas ornaments, creating my own filter for what made a worthy, keepable ornament. Here were some of the criteria:

• A worthy ornament can’t be a non-Christmas-y trinket that simply has a string coming out the top to hang on the tree. Because of this definition, I attempted to throw away several clowns, miniature blue and brown buildings (Caro claimed they were “churches”), a dozen crosses (yes, I know they’re spiritually significant… but how many do we need of those?), and some wooden things.
• A worthy Christmas ornament can’t have glitter on it. Just to let you know, this criteria was totally vetoed by Caro, but I hate having to try to vaccum up glitter from cheap ornaments.
• A worthy Christmas ornament can’t weigh more than 3 pounds. Serious. We have some things that you could enter into the Strongest Man Competition. You need to use 2-3 branches and some rope to keep these babies on the tree. The eyebolt screwed into the wall with the steel cable holding up the tree is pretty distracting.
• A worthy Christmas ornament simply cannot have Hello Kitty on it.
• On the other hand, any ornament that has Donald Duck on it is worthy. In fact, the kids and I played a game called “Most Blessed One” in which we kept score of which kid was able to hang up the most Donald Duck ornaments. And they’re all very Christmas-y, so they don’t violate the first criterion.
• A worthy ornament can’t be a piece of construction paper that it appears one of our kids drew on unconsciously in their sleep and is labelled “Preschool” on the back of it. As a caveat, I assured Caro we can keep it in the ornament box, in case forensics proves that one of our kids made it, but it does not belong on the tree.
• An ornament that was worthy last year may not be worthy this year, based on whether the tree “theme” is different from last year. We had gallons of plastic icicles and dozens of prune-shaped glittery (see the second criterion) balls that may have been worthy because they fit the tree theme in years past. However, I was able to toss them this year because I convinced Caro that no 21st century Christmas tree would allow anything of the sort to adorn its branches. 
• An ornament, no matter how worthy, is not allowed to hang from the tree-topper angel’s wings. This was instituted by Caro a few years ago, and apparently still remains firmly in effect in spite of protestations that the Mystery Van from Scooby Doo would blend very well with this year’s theme if it was allowed to hang from the angel’s wings.
• While not exactly an ornament, Caro has decreed that all sorts of branches, berry-looking things, and dead weeds may be entwined around O Christmas Tree and be considered worthy. The overall effect with lights on is nice, but I still fight the urge to pull out the weedeater.
• If it’s an ornament that doubles as a picture frame that even came in a Hallmark box that says “Baby’s Second Chrismtas” – but has no picture of a two year-old baby (preferably ours) in it – it is not a worthy Christmas ornament.

The following is from Michael Kelley’s blog. He gave me permission to post it in its entirety. I was wanting to do an OCC post since this is “collection week,” but his entry was so good, I thought, why duplicate? Thanks, Michael! -

Last night, our family went to Target to fill our Operation Christmas Child shoebox. This is a great organization with a great mission:

Operation Christmas Child brings joy and hope to children in desperate situations around the world through gift-filled shoe boxes and the Good News of God’s love. Since 1993, more than 61 million shoe boxes have been packed, shipped, and delivered across the globe. People of all ages can be involved in this simple, hands-on missions project while focusing on the true meaning of Christmas—Jesus Christ.

It’s simple – make Christmas better for a child by filling a shoebox full of gifts. But here are a few things you might not know about OCC:

- Did you know that there is a national leadership team in each country that receives boxes? Boxes only go to countries that have a National Leadership Team. This team is made up national volunteer Christians
that have a heart to see their country come to know Christ. They help raise funds to help pay for the transportations of shoe boxes into their country. They make the decisions about where distributions
happen and are responsible for creating opportunities for distributions to all kids by creating a strategic plan (meaning that kiddos get one box- not multiple boxes that they show up year to year
just to get the stuff- the goal is to provide the gospel)

- Every child is given the opportunity to participate in a 10 week discipleship program and plugged into a local church

- Shoe boxes have allowed Samaritans Purse to create roots in communities. OCC opens the doors to focus on relief and community development. Other SP programs include children’s heart project, instillations of water filtration systems/ feeding programs, HIV programs, and Medical Mission programs.

- A shoe box = gospel opportunity. For every box that is distributed a copy of “The Greatest Gift of All” is distributed in the language that the child speaks. So last year 7.6 million copies of the gospel was spread throughout the world. Think about how influential that is. One child gets a box- he/she goes home to his 4 siblings and his mom and dad.

- There are 11 sending countries. The US of A is not the only country giving- Other sending countries include Austria, Australia, Germany, The Netherlands, Canada, Finland, Ireland, Switzerland, UK and New Zealand.

This is national collection week. Click here to find out where to drop off your shoebox.