Advent 2023 - Christmas ~

Christmas has such a different feel for me this year. No children in the house except our youngest who is a senior in college. Relaxed schedule as we ease through the holiday season. Looming major life change right around the corner.

And yet the traditions and colors and smells of the season draw memories up that make it a warm and fuzzy holiday. Good vibes everywhere! And when I feel a bad vibe instead of chasing it to figure out the source and try to modify my behavior to meet someone's unexpressed expectations I lightly smile and turn back to the good. Fascinating.

I finished my "12 Days of Christmas" giveaways with the Bible Project's video about the Christmas story in Luke 1-2. One of the most successful invasions of another kingdom by a creator that turned the kingdom on its head. I hope you review the story!

Merry Christmas!

https://youtu.be/_OLezoUvOEQ?si=sPSBfuzXt5PcC0_f

Advent 2023 - Love ~

Love is such a complicated subject. We look around and see so many people expressing love in ways that don’t fit with what we were taught growing up and don’t know what to do. The default answer is go with what we think is expected and hope for the best.

But my understanding of love is different. It’s a verb. It’s something we choose to do separate from what the world around us wants done. The choice to “love” is outside of what is expected by anyone in our current American society.

What is love? Haddaway had a whole “hit” song about this that drove my generation to think about “love” in certain ways”. ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLA0XTO3Avw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLA0XTO3Avw "smartCard-inline") )

I prefer to think about love in the way that TobyMac and DC Talk presented it ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhzCrNd1zOA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhzCrNd1zOA "smartCard-inline") ).

Love at Christmas is a baby being injected into a world that belonged to another king, and this baby brought love and hope to a people surrounded by hoplessness and desire. I hope that you can look to the ceiling and believe that God is listening despite you being in a different kingdom and that he will answer your prayers in ways that don’t make sense right now but that work toward our good.

Bonus material:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slyevQ1LW7A

The Beatles - All You Need is Love

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVgKio0z1hY&list=PLOJgNPpZvsA2JGb8sOpujVMF3jSuMDOcA&index=26

Advent 2023 - Joy ~

I don’t seem to do “joy” very well. Most people seem to associate the feeling of “joy” with this definition I found: “Intense and especially ecstatic or exultant happiness, or an instance of such feeling.”

I find that I experience joy more like this definition that I found: “the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires.” The synonym they offer with this definition is “delight”.

I feel delighted a lot more often now than I did in the past. I feel successful, and I’m on the cusp of achieving one of my lifelong objectives. It’s a weird feeling for me, but I like it.

In the past I tended to ruin the times I felt joy by actively looking for the other shoe I knew would be dropping. Something to mess up what I had achieved or what I was enjoying. I let that proactive seeking of disaster mess up a lot of good times.

In this season that is awash in so many emotions and so many entities trying to pluck our heartstrings I hope that you do your best to take delight in a smell, enjoy the warm wishes someone sends you, close your eyes to focus on a Christmas song, reach out and touch someone, and open your eyes to take in the colors around you as God’s creation celebrates the birth of his son!

Bonus material:
Bible Project word study: Joy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72YyijJQgoU

Joy to the World (Joyful, Joyful) by Phil Wichkham
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLEfxk4gKz4

Ted Talk: Where Joy Hides And How To Find It
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_u2WFTfbcg

Advent 2023 - Peace ~

My wife and I went to Israel a couple of years ago. It was a beautiful place, and we really enjoyed seeing where Jesus grew up, walked, lived, and taught. And died. It was an amazing!

I was a little scared to go because of all the bad things that have happened there. So much violence. The warring factions between Christians, Jews and Muslims. I just feel like because Jerusalem is right there it's a place where lots of battles happen in the spiritual realm as well as the physical realm.

But while we were there, nothing happened. We saw the Golan Heights and the trenches on the top of the mountain. We saw the barbed wire and the mine fields on the border between Israel and Jordan. We saw Israeli soldiers walking around, armed and ready at all times. They didn't seem to be at peace.

But what I found so fascinating when we were in Israel was how the newspapers and shows had tanks firing guns in their stories about Israel and talked about all the bad things happening there. We didn't see any of that! We saw a very calm place. Peaceful. With people conducting their lives without any issues. Ready. But completely at peace.

As a christian I try to live my life as if I am in a different kingdom. I feel like in this place on the earth we are in a kingdom that belongs to someone other than God

And while God created this kingdom, it was taken away by sin. But I live in peace because I trust Jesus to have taken care of my sin-debt. And I believe in God and look to him for guidance in my life. And enjoy the peace that my faith brings.

I hope you do, too.

Bonus material:

Bible Project video - Shalom “Peace”
https://youtu.be/oLYORLZOaZE?si=QBswOh3vu2SssUNi

Some peaceful Christmas piano music
https://youtu.be/wH-pdh7k9xk?si=pdxstTEDzz_PtEv6

Advent 2023 - Hope ~

I recently started transferring slides that my parents had into digital photos on my phone. In the slides that I've been taking pictures of there are several pictures of Christmas trees and decorations from the 1970s. When I was growing up we always put little icicles that make the tree shimmer. These were fun to see but they go everywhere and you see them around the house for the next six months. Seeing them always gave me hope for the next Christmas season.

Maintaining hope in a God that we cannot see is challenging. How much easier it would be if he was still a pillar of fire or a pillar of smoke and we could all go to one place and see it!

But how much better it is that he wants a relationship with us here in this fallen world that Jesus invaded and then punched a hole in for us to be able to get out. God's love for us, and the caring he has is just so amazing. Yet so many people don't ever experience God's love because they can't touch it or smell it or see it.

Looking back at the slides again and the pictures of Christmas, I'm reminded of decorations, of gifts, and trying to capture that feeling that we just can't capture anymore. We just don't get up to that level of dopamine now.

How burned out our dopamine channels must be from all the stimulation that we give them now. How hard it is to get that feeling of being close to God or even of feeling His presence. And the upside down nature of God's kingdom, like the Israelites, we expect some presence that will dominate and command and take over, but because this is not his kingdom, it's different here.

The last will be first. Believe like a child.  Jesus told his disciples that he was going to go and give himself away for them and us but then got down on his knees and made sure they were clean before he left.

A seed falling to the ground the seed seems useless and worthless but becomes so much more than a seed when it sprouts and grows.

My prayer for you this week is that you find hope in the Christmas story.


Bonus material:
This is the hope for the evil that affects your life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dEh25pduQ8

Phil Wickham - Living Hope
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DI06nLHVzDw

Radar love ~

I remember long, long ago when my wife and I were in a Sunday school class and the teacher didn't really like my contribution.

Valentine's Day was coming up and the lesson was about love of course. The teacher had a dry erase board at the front of the room. He wrote the word "love" on it. He asked us in the class if we could think of songs with the word "love" in the title. "Endless Love" was named. A couple of others that were good love songs were name. And then I raised my hand and said "Radar Love".

Why? I was a young air traffic control specialist and had been certified for a couple of years. It was very strange for me to be in a Sunday school class because I usually worked Sundays. Somehow I had that Sunday off and was able to go to church with my wife on a Sunday morning, a rare occurrence early in our marriage. An air traffic controller used radar to track airplanes. I really liked the driving beat of the song by Golden Earring. And it just popped into my head!

The teacher scowled and said "that's not the kind of song I'm looking for" and just kept rolling. And then we had a good lesson and a nice discussion. But he made a real quick exit when the class was over and we need to get out to the church sanctuary for service.

I've always been a little bit off be like that. Out of sync with the people around me. Just doing my own thing!

Here's a link to the song radar love:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRlSHG5hRY4

Heat transfer paper in college ~

I've been a nerd a long time. I didn't get a locker in my freshman year of high school so I carried all of my books everywhere at school that year. Asking with my Star Trek book that I was reading at the time.

In college I had a Commodore 64 computer and ran the Geoworks graphical user interface (GUI) on it so I could type up my papers with bigger fonts :-)

One semester I turned in my semester "term" paper on heat transfer paper. I had gotten a printer and some rolls of paper to use with it so I thought I'd give it a try.

I thought it looked great! Yes the paper was different and didn't stay flat the way bonded typewriter paper did but it was the correct number of pages and met the word count rules.

My professors were very unhappy with me about this. I had to argue my case for using the heat transfer paper with most of them for a semester. But they eventually accepted it. Woohoo!

I was a bit of a rebel, too. In my own way :-)