I believe all I have done for the last few days is eat!

 I haven’t seen it in the belt line yet because I have been wearing my “comfortable” pants. You know the ones with “more room” due to expandable waistlines or they are just a size larger. Take your pick or combine all three the day of reckoning is coming.

A new year with new/old resolutions to shape up, slim down, tone and be healthy, pray more, give more, be better etc. We will start out that first day all on fire, “gung ho” and then comes the second day with less energy and a bit less enthusiasm, then the third and finally the fourth where we throw our hands up in defeat and give up. It is just too hard. We did this last year and the year before and the year before that. Good intentions and a fast start just no drive or sustain to follow through. What went wrong?

Consider the year just past, how did you make it to the end? Time went the same speed it always has with 24 hours in a day, 168 hours each week and 52 weeks coming in at 8736 hours in a year. How did you make it through all of those hours? You made it through one minute at a time, when life was hard maybe one second at a time. There is an old saying adage, “How do you eat and elephant?” the answer is the obvious “one bite at a time.” When we break down and large task or amount into smaller pieces we can set mile posts to measure our progress. Everyday has 24 hours but we count down until our break, then lunch, then mid-afternoon break and then quitting time. It helps if those hours are filled with activity, something to do. I have always hated being on a clock with little to do. The time seems to go so slow! It really doesn’t but it sure seems like that.

Taking a large task and breaking it into smaller pieces makes it seem more “manage” able, more “do” able and more “complete” able. Reduced to the most basic of components, change one thing to start. Add a short walk to your day, read one chapter in scripture, pray at every meal in your own words, pass on desert at lunch, break your day into sections. Make those sections ones of time or task and when you conclude a section (if possible) move on to the next. That allows you to pace yourself and measure your progress.

That is exactly how God works in our lives. When we receive the gift of Christmas Jesus Christ as our savior and Lord God does not instantly change us into the image of Jesus. If he did we would immediately move to heaven. No, that is not the process. It is much slower than that. It is requires a lifetime to complete with many sub sections along the way, one step at a time in a slow methodical pace always moving forward even when we don’t think so. The key to completing is to keep our eye on the prize and to pace ourselves right behind the Holy Spirit.

That’s how we are to eat a meal; take your time, talk with family and friends, rest between courses, enjoy yourselves. When we do that we don’t eat as much and enjoy the food and the people so much more. That is the first step to completing one of those New Year’s resolutions. See it was a smaller piece and not so hard!

Have a safe and Happy New Year!

                                     

In HIS Service and Yours,

BroG

It is Christmas so it is crazy!

I have come to recognize that the season of Christmas regardless of the number of months prepares us for the moment(s) of Christmas. What I mean by a moment is a point in time/life that becomes magical although fleeting and maybe short. The magic is so special that you are left with an un-dimmable memory. When you think of it you are there back in that time and space where you can hear, taste, touch and smell the moment. The Season makes us ready for the moments.

Some of us have been preparing for months. The decorations are almost finished and the baking is done. The presents are wrapped and the stockings are finally hung (I’m a poet and yes I know it). It has been hard work. You almost fell off the roof. The sugar supply ran close as you prepared all of those calorie free (;-), ;-)) goodies. More boxes had to be found and purchased. Don’t forget the tape and wrapping paper. You had to resort to that craft idea from The Chew to make a box out of a cereal box. But now the preparations are complete and you are completely worn out and wondering if it was all worth it? You hope to have a special moment after all of this hard work. Others seem to have such a wonderful time but yours is missing.

The Christmas story has those moments. The moment the angel appeared to Mary, Joseph and the shepherds, the moment of Jesus birth and immediately following, the moment when the shepherds saw the baby just as the angels said, the moment in the temple when Simeon and Anna praised God because of this boy child, the moment the Magi entered the room and worshipped Jesus. The story is just filled with those moments. You have done the preparations of the season and yet no moment. You are all ready for your moment and yet life just keeps plugging along so you plug along too same old same old.

That’s what I was doing last Thursday, plugging along. I had gone to two hospitals to see some folks and was waiting for the elevator to go to the fourth floor at the first one. There was a crowd, unusual for the time of day. I guess 8 in the elevator. We were not packed but full. The people included a hospital volunteer; she had a vest, two employees with carry-out boxes, four others and me. The two employees were bantering about having a party when they got off. Then the party could start here in the elevator but we had no music. The volunteer said we could make our own and started to sing We Wish You A Merry Christmas AND others joined in just that fast. We got through a verse and a half and the doors opened on the second floor and the singing stopped and the moment was over just that fast. I have to tell you I have been in a lot of elevators and it is never a “comfortable” experience. It is always awkward in some way. People hardly talk and if they do others look at you…oh mean them. The elevator ride awkward yes, but such a delight. However, this has NEVER happened to me before.

It’s Christmas. While I was plugging along, along comes a moment that could never have been scripted we most likely will never be in an elevator together again and yet at that moment in time and space we were together singing a Christmas song. It’s a moment of Christmas. That’s what the Christmas story is people plugging away at life with its difficulties and God comes down to be with us and help us for a moment of eternity. Our hope is found that God is still showing up in the plodding of life making a moment Christmas that will last forever.

Prepare for your moment its coming. Keep plodding God is with us and in a moment of so you will know he is with you!

Merry Christmas from my family to you and yours!              

                                         
In HIS Service and Yours,

BroG

It happened in the middle of my thing Monday!

My thing was a speaking and singing gig for the Seniors of First Baptist Springfield. They are so gracious and generous to ask me to participate. We were at the New Ebenezer Retreat Center. The room is large with a post and beam high ceiling and hard surfaces all around. That makes for a bathroom- like sound. That is fun to sing in especially a cappella (without music). So I did.

I began with O Come, O Come Emmanuel (an ancient plainsong) with its haunting melody and in “bathroom” acoustics the sound was good. My outline had developed from my message the Sunday before which included a few songs and some words to connect them and today at Christmas. The songs included O Holy Night, What Child is This and my favorite Do you Hear What I Hear. The story was the juxtaposition between Christmas as we experience it and Christmas as we dream it.

During the message from Sunday I included a clip from the Peanut’s Christmas were Linus recites the Christmas story from Luke 2. It is magical in its simplicity as recorded by Luke of the first Christmas. I think that is what each of us always dreams Christmas will be. It frustrates us when this year like every other year it is not. At the annual Christmas family gathering the tension can be cut with a chain saw. The office “holiday” party is so removed from Christmas that it is hard to tell what season it is. O holy night turns out to be a string of un-holy nights that come more from Hades than heaven. Where is our peanuts Christmas now?

So I turned my talk to the original story of Christmas where an unmarried, unwed girl is pregnant and her fiancé is ready to get rid of her only for God to intervene and tell Joseph the baby is of him. To that mess add a government that requires people to return to their ancestral home to be counted so that their tax may go up. She is pregnant and now having to travel and when they arrive there is no room, closet etc. for them to stay in only a stable/ hole in the ground to sleep and then the baby comes. Great just what they needed a baby, just what we needed, a baby. A moment in the insanity that was their situation where nothing else mattered, a baby was born. THE baby was born. Add to the mess; enter these crazy shepherds into this most private moment of Mary, Joseph and to be named Jesus. How Rude! Until they tell their story and then it’s not rude at all. It is an “ah huh.” Come up close, Joseph gestures and the night continues. That was when it hit me.

Here I was telling the story to this gathered group of senior saints. It was my task to speak to them and God speaks to me through what I was telling them. The original Christmas story is not Peanuts like at all. It more resembles the messed up, hurried up, chaotic lives we lead daily. Into THAT God shows up, God is with us in our mess. That IS the message of Christmas. Here God was showing up in the middle of my thing. Maybe, it wasn’t my thing after all.                  

In HIS Service and Yours,

BroG

It's My Birthday!

Well, at least Friday, December 6 was my birthday. In days gone by it has been my belief that it was not truly Christmas until after my birthday. As I was growing up we did not decorate the house until after my birthday mostly because my Aunt did not arrive until later in the month and then we decorated. She cracked the whip. This year we saw Christmas commercials in October. Now it is time to bring on Christmas.

What does that mean?

Really, an increase in activities almost to the absurd, decorations on in and around everything (the dog came back from a teeth cleaning with a Christmas bandana around her neck), 24/7 Christmas music on the radio (that started before Thanksgiving), lights, lights and more lights hanging from anything that stands (one home on Blue Jay added LED lights to their eves and now a normally dark part of the road is lit up). That is the madness we call Christmas. But there is another side that comes.

Christmas brings a keener sense that we can do simple things and change lives. It brings an awareness of others who may need help and a willingness TO DO SOMETHING about the need. It adds a smile to faces normally caught up in life and living. It encourages an excitement to the step of every child no matter what the age with a faint sound of a tune from their lips and a “Merry Christmas” to the tail end of conversations a wish for the best for any family regardless of faith or belief. Sure it brings the absurd as well but the great rises above the other to shine the brightest light to a dark world.

One small child, one giant promise, one great God on the scene to make us right changed everything in this world we live in. It was insignificant there in Bethlehem. It is not insignificant in our hearts. So, bring on Christmas regardless of my birthday or not.

The season is well worth the celebration.

It’s time for us to dance the Savior deserves it!        

In HIS Service and Yours,

BroG