What Next?

WELL, CHRISTMAS HAS COME and gone and New Year’s Eve is just a memory. How are you feeling about 2012? Are you excited? Are you cautious? Are you simply resigned to it happening?

The reality is that, regardless of how we feel about the coming year, there is a very good chance that it is going to happen, with or without your permission.

We have very little control over the coming of the New Year. What we do have control over is how we react to the events of the next 365 days regardless of whether they are good or bad.

Ultimately it will be your choice whether you allow the events that come into your life to make you a better person or a bitter person. Others may determine what happens in your life, but only you will determine what happens in your heart.

So, as we bid farewell to 2011 and hello to 2012, let’s do so looking forward to the New Year as an opportunity to do great things for God and to allow Him to do great things for us. It’s a brand new year with brand new possibilities, if we are only willing to see them and claim them.

Have a great week and remember: To see what is really possible, you will have to attempt the impossible.

Keeping Christ in Christian

You find truth in some of the strangest places.  I was reading an article online a couple of weeks ago, Unitarian minister Marilyn Sewell was interviewing atheist Christopher Hitchens.  Hitchens who passed away last week, talk about “all dressed up and no place to go”, was the author of “God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything”  

Rev. Sewell, a liberal pastor,  felt that the book’s criticisms were mostly directed at conservative Christianity and so she asked the author,  “Do you make a distinction between fundamentalist faith and liberal religion?” 

And Hitchens said and I quote, “I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that He rose again from the dead and by His sacrifice, our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.”

So, you would think if an atheist can figure that out it must be a fairly straight forward concept.  The question then has to be: How come there are churches that would deny the virgin birth, the deity of Christ, the bodily resurrection of Christ and his atonement and yet still call themselves “Christian” Churches?  

Maybe for some the challenge shouldn’t be keeping Christ in Christmas but keeping Christ in Christianity.  Have a great week and remember: To see what is really possible, you will have to attempt the impossible.

Come on Ring that Bell

I said I’d do it and I did it.  This week I volunteered with the Salvation Army to tend a kettle in the mall. 

I was a little disappointed that I didn’t get a bell, so I downloaded an app for my smart phone.  What says Christmas like a bearded fat man , wearing a Santa hat, shaking his phone next to a kettle?
And it was an interesting evening.  I was surprised at those who wouldn’t meet my eyes, although maybe that had to do with the phone and Santa hat.  I noticed that the majority of those who gave were over forty or under fourteen.  Interesting.    The gifts ranged from a few cents to a twenty-dollar bill and for a number of people it wasn’t the first time this year they had put money in a kettle.

And there were a couple of highlights. An older gentleman came over and offered to buy me a coffee, an obviously Muslim couple, (she wore a veil) wished me a Happy Christmas and a number of people thanked me for the work that the Salvation Army does in the community.  Overall a good evening.

I said I’d do it. . . and I’ll do it again.    Have a great week and remember: To see what is really possible, you will have to attempt the impossible.

Hark the Herald Mall Muzic

I heard it amongst the hustle and bustle of the season, in the commercial clamour of a shopping mall. My mind was a million miles away as I rushed about my day, and I really wasn’t prepared for it, but I heard it anyway. Above the busyness of the day, and through the fog of my daze, the words slowly broke through, “Oh come let us adore him, Christ the Lord!”

One of my favourite things about going into the Christmas season is knowing that for the next month the world will willingly do what they would have problems with the church doing; publicly and loudly proclaiming that Jesus is Lord. Songs of praise and adoration will be sung about Jesus in the most unlikely places by the most unlikely people, and they’ll enjoy it. I think that’s a hoot. What a great opportunity it is for believers to remind people what they are singing about and what they are celebrating.

The Angel told the shepherds “I bring you good news of great joy for everyone!” 2000 years later the news is still good, the joy is still great, and you will be somebody’s angel if you just take the time let them know.

Have a great week and remember: To see what is really possible, you will have to attempt the impossible.