Welcome one and all on this
Tuesday, December 15, 2015. I know yesterday's visit was more of a sounding off but those things do bubble up to the surface from time to time. I understand the President is working this week to reassure everyone how the government does have control over these threats since polling indicates his address from the Oval Office did not make people feel safer. I watched his address. It certainly didn't make me feel safer. In fact, it was more or less a message that said we are going to continue doing everything we have been doing because it is all working. Really? Maybe he is now learning how that everyday folks have differing ideas about what the word 'working' means. I suppose when one says what they are doing is working and everyone who hears that thinks the opposite it may be time to make some adjustments. It seems they spend so much time trying to convince everyone how the greatest threat to our daily way of life is climate change that it gets in the way of protecting our way of life from those who have sworn an oath to do what they can to destroy our way of life. Climate change may be on the top of the President's list but most Americans would prefer to see protecting us from being blown up or blown away as our top priority. I'm just offering up some feedback from my perspective as one who really does try to think these things through. You have that same privilege as well. At least for now. Use it while you can.
We did get us some rain and wind this past weekend. There were lots of tornado warnings in our area and we feel blessed not to have had one touch down near our place. We did get the rain. I know we need the rain. We got it. Water was pretty much standing everywhere. A lady in our neighborhood was having her wooden fence torn down and a new one put in its place. Those fellows worked straight without stopping. In the rain. The soaking rain. The blowing rain. While I admire their tenacity, I'm not sure I agree with the execution of their work schedule. I remember when I would come into the house wet from being out in the rain and my grandmother would ask, "Don't you know that God gave you enough sense to get out of the rain?" I've been wet before, even recently, from working. But, I can't remember ever working in a blinding rain storm like those fellows. My wife made the comment they must be getting paid by the job not by the hour. I never even knew she was a labor expert but I think she may have hit the nail right on the head on that one.
One thing I've learned is that while sitting in the Santa chair you don't have to be able to speak the same language in order to communicate with children. The Christmas language is one based on excitement and love. The messages come through using smiles and high fives. The joy of it all shines through. This past Sunday our class read again as we have so many times before from Luke's Gospel Chapter 2. That is where we find the account of how the Reason for the season came into our world. It wasn't like the religious leaders would have planned it or did it even meet the expectations of the masses. However, reading it again as if it were the first time I was struck by it being God's plan, God's purpose, and God at work. Those He chose to be involved were obscure kinds of folks, out of the mainstream, but, they had something that God valued then and still does today. Zechariah, Elizabeth, Mary, Joseph, Simeon, and Anna, and the shepherds, they were not part of the recognized elite but they were part of God's recognized people of faith. They were genuine believers in the Lord God of heaven. They were those who practiced the commandments as best they knew how from the inside out. They were not perfect but they were people who lived out their faith in God. Common. Ordinary. Day by day people. That, to me, is very remarkable. We often say the rest is history but in this situation, it's HIS-story. The Greatest one ever told.
Amen. .....More later.
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