Catching Up

Been a while since I blogged. Since I'm busy, this is actually pulling together some emails I've sent out to friends in the last few days and turning them into a blog post.

Christmas went well. We spent the day at Dean’s mom’s house. We got there at about 9 and had blueberry coffee cake for breakfast. As we visited and snacked on munchies (mostly candy, which I had to stop after a while cuz it was making me sick), we watched a bit of the Disneyland Parade. (Dean loves parades; I don’t care for them much). We opened prezzies at about 10. Dean was caught completely by surprise by the hdtv I got him. I got mostly books and DVDs. People just raided my amazon wish list and gave me stuff from that. Which is fine by me. One neat thing I got was one of the Lego sets. I know it sounds totally stupid, but I love putting Legos together. It’s very relaxing without the glue and mess of model ships or whatever. Anyway…

Dean’s mom forgot to put the ham in the oven in the morning, and she didn’t discover it until after we had opened prezzies, so she had to get that in the oven. So, we were late having lunch/dinner. We normally have it at 1pm, but this time we had it at about 2:30. It was still great tho—ham, scalloped potatoes, fruit salad, pumpkin bread, and vegetable casserole. Yum! I went into a post-dinner coma almost immediately afterwards and snoozed on the couch for about a half hour.

We finally got home at about 3:30 in the afternoon and just lazed about the rest of the day. Yesterday, we spent most of the day setting up the new HDTV (which required a trip to radio shack for cables and the cable company to get an HD cable box), and totally re-arranging the family room furniture. I totally love the new arrangement. It’s very cozy. And the tv is awesome. Dean has really been enjoying it.

Sunday I preached at church. My sermon topic was “Christmas Wish.” The scripture text was Luke 11:5-13. I showed the short film “Santa’s Little Helper,” which you can find on iTunes here http://www.jgsfilms.com/ . It’s an 11-minute film about a woman whose Christmas wish is to find true love that goes on a blind date with what turns out to be one of Santa’s elves. There are a couple of “PG” moments in the film that might get people bad mouthing me to the pastor, but I don’t care.

After the short film, I briefly discussed two of the questions that the film raised for me: (1) what is my Christmas wish for 2009? I developed the idea that sometimes I think I am asking for bread, when it turns out I’m really asking for a snake, and being thankful that God doesn’t always give me what I think I want. I also developed the idea that often I do not know what I want or need, and that this is an opportunity to spend time with God asking for God’s insight and wisdom for my life. (2) am I willing to ask, seek, and knock? Just as the main character in the film had to take an active part in making her Christmas wish come true, so I have to be willing to go beyond my comfort zone, to ask, to seek, and to knock, and to be aware of the opportunities that God brings to me. And if I am not willing to take that risk, then at least I might be willing to ask for the strength and courage that I need.

I closed by noting that we rarely give ourselves the time and space to ponder these questions. So, my Christmas gift for them was the gift of time and space. At the end of my sermon, we had 5 minutes of quiet, allowing the congregation to ponder these questions, or any other questions that the film raised for them, and allowing them to bring their thoughts, questions and responses to God.

This is the last sermon I’m doing for a while. At least 6 months. I find them very emotionally draining to do. It is very hard to be interesting, clear, thought provoking, caring, and challenging/transforming without judging all at once.