Sermon Blog

How is everyone feeling in their beautiful Christmas sweaters this evening? I’d like everyone wearing one of those gorgeous holiday sweaters to come right on up for a picture. I’ll post and share the picture this evening, but do you see what God has done…He’s taken those ugly Christmas sweaters, the tackiest apparel of the season, and turned them into something beautiful as we gathered in them together as a Church family. After Sunday, are y’all really surprised that I am using a Peanuts’’ clip tonight?   In it we see more transformation…the transformation of something ugly and the transformation into something beautiful—whether you are talking about the tiny little tree, that never was truly ugly, into a showcase Christmas tree or simply the attitudes of the kids from ugly in their cruelty to being gracious in their efforts to cheer up Charlie Brown.   Are those God transformations?   That’s your call, but consider the way the script was written—the ugliness is on one side of

They were the big three every year.   It was how you knew it was Christmas.   The TV Guide would arrive, and I would quickly scour it to find out when they would be on.   There was Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, and my favorite, “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”   That’s probably why when I heard this song years ago, it quickly became a song I listened out for every year… Some may be wondering about whether a seemingly secular song has any place in our worship today.   It doesn’t mention Jesus or Mary or Shepherds or Wisemen or anything that we traditionally think of when we think of Christmas carols.   However, when we set it alongside this morning’s readings from Isaiah it becomes very fitting.   Snoopy and the Red Baron…arch rivals…images of World War I’s raging air war….   Charles Shultz introduced these characters in 1965, years after the war, but at a time when interest in the flying aces of WWI had peaked.   It was also a time in which the United S

    Rudolph’s gotten a bad reputation this week.   It seems like this scene, and others like it during the Christmas Special, have a group of folks worked up.   They are suggesting that Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is a special that promotes bullying, bigotry, horrific parenting, and a utilitarian view of others.   The truth be told, I guess, given a person’s focus, it could be looked at that way.   I mean, if we focus on the way the way the other reindeer treat Rudolph and that’s the totality of the story for us, it is about bullying.   If we look at Rudolph to develop our parenting skills based on Donner, then there is concern.   If look at Coach and Santa and develop a tendency to write off or shun folks who are different than us or if we value people for only what we can get out of them.   If we see this special as an endorsement of any of these behaviors, then by all means, we need to stop watching it—because we have missed the point of seeing the story as a whole.   As for

I want to push y’all a little this evening.   Take out something to write with.   Does anyone need anything? Lift your hand, I have pens right here. Let me pass out these papers, please take one and pass the rest along.   This is an exercise that I mentioned to y’all before and have challenged many to take on over the years since I first used it with a youth group on a summer retreat.   As I have shared before, it is a part of my devotional journaling most mornings.   What I would like you to do, right now, is take a few minutes and write down ten ways that God blessed you yesterday.   If you need to add numbers because you can come up with more than ten, please do so.   If you are having trouble thinking of ten, let me offer this.   Think of everything you did yesterday and everything you used yesterday, what if you woke up tomorrow and it was gone or you couldn’t do it any more, where would you feel the loss?   Or as someone else asked one time, “what if you only have tomorrow wh