This Blog contains guiding thoughts for the January 2nd & 3rd message. No reading is necessary for the first week.

Is the Bible qualitatively different than the sacred writings of other religions?  Christians believe so.  But why?  What makes the Bible any different?

Has the spiritual Scrooge tried to ruin your Christmas?  I am talking about the spiritual Scrooge Satan. 

Surely he can't stand people celebrating the arrival of the Christ to rescue people from his influence.  Surely he will do everything that he can to distract us with shopping, baking, wrapping, etc.  Surely he will do everything that he can to frazzle us with short-tempers and cranky, demanding people.  Surely he will do everything to derail us spiritually. 

My wife and I are quite a pair.  We strive to get all the Christmas wish lists in advance.  We talk about what we should get for each person.  Then we get too busy with other things.  And at last we all too often second guess what would be the perfect present for each person.

I'm grateful that God before time came up with the perfect Christmas wish list for a spiritually broken person like me.  It was the perfect present of Jesus.

Are you busy like me, overwhelmed with all the things that need to be done in December?

Recently, two things came together for me regarding prioritizing things at Christmas.  First, I watched a presentation reminding me of the Pareto Principle, namely, if you prioritize 10 things from the most to least important; and then do the top two, it will give you 80% of the results you could get from those 10 things.

Second, I watched a mom have her son skip a sports practice so that he could attend a worship service.

In my devotions this morning, I was struck by Moses recounting the drama of the Israelites at Mt. Sinai.  God spoke aloud the 10 Commandments amidst the fire, from the mountain shaking and ablaze with fire.  The people were amazed that they didn't perish in the presence of the Almighty One.  So overwhelmed, they asked Moses to get God's commands privately and "then tell us whatever the Lord our God tells you.  We will listen and obey." (Dt.5:27)