On the off chance that you have never heard of the Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, here is a short synopsis.

*****Spoiler Alert*****
Not sure I’m actually required to do that, over 100 years has come and gone since this classic was written, which I believe is well past the statute of limitations on spoilers, but consider yourself warned.

There is a rich man named Scrooge. He hates everyone and most everyone either hates or pities him. He loves money. He has a clerk working for him named Bob Cratchit that has a sick young boy named “Tiny” Tim.

More than anything Scrooge hates Christmas, thinks it’s a waste of time and money. Then one Christmas Eve he is startled by a familiar face. It is his old partner Jacob Marley (in the Muppet version there are two), unfortunately his partner happened to be long dead. This specter warned him of the 3 spirits that would visit him that night.

Through the night he is shown his past, present, and future by the 3 spirits of Christmas. He sees Bob Cratchit’s poor home full of love, and the hope in the sickly young Tiny Tim. Then he sees the empty chair and the pain and loss in the Crachit house, and finally his own lonely death.

He awakes Christmas morning over joyed to find that he has time to make a difference, and buys the Christmas Goose for the Cratchit family as he begins righting many wrongs. It is a truly moving story.

I’ve been thinking about it because I am truly blessed but don’t always realize it. Sometimes it takes something bigger than me to show me just how blessed I am.

Recently I met a family that was in need. They were asking if the church could help them, and quite frankly I don’t have access to church funds, but I did have some money in my wallet from a wedding I had done a couple months ago. They are nearly homeless, trying to get into some apartments that work with the government assistance programs. They started coming to church, and their daughter came to my youth program. My wife picked her up and found she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. My wife asked if she was hungry and was told, “I try not to think about it so I’m not so hungry.” We got pizza for everyone and made it into a party. My wife also asked if she was looking forward to Christmas, but she isn’t. How can she be when they won’t have anything for Christmas? No decorations, no presents, no visits to family, just staying in a low cost week to week motel, with maybe one meal a day till school starts back in a couple of weeks when she’ll be able to eat breakfast and lunch at school.

My wife wants to give them Christmas and we’ll be able to do that, but honestly I want to do so much more.

I know I don’t have the huge reader base SCL has. Heck I’ve really sucked at writing updated and doing all the things that I’m supposed to do to build a solid base, but I want to help this family and I can’t do it all by myself. I’m not really good at asking for money, but I know if I get others to help we can make a bigger difference.

Thanks to everyone that helped in the donations. I’ve taken the donate button down so I could wrap up the donations and help this family out. I’ll be posting a follow up post.

The post God Bless Us Everyone appeared first on My Experience As....

Imagine what it would be like being a baby. You have no control over where you go. Even after you start crawling and walking bigger people can just pick you up and move you around. You might fall to sleep being held and wake up in a crib or many other freaky things that are beyond your control. You might fall asleep surrounded by people and wake up in front of a giant TV with weird sounds and puffs of smoke, air, water going off in your face.

I wrote yesterday about the incarnation, a fancy word for “God becoming a man.” I talked about how Jesus had everything, was everything and gave it all up to become nothing. That was powerful and amazing but it wasn’t a one day event. Jesus continued to be nothing fo about 33 years until he died as nothing, mocked for trying to teach Love and the way to Life.

I wonder about the days after his birth. Joseph is going around town talking to the same friends and family that wouldn’t let the pariah couple stay while Mary was pregnant. Would any react differently? Would he be able to get a job and settle in with his family? Mary continued to wrap little Jesus tightly and put him to sleep in a feeding trough until they got a place to stay. About two years later little Jesus got a visit by some strange men wearing shiny clothes. Did he try to play with the buttons? Did he try to eat them? Did it frustrate him when Mary put him down for a nap? One the long trip to Egypt as they fled the wrath of Herod did Jesus get bored?

Do you ever think about that sweet baby Jesus being God and what that all means?

The post The Day After appeared first on My Experience As....

This day is a celebration of an event more important than any event in human history, including our creation and salvation if you ask me. On a personal level the Cross and Resurrection are more important, but consider that this event is a celebration of the first step on the road to the cross and it makes it as important as any other step. Add to it that this is the first and only time in all of history that God put on humanity and it is more powerful than any single step in the path to our redemption.

Philipians 2:5-11 says it like this:

Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

He was everything and yet made himself nothing. In a sheer cost analysis, we are saying that today we are celebrating the most expensive gift ever given. Today we celebrate the gift of a baby that cost infinity so that we might have everything we never deserved.

Merry Christmas

The post Merry Christmas: the most expensive gift appeared first on My Experience As....