We want to wish everyone a very blessed and happy Christmas celebration. Our family is glad to be spending time in Minnesota and Iowa over the next week, reconnecting with our families, relaxing, and celebrating God's gift. I wish everyone a great time of relaxing, avoiding anything dealing with school, snowmobiling, presents, getting fat like me, and finding time to really think about what this holiday is all about. I'm excited for our upcoming Silver Birch Retreat, and if you or a friend is not already signed up please do so by Sunday. There are registration cards in the youth room, as well as a box to placed your filled out stuff.
This past week both of our ministries spent sometime talking about the gift of Jesus. I think sometimes we focus so much on the cute factor of the Christmas story that we miss out on what its all really about. On Christmas God CHOOSES to leave the perfect bliss of heaven, taking on this lovely thing we call humanity. You know humanity, its the thing you always complain about. Pain, work, criticism, death, losing loved ones, illness, feeling tired, etc. Yet, God CHOOSES to take that all on, to experience what our life is like. But, even more, God CHOOSES to suffer and die. Not just to experience those things, but to conquer death FOR YOU AND ME. We are given the gift of eternal life because God chose to come to earth as a human, to take the punishment once and for all for all the bad things you and I do. My challenge to everyone this Christmas is: what do you do with that gift? Is it like that favorite present that you use again and again, telling everyone you see about? Or is it like that bread pan from my wedding, which sits in a closet for six years collecting dust? Do you put your faith on the shelf, or are you really living it? It's great to see the wall outside the youth room full of ways people are going to respond to Jesus' gift. My prayer is that you follow through and live every day with Christ as we head into 2010.
Have a great Christmas everyone, and see you all in January!
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