Satur-deja Vu

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Here’s a controversy we don’t get to have every year, just every 6th year or so. December 25th falls on Sunday this year. The argument is that cancelling services gives church staff a break and allows them to spend time with their families. Maybe it’s a generational thing and I’m from a previous one but… my family has always known where to find me on Sunday morning. Maybe it’s because my dad was an independant, fundamentalist, premillennial Baptist and we were at church every time the doors were opened; Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, revival, cottage prayer meeting, etc. I would no sooner cancel church services on Christmas than I would on Easter Sunday. To me that makes it extra special. There are some folks that only come to church on Easter and Christmas so that cancellation eliminates 50% of their attendance for the year. Maybe I’m an old grouch but in this case I feel like being an old grouch for Jesus.

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Satur-deja Vu

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December 25th is not really Jesus’s birthday. This is not breaking news. Let’s stop pontificating on when sheep are kept in fields, whether or not it snows in Israel (it does) and making arguments for when his actual birthday is. Christmas has been celebrated on December 25th since A.D. 336, during the reign of Emperor Constantine. He made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. Setting that date may have been an effort to weaken established pagan traditions, rather than following them. Hanging wreaths, decorating trees and lighting candles (and by extension strings of lights) have pagan origins. Celebrating the birth of Christ – the incarnation – is uniquely Christian. It’s not about a baby in a manger; it’s about the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy. It’s about John the Baptist leaping in his mother’s womb and Mary and Elizabeth being filled the Holy Spirit. It’s about the angel appearing to Joseph and Mary and the faith it took for them to travel to Bethlehem. It’s about angels bringing good tidings of great joy and wise men traveling from afar to worship him. It’s about the deity of God being robed in flesh and walking among us. It’s about the point of contact between heaven and earth. It’s about the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, the first page of a story that ends at the cross… which for us is only the beginning. So don’t worry about the day. At this point the Julian calendar is off by 13 days and observant Jews probably ignored it anyway.

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Firestarter

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So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.

James 3:5-8
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Satur-deja Vu

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Wendel Dan Stockton – There were some celebrity deaths this week. Clarence Gilyard, best known for Walker Texas Ranger but also one of my favorite Christmas movies Die Hard, passed at the age of 66. Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac at the age of 79. The pic above is from a senior banquet in 2011. Dan Stockton was my principal when I taught World and U.S. History. I said a lot of personal things that relate to our family in my Facebook post because many former students and other teachers keep in touch that way. For this post let me just say that for a man Dr. Stockton wore his heart on his sleeve and it was apparent that no one cared more than he did. The lives of thousands of students and dozens of educators were changed by his work and passion. I’m reminded of a line describing Aslan in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: He’s not a tame lion. Here is an official obituary.

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Happy Monday

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You have the official permission of the Council of Happy Monday to put up your Christmas tree.

This is Happy Monday #507.

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Satur-deja Vu

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This was me on Black Friday. How did you make out? My week was mostly driving and eating pie but there are a few things worth mentioning.

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Satur-deja Vu

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Pastor, author Tony Evans – I wrote Tuesday morning that I was in Augusta, GA for the bicentennial meeting of the Georgia Baptist Convention. There had already been a missionary sending service on Sunday evening, a preaching conference Monday afternoon and the first session of convention meetings Monday evening. The Tuesday afternoon session features the convention sermon each year, brought this year by pastor, author, orator and radio/television host Tony Evans from Dallas, Texas. I don’t know the official seating capacity of Warren Baptist Church in Augusta but the attendance Tuesday afternoon exceeded that. I did have a seat in the sanctuary, in a row of chairs put out for the overflow crowd. The room was stuffed and I retreated to the lobby where I found a much more comfortable chair parked in front of a flat screen. A small group of us watched together and listened in to the remote broadcast and each time the crowd in the room broke into applause we could hear that for real. I did step into the back of the sanctuary to take part in the standing ovation at the very end. Anyone can stream individual sessions or the entire 3 day meeting from the GBC website.

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