Have yourself a prophetic Christmas

There is a drawer in our home that houses plastic and paper bags we get from the store when we forget to bring our own.  This drawer is opened and bags are placed into it and then we close it, with intentions of using those bags one day.  Classic "junk drawer" behavior.

The other day I put a bag into that drawer only to discover that the drawer is very full.  Not wanting to deal with this at all, but identifying I must, I pulled the drawer out and saw there were not only bags housed in the drawer but also a good number of carpenter ants.  So, after seeing this, and not wanting the ants to eat out parts of my home like termites, I had to act.

This is what the light does.  It exposes things that we may not see even when we look at something with regularity.

Christmas is that time in which the Light of God comes into the world.  And much like the drawer in my home, the Light of Christmas exposes things that we might not want to see or deal with at that time (war, rape, LGBT, etc.)

Macy's is great at redirecting light in order to show you only what they want you to see.  Sales, Santa, Smiles.  The Church's mission is to work with the Light to expel darkness.  This is the role of the prophet.

The great thing about Christmas is there is an opportunity to see things that we have not seen before.  That is, thanks to the Light, we are able to see more than just bags, we can see the ants.  This is why when Jesus begins his ministry he begins with calling people to repent.  That is to say, that when the Light shines it is easy to see where we have failed and since we can now see our failings we have an opportunity to do something about it.

I wish you the very best Christmas.  I hope that we are all moved not only to deal with cleaning out the 'baggage' in our personal drawers, but also have the courage to deal with the other issues of the world that have been in the dark.

Top Ten Googled words

Google released their top search words for 2011.  Here are the top ten:


10- iPad 2 (if you are 37+ years old and reading this blog, you have a 64% chance of having one)
9- Steve Jobs (genius)
8- TEPCO (Japan reactor that melted down)
7- Adele (musician)
6- iPhone 5 (have you heard of this phone that Apple has?)
5- Battlefield 3 (video game)
4- Casey Anthony (Florida mother accused of murdering her child)
3- Ryan Dunn (From Jackass who died in a car crash of all things)
2- Google+ (mostly searching for invites or digital migration steps from facebook or "is this another social network I have to learn? Crap."


And of course the number one most Googled term of 2011 as released by Google - 


1- Rebecca Black (had a viral hit video called "Friday") 


I am sure you can catch the irony of people using Google to discover information about Apple (a competitor of Google).


50% of this list are people.  For some reason this made me think of this line credited to Eleanor Roosevelt, "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."

Are we doing the wrong work out?

Recently I learned from a physical trainer that many people work out hard and feel like they are getting closer to their goals of physical fitness but in reality are not.  He shared this autobiographical story of when he was younger he would participate in professional fighting (karate and the like, not like Fight Club or MMA).

In the short rounds he would fight he would grow tired.  So after the fights he would train by running long distances in order to build endurance.  After several of these long runs, he would discover that the next fight he would be just as winded.  So more running.  What he later discovered after he studied and science exposed, is that in order to build stamina for the fights, he should not have been running long distances but rather many sprints.  His distance runs would build his aerobic system but not his anaerobic system.  

Bottom line, all that long distance runs were hard workout and he felt like he was getting closer to his goal (lasting the fights without becoming winded) but in reality he was not.  

So too in the world of spiritual formation, we are working hard and feel like we are moving toward our goal however we really are not.  

Ironically to the metaphor above, many people run spiritual sprints and think they are moving toward a strong spiritual life, when in reality we need to be running long distances.  

We attend worship one time a week.  Maybe we pray at dinner.  Perhaps we fast from eating food on Ash Wednesday.  We read the Bible one time a week.  We pass out soup at Thanksgiving and adopt a child at Christmas.  They are hard work and they make us feel like we are growing toward our goal of faithfulness.  The thing is, while good, these things are sprints. Taken alone they contribute to a faith that is a mile wide and an inch deep.   

This is why for many people the practice of giving up something for the season of Lent is such a difficult task.  Lent really is more of a marathon than a sprint.  For 40 days Christians engage in some combination of spiritual disciplines.  Doing something everyday for more than a week is something that is contrary to the instant culture we live in.  We live in a culture where 140 characters is the limit of our willingness to engage an issue.  When you hear of someone doing P90X, we tend to think those people are 'intense'.  Only the really hardcore people can go three months working out!  

The tricky thing is that running spiritual sprints feels like we are working out and growing spiritually.  It is difficult to realize that by only working on sprints we are not going to make it through the marathon of life.  

If you find you are regularly stressed out, worried, anxious, nervous about the future, seeking to control all things, fearful, angry about things you later realize were silly, or think that everyone else is an idiot then all while trying to fit in ways to better yourself - then perhaps you are sprinting when you ought to be considering distance running.