Underwear and Sandwhiches

Merry Christams Eve !

I hope that Merry is a perfect word to describe your Christmas... lets be honest - the holidays are a tough times for a lot of us. We spend a lot of time thinking about the things and the people that are no longer in our lives. Maybe they passed away, maybe they are in the army, maybe its our first christmas without them... maybe its our twentieth and it isn't any easier. Or maybe we got a diagnosis that wasnt what we were hoping for, or maybe we are still waiting for the results... The holidays represent a season of family for most of us - we travel for hours and over seas to be with the people we consider our family. Our memories are consumed with our dads jokes or our moms gentle spirit. We look back and remember it being perfect when those certain people were still around...

Tonight at church our pastor's wife read a story about a little girl who was longing for the sense of hope to be renewed in her community. The cold and foggy atmosphere was becoming too much for her... she had to take matters into her own hands. Something needed to happen and she was determined to see that it did.

She was sick and tired of life being bland. She was hungry for some spice - some hope. She knew there had to be more to life than materialistic necessities... There had to be more to life than underwear and sandwhiches. She was convinced that there was something they were all missing out on... something big that would spice everything up, given the chance.

Mark my words, there is more to life than underwear and sandwiches. You can experience the fullness of God amidst adversity. In fact, hope stands firm when it seems that all else has fallen.

Jesus himself says this : "You will face difficult times. You will experience hardship because you live in a fallen world. You will have troubles. The road is not smoothe. You will fall and bleed and cry. Your heart will get broken. but...

take heart. I have overcome it all."

We have been redeemed - we have been restored. No matter our losses, no matter the schemes and plots of satan... Jesus has the final word. He came to show us his redeeming love, so that we would encounter Him and hold tight to the hope that he has given us.

Where ever you find yourself this Christmas season, remember that Jesus was born so that You would know his outrageous, unconditional, furious, overpowering love he has for you. He is gentle, and strong - He makes up for what is lost, and he understands where your heart is.

When you expereince his abundance amidst adversity, you wont be able to contain your joy. Your cup will overflow, and your peace will surpass all understanding.

May your Christmas be Merry, May you see the joy through the fog, and May you know that there is more to life than underwear and sandwiches.

Doubting Thomas & Slow Down, Quinton.

Today at church we talked about all the names of Jesus. The Son, The Father, the Holy Spirit, Messiah, I Am, Abba, Healer, Protector, King of the Jews, and the list goes on... throughout the bible, Jesus was known and proven to be worthy of many different names. Today we talked about one in particular: Jesus as God. He was fully man, and fully God while he walked the earth. The sermon was about all kinds of different facts and miracles but there is one thing that struck me: The resurrection of Jesus is the one thing that leaves the world with no excuse to not believe. It was the way that God said to the world, "There is no way you can deny me now." The evidence is so clear. It is the truth that Jesus was beaten and hung on a cross, was burried in a tomb, and then three days later raised from the dead. It cannot be argued, over five hundred different people saw, spoke and interacted with Jesus after His resurrection. One man stood out to me the most. Thomas. We refer to him as "doubting thomas" but lets be honest, if one of your best friends and the leader of your pack was murdered and everyone came to you telling you that He was now alive, would you automatically believe? I think a lot of us are more like Thomas than we like to think. Thomas says, "I won't believe that Jesus has risen unless I touch his wounds with my own hands." He doesn't believe that Jesus is really alive... since Jesus is fully God, he knows where Thomas's heart is, and he understands what is going on through his head. Instead of writing him off because he has no faith, Jesus finds Thomas and says, "Come here Thomas, and put your hands in my wounds." He goes on to say that "those who believe without seeing will be blessed." but he loves Thomas and He knows the desires and the needs of his heart. He meets those needs by showing Himself real. Growing up my dad has always reminded me that God can speak for himself. When we were faced with tragedy or trial, he would tell us to ask God to reveal himself to us... He told us to ask and to wait and to listen. The Lord speaks. He is just as alive as we are. I wish the world knew that. I wish the world knew that Jesus cares about where they are. When you are confused and you have a doubting and unsettling feeling in your stomach, Jesus cares and he doesn't only care, but He wants to reveal himself to you. He wants to become real to you. Jesus didn't have to go to Thomas and say come and put your hands in my wounds, but he knew thats what made Himself real to Thomas, so He honored him and did it anyway. I love that about Jesus. -------------------------------------------- If you're a pretty regular reader, than you might recognize the name Anis Mojgani. He's my favorite poet, and though some of his work can be vulgar at times, he is an excellent writer... His poetry makes me think, and it inspires me to write. In his poem "For those who can still ride in airplanes" he address the issue of trying to figure out this thing called a man... He explains that his one desire is to find God everywhere. He says, "I spend most days making pictures or thinking about making pictures... I dream too much, and I don't write enough, and I'm trying to find God everywhere. I want to find God in the morning and the tired hands of dust. At the mouth of a river and down by its feet." "Tell me what my fists keep writing. My fingers open up like gates when I write, and the wind is swinging in the wake... I lift bridges with poems." He finds himself on a bus with a small boy named Quinton, and they take a glance into eachother's worlds... Quinton reads to Anis and he becomes so excited that his hands begin dancing back and forth across the pages, stumbling over words, skipping over lines because his fingers are moving fastser than they're showing his eyes... Anis listens. "Slow down, Quinton. You don't have to touch and go. You can see it all while your finger whispers on one word. Slow down and hold what you see for just a little longer. For in a world full of fast faces I'm looking for God everywhere..." We become so caught up in our agendas, and our hectic schedules. We have practices to be at and meetings to attend and classes that we can't miss and tests to study for and jobs to apply for and music to write and books to read and sermons to create and we forget to slow down. We don't have to touch and go. There are things we must observe along the path. The other day I was talking to Jesus and he said, "Kirby, I go before you each day, so look for the little things that I hide along your path. I put things out for you to observe and to rejoice over." The next day I was walking to class and I saw this big huge colorful pile of freshly raked leaves... I laughed and my cup overflowed with the memories of jumping into those leaves when I was little. Slow down. Observe the things the Lord puts in your path for you to sing about. They are there. It's a matter of whether or not you'll stop to notice. Pause. Observe. Rejoice.