You may have heard the song, or seen a picture that lists all the names of Jesus from the Bible. I just came across two that I have really never heard before: stone of offense and a rock of stumbling. I guess that just doesn’t sound as good as Lily of the Valley.

“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense;
and whoever believes in him will not be a put to shame” — Rom 9:33

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Christmas in My Family

Maybe I am an extremist when it comes to Christmas and the issues surrounding it but I get pretty excited over it. There is no other religious observance or holiday that is undermined so much in our American culture.

You don’t see TV shows and movies that tell you the “true meaning” of Chanukah is something completely unrelated to is original meaning and I can’t even imagine the outrage is we distorted the “true meaning” of a Muslim holiday was something other than its religious purpose.

Christmas is the celebration of the first advent of the Son of God, Jesus of Nazareth. God gave us is Son who would live the life we should have lived, die in our place for our sins, and rise again showing God’s acceptance of his sacrifice, all according to the scriptures.

I don’t say the gifts they receive are from Santa, I don’t intend to tell my daughters about Santa Clause until they ask and they we will look up St. Nicholas together. It may seem extreme but I don’t want my girls to be confused when they learn Santa isn’t real will they associate his non-existence with that of Jesus? “Well if Santa isn’t real maybe Jesus isn’t real either?”

I don’t ever say things like “If you aren’t good, or if you don’t do x Santa won’t come.” First of all, I don’t make threats that I have no intention of following through with. My daughters know if I say it I mean it.

I don’t want my daughters to even subconsciously make the connection to their behavior and the gift of God’s son. Let’s be clear, we don’t and can’t deserve the forgiveness of sins and the gift of Jesus. The point of the gifts should be the same; my kids don’t deserve it either. They are given gifts simply because we love them as God loved us, not because they were good all year (The last person to be good all year died on a cross)

Thirdly, I am not forcing this thought process on everyone, I am not wearing t-shirt that says “Santa isn’t real” and ruining it for children, (Although I am thinking about getting one for my daughter that says: Don’t mention Santa to me spoilers enclosed) and then training her to say “Santa isn’t real” to any one who mentions him to her. OK, not really but I want to.

In our home we have decided to take this Holy day and treat it as such, my girls will learn far earlier than I did the reason for celebrating Christmas, and every year it will enforce upon them how great the grace of God truly is.

I don’t mean to sound so tenacious about this but I feel constantly under attack by every “Christmas” special and movie out there which constantly tries to apply something to this Holy day that isn’t the gift of God’s son. I don’t care if we all love each other, or if we learn it is better give than receive, or learn what family is all about or what ever other tripe Holly wood can come up with. If it isn’t the birth of Jesus Christ; it isn’t Christmas.

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Every year since I started this blog I have tried to get people to read through the bible with me, in fact this site started in large part with a forum to discuss what we were reading. I still keep my schedule as one of my pages at the top of the page so people could jump in at any point.

I have discovered a new way to read the Bible that I have found very useful and I wanted to share it with everyone since the new year is quickly approaching.

With the advances of web 2.0 it has become increasingly easy to have information delivered directly to your computer, this includes your daily bible reading. Crossway has put out feeds of daily readings for just such a purpose. If you don’t use a feed reader already you can use firefox of Google reader, you will need to register for a Google account if you don’t already have one.

Then simply visit the crossway feed page. You can find daily devotion feeds, bible in a year feeds as well as feeds for memorizing the word of God. It will all be updated daily and published in your reader for you. Additionally they include the audio so you can listen to the passage if that is easier for you.

However you do it, READ YOUR BIBLE, it will change your life.

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I get new urban legends sent to my reader everyday and this one shocked the tar out of me. It isn’t often, in fact I don’t think I have ever seen my hometown online. Unless I looked it up.

snopes.com: Razor Blades in Merchandise

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In the interest of improving my quality of life and reducing the commercialism of Christmas I found this list last year and I wanted to post it to remind myself as well as give ideas to others.

Top 25 Life-Improving Christmas Gifts for Under $10 | Zen Habits

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These are just thoughts that may not be long enough to get an entire post to themselves, but are things I wanted to get written down.

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At risk of sounding like a “review” of a church I wanted to talk about the church we attended over the weekend. Sunday night a few of us went downtown in Columbus to visit Veritas Community Church Heather and I have been looking at becoming involved with the acts29network for some time. I am even thinking about going down to their training camp in February. When we found out they finally had a church plant in Columbus we decided to check it out.

We found out way through the Victorian village to the church, it was in a beautiful area, all the old houses had been rehabbed during the real estate boom and it looked great. The church was an older building (it is currently sharing with another church) and it was interesting to be in a real sanctuary, complete with stained glass and pew bibles, instead of a modern theater setting.

One of the advantages I noticed right away was since they were new, the church was planted in October, no one knew anyone and so everyone felt free to introduce themselves. We met and talked with several people, many of them there for the first time. There hasn’t been enough time for unhealthy cliques to begin. I don’t know that I have ever felt so welcomed into a church before.

All in all I was very happy to have attended and amazed that I enjoyed the “worship” so much. To me the “worship” portion of a church service is normally what I tolerate to get to the point. The songs were focused on the work of Christ and his gospel, without having the song list in front of me I don’t know how to describe it but I can say I never once felt like I wanted Jesus to be my boyfriend as I was singing. I really felt like we were worshiping God for the work done by Jesus Christ as our savior.

They also did responsive reading which took me back to a time in the Lutheran tradition which I quite enjoyed.

I think we will be returning to and we will be praying about what God wants us to do.

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