Archive for December, 2008
Grace Point turns 3. It has been a crazy journey.
LATER
I am a huge sports fan. Here is a great montage picture from Yahoo summarizing the year in sports.
After a week “vacation” (translated running around to several different Christmases), I am back in Vegas. Time for some catch-up this week. This year was the first time in four years we have been back to our parents for Christmas. It was overall a fun experience. Some of the highlights:
- Seeing and spending time with family
- My kids enjoyed going to several different Christmas gatherings
- Zachary shot a gun for the first time
- Lots of Southern style cooking
- My kids receive their annual exposure to Southern culture
- A week out of the office
- I didn’t have to teach on Sunday
- Laughing
Some of the not-so-high-lights:
- Too much Southern cooking impacts one’s system
- My younger brother Derek had a massive kidney stone attack and is undergoing an emergency procedure
- Battling the shoppers the day after Christmas
- It seemed we spent a lot of time in the car going from Christmas to Christmas
- Time goes fast when you are on vacation
- The Cowboys pathetic display on Sunday
- Always feel behind upon returning
- Tired
2008 is ending. 2009 starts this week! Wow.
Anyone see Vegas band The Killers on the EMAs? Unbelievable what technology can do…
We had a great weekend:
- Family Christmas time … kids got lots of video game stuff
- Friends Christmas time … watched Dark Knight again – awesome!
- Grace Point Christmas Sunday … great attendance / good service / gospel presentation
We left Sunday evening and flew to the South where we will spend the next several days with our families. I pray you have an awesome Christmas week. Out for a few…
A couple of people have pointed out this video to me. It is definitely worth the watch. For those who don’t know, Penn (of comedic duo Penn & Teller fame in Vegas) is a professing and practicing atheist. He has said and done some crude and blasphemous things in the past and is known in Vegas for his anti-religious rants and jokes. Yet in this video, we see a more contemplative side of Penn. It is interesting to hear his comments about how a genuine belief in Heaven and Hell should impact our passion to share this message. It reminds me of the story I heard growing up in church of the atheist in past-evangelist D.L. Moody’s day who said that if he were a Christian who truly believed in a literal Hell, he would crawl on hands and knees over broken glass to share that message with the community in which he lived. Check out this video from a known atheist and his perspective on what he calls proselytizing:
In the last 3 days, Vegas has received more snow than it has in 20+ years – which basically means it snowed off and on for a few days and a few of the places in the valley with a slightly higher elevation received a little bit of accumulation. The result of a little snow in Vegas?
1. SLOW drivers. I had to run some errands yesterday and make my weekly trip to the chiropractor and I could not believe how slow traffic was moving. A few flakes fall and drivers panic into a crawl.
2. People start talking “weather” which rarely happens in Vegas b/c our weather is so constant. But yesterday I started hearing terms I have not heard in Vegas in 4 years: “black” ice, accumulation, no school, “white” Christmas, etc. It is funny to hear people talking about how dangerous the roads are when a few sporadic flakes are falling.
3. School was canceled today for a snow day! This is so funny to me. When I drove to work this morning, I did not see a single snowflake on the ground or roads. My oldest daughter (the only one of my kids in school right now b/c of our year-round school system) was pumped about getting a snow day! But when I think about it, this is her first official snow day from school. Life in the desert.
I am not a big fan of snow for the simple reason that it inconveniences me. But it has been fun to watch it snow the last few days and remember how beautiful it is. Of course before you go feeling sorry for those of us who live in the desert and never see snow, remember we are surrounded by snow-capped mountains about 7 months a year (the mountains are still there the other 5 months but the snow is not). Our snow is exactly where I like it – 30 minutes away. A couple of day trips a year to Mt. Charleston gives us more than enough snowman building, precarious sled racing, snowball fight days in 3-4 feet of snow to get our fix before returning to the warmer valley below.
Who would have ever thought Vegas would be dreaming of a white Christmas?
Check out these clips of inspirational speeches:
We continued our “Christmas Outside the Box” series this past weekend looking at another misfit in the genealogy of Jesus Christ. We talked about the story of Rahab – a woman with a nickname / a past. She is known as Rahab the Harlot – probably not a reputation that will advance your career opportunities. Rahab was a Canaanite prostitute. According to OT Law, she should be stoned or at least ostracized and avoided. Her story, found in the book of Joshua, is one of those stories that confuses us. She was a prostitute who lied and deceived her way into a promise of deliverance and was subsequently delivered from the divine judgment that fell upon the rest of the Canaanites. Her story speaks loudly of the incredible grace of a God who pulls sinners out of the chaos and makes them His children.
Rahab was not a role model. Her reputation was one of promiscuity. She sold her body for money. She was not considered “righteous” even by her own people. And yet there she is – leaping from Matthew’s list of the people God selected to carry the messianic seed. Of all the people in Israel to preserve the messianic bloodline, God chose a pagan whore to pour out His grace upon and demonstrate the message that God came to save sinners while they are still sinners.
A person’s past can keep them from God but a person’s past cannot keep God from them. Your past cannot thwart God’s grace. A person’s past can cause them to live life trying to make atonement for their past transgressions – trying to be good enough to earn God’s love and favor. But in reality, my past was atoned for the moment Jesus died on the cross and made provision for my sins (past, present, and future).
I believe Rahab is included in “the story behind the story” to remind us that God the Son came to save real people with real stories and real pasts. He did not come to save self-righteous and pseudo-holy people who tend to live life like they just need a little boost to make it to Heaven. He came to seek and save the lost. Jesus spent time with the Rahabs of his day. In one recorded instance, a Rahab was thrown at the feet of Jesus in condemnation. Jesus responded to this prostitute in love and forgiveness and instead condemned the “righteous” people who brought her to him.
The story of Christmas is the story of God entering our chaos to save sinners – the Rahabs of the world, people with a past/a nickname/a reputation. Long before Bethlehem and Mary & Joseph and shepherds and wise men, God was crafting a story of grace, mercy, and forgiveness. He was shaping a bloodline that would include prostitutes, murderers, adulterers, thieves, liars, secret keepers, and generations of other sinners. And from this lineage of deranged sinners would come a Savior who is Christ the Lord. His name? Jesus – because he would save people from their sins. That includes Rahab and that includes me!