It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

  The holidays are in full swing.  We got an early start this year.  My son-in-law was in from Afghanistan on leave in November, so we got the tree and everything up right after Halloween.  (Well, almost everything… I promised I would get the wreaths out this afternoon.)  [Of course, celebrating it ahead means they didn't actually celebrate it on Jesus' birthday... but, oh well.]  Mary tells me we have almost finished our Christmas shopping, and driving around town makes me glad of that.  (Christmas eve is so exciting; I can’t wait to see what we got everyone.)

    I hope you are getting the special people in your life something they will love this season.  If you are looking for some great gift ideas here are a few.

This house in Australia is for sale.  It looks normal enough, except that it continually rotates.  That has to be interesting.

Here are some fashion ideas from a recent show.  Nothing says “love” like a new outfit.

I hear you can get great deals on real estate… on the moon.  The Lunar Embassy in Prague (a real agency) says sales have been slow… with housing market and all.

  It seems the president loved his gift.  [This photo settles it, even when you are president, sometimes your "coolness" slips.  Notice the first lady's expression.  You get the feeling she's been there for these "cool-challenged" moments before.]

Of course you could get the man of the house a new lawnmower….

   The list goes on and on.  I still have one of the great gifts I have ever received… “The Ronco Pew Appreciater.”  Given to me by a dear friend in Tennessee, it was a square frame with small nails forming a cross.  The instructions directed that in the course of a long sermon just set this underneath whatever part of your body was feeling the hard pew and a renewed appreciation would come in minutes.  I keep the present hid because… afraid the kids will start carrying it to services on a regular basis.

What’s the most bizarre gift you have ever received?

  I don’t know the most bizarre; but I do know the most incredible.  The spirit of Christmas is that God “gave” His son… His son “gave” his life.  He paid a debt we could not pay… and we owe a debt we can never repay.  If Christmas means anything its because the one in the manger was the Divine come to be one of us.  And if He really came, then everything is different.  If He wasn’t divine then celebrating is an absurdity and a delusion.  If He was… then its a spiritual earthquake that rocks the world still, 2000 years later.   The God of all creation is in a battle of love to save all men.

    The absurd thing is to sing the songs, praise the baby, and then do nothing…to sing “Hark the highest heaven adores Christ the everlasting Lord,” then live like He was anything less.  If He was just a baby… walk on.  If He was “Immanuel,”  “God with us,” then bow at His feet and serve Him all your life.  He is worthy of no less.

   Joy to the World the Lord is come, let earth receive her king.  Let every heart prepare Him room, and heaven and nature sing.

Proof the world is about to end… its all in the chickens

  Last week I ran across a lady who has finally proven, historically, that the world will be ending within the next couple of generations.  She said, my grandmother remembers how her mother would go out to the chicken yard snatch up a running chicken, hold its head tight and spin its body around…. wringing the chicken’s neck.  Then she’d throw the bird to the side where it’d flap and flop until dead.  She’d then take an axe, chop off the head, and throw the whole bird in a pot of boiling water.  After boiling the bird was ready for plucking, and the lovely aroma of burning down over a fire.  She’d clean it, butcher it, cook it, and serve it by the mashed potatoes. 

  The lady remembers that her grandmother didn’t enjoy that process very much and that’s why she did it different.  Instead of wringing the birds neck, she carried a 22 rifle to the chicken pen.  In a move that would make Annie Oakley’s chin drop, she’d pick out a chicken, shoot, and often times take the head clean off.  The rest of the process remained the same.  Her mother, the lady notes, verified these crack shots, but also how much she hated the rest of the process.  That’s why her mother skipped all of that.  She went to the store, bought a whole chicken, butchered it into the appropriate pieces and then cooked it.  It saved time, hassled, and a whole lot of the “ooh” factor.

  But, the lady triumphs, her generation has done one better.  No more joy of cold chickens, sharp knives and the quandry of what to do with the innards.  Thanks to Tyson, Pilgrim’s Pride, and others she now picks up from the store freezer only the pieces she wants… a package of precut legs, or thighs, or breasts all in a nice styrofoam tray.  Everything is done but the cooking.  So the way she figures it, one more generation can take things further, buying it already cooked, but that’s it.  The process has reached its eschatalogical climax.  Therefore, since there is nothing left, everyone will have eaten, the dishes will be done, and it will be time to turn in… for good.  Hard to argue with the logic.  It’s all in the chickens.

  When people get the ominous feeling that the world really is about to slide off into the apocalypse I think this is how it must have felt in the time of Augustine.  As the Roman empire was limping towards its close and everyone feared ” What’s happening to us… will the church survive?,” Augustine penned “The City of God.”  Reminding people, there is a city that is not shaken. 

  I don’t know if the world is coming to an end.  I do think we are seeing the beginning of western culture in hospice care.  It will take a few generations and you’ll still have to take Western Civ. to get a degree, but its “Pickett’s Charge” moment has probably passed, and things will go in a steady direction.  Like the folks “in between” as the premodern, supersticious world gave way to science and the modern age, we find ourselves unable to fathom what kind of world is coming.  I don’t think ”postmodernism” is it.  (I rather think postmodernism is just the “unraveling” part… we’re yet to see what will take it’s place.)  Like trying to explain scientific method and Kant’s philosphy to a 6th century shaman, I doubt we’d understand much of the new world even if someone told us.  The one thing we do know, it will still be God’s world, probably not better or worse than the ages before.  Also, back to Augustine, the kingdom of God will go forward…  different, for sure, but the kingdom nevertheless.  That is, unless the world ends!!

Post note:  Maybe in heaven children from all the different ages will gather together to ask God… “Which one of us did you love the best?”