Christmas Memories, 2009

Through experience I have found that my best Christmas memories happen before Christmas Day arrives. So, I want to share my top 5 memories from this season.

1. Delivering 90 bicycles in one afternoon with Ron and Tony to two area elementary schools. There is no greater joy than to see kids faces light up when they walk into a room of bikes knowing one of them is soon to be theirs. All these bikes came from Rock Creekers who give to our Bikes for Christmas drive we do every year. Credit for the Bikes for Christmas has to go to Bob Mack who started our church doing this seven or eight years ago.

2. Visiting a young man at Pulaski County jail one afternoon and hearing how God is working in his life in spite of his mistakes. I'm always amazed every time I do jail visits how God uses the loss of freedom to get our attention and bring the focus of our life back onto Him and what's really important. I always get much more than I give anytime I do these visits.

3. Spending two and a half hours last Sunday evening here at Rock Creek with my 11 year old granddaughter with over 600 excited kids and their parents at Christmas at the Creek. This is an annual event hosted by our Kidz Department that really gets an old guy like me jazzed about Christmas and experiencing the joy of Jesus and life.

4. Having the privilege of delivering a Christmas card from our couples group with a gift card in it to a couple in our LIFE group who have been struggling for 19 months due to an accident he had. They are dear, sweet people and wonderful neighbors and to help lighten their load made my day.

5. Having our couples Christmas party with our LIFE group and doing a Dirty Santa gift exchange is a blast. I highly recommend if you're not in a group find one in 2009. It will make a world of difference in handling the pressures of life.

Merry Christmas.

My Best

My Best

Dinner Theatre, 2009

Last night Jason Curry and his 531 youth ministry here at Rock Creek pulled off another amazing night of laughter, served over a 1,000 people in 20 minutes, and provided us all an opportunity to see what's right with teens today. In a day when teens get lumped together and they all get a bad rap for being disrespectful, rebellious hoodlums it's refreshing to see over 300 kids love Jesus, know how to have a good time, and are everything any parent would want their son or daughter to be. I sat beside a lady I had met for the first time and we had 4 teenagers across from us and after I had chatted with them for a while she remarked, "We're soon to be first time grandparents and these kids and those all around us are what we want our grandkids to turn out like." To that I say thanks to parents and a church that has it going the right direction so that kids can turn out to matter for God in their generation.

Community Impact Day, 2008

What a privilege it was to be part of our first Community Impact Day this past Saturday. We had 800 people serve 7 area schools, feed and clothe the homeless, help other churches, build a fence at a nursing home, pick up trash along a city street, and just generally be the church out in the community to show the love of Christ in very practical ways. The whole morning just made me feel great once again about being part of a church that "takes Jesus as He is to people as they are." And we had great fellowship with one another while we worked. That is such a hard combination to beat. Serving Jesus by serving your fellow man and experiencing Christian oneness with your spiritual family; I'm not sure it gets any better than that here on this planet.

Changes

I don't have to tell you life is full of changes. You already know that. But what do you do when something in your life changes and you don't even realize it? It's an odd feeling when something changes about or around you and you think, "How did I miss that?"

Case in point for me was a couple of weeks ago I had been having foot trouble where it was painful to walk; had been to the foot doctor, got a painful cortisone shot in the second toe, and still the pain wasn't getting better. Part of what they discovered was a broken bone in my second toe but the shocking thing was when I went to the shoe store to get some shoes I could walk in. I have always worn a 10 and 1/2D shoe. I have a closet and garage full of shoes and boots in that size. Imagine my surprise when the lady measured my foot and told me I wore a 13D!! My first thought was, "No way, I've always worn a 10 and 1/2 D." My second thought was "No wonder my foot hurts." Of course my family all made fun of me for being such an idiot.

I wonder what person or thing touching your life has changed and you're not aware of it. Maybe it's time to re-evaluate and not take things or people for granted. You know, don't assume just because that's they way it's always been that it must still be that way. There's a good possibility things have changed and you need to be made aware of it.

Here Comes the Bride

I have had the privilege of doing several weddings in my short pastoral ministry and everytime I do one, there is the moment when I'm standing at the front with the groom and his attendants and the time comes for the bride to enter the building. When the bride appears to begin her walk down the aisle I always have a catch in my throat and a quickening of my heartbeat.

I had such a moment a week ago this Saturday at the wedding of my niece in Texas. That's what made me think about this again. As I thought about what makes this a heartstopping moment for me I realized it reminds me that there is coming a day and a time when Jesus is going to come down from heaven to this earth for His bride, the church. I can only imagine being able to visibly see Jesus for the first time and what an awesome sight that will be.

"For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud comand, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so will we be with the Lord forever." I Thes. 4:16,17

My hope for you is you're ready to see Jesus if today was the day He made His appearing to take his bride home to live with Him forever.