Hope

A Christmas Message

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Hope, Peace, Joy, Love and Christ

As I sit in the glow of lights from our tree I think back to Christmas time when I was a child.  As a kid I enjoyed the lights, the music and family gatherings and of course, the presents.  As I and my faith have grown I realize that Christmas is the time of year that I really began to connect with my faith.  As an adult in the mind and a kid at heart I still enjoy the lights, the music and the family gatherings…I now enjoy the giving of gifts far more than receiving.  Where we live I enjoy the snow (most years) and even the cold.  The change of season is natural, to me it is God showing us his love using nature.  All that was alive in summer has passed on but it will all be reborn in springtime. The world is covered in fresh new snow and we see angels in different forms everywhere.  Most of all it seems to be the one time of year that people actually live life at a slower pace and often take time to recognize Jesus Christ and his coming into the world.

At Christmas time I pray we see and feel a sense of…

Hope – God made a promise to you and everyone to love you and to never leave you…believe him and trust him with every area of your life.

Peace – Be content when your basic needs are fulfilled and share with others if you have been blessed with abundance…practice patience.

Joy – Wear a smile more often and make an effort to help others find their smile…focus on the positive as often as you can.

Love – Life is more about how you treat others than how they treat you…you can’t control what others will think, say or do so why waste time worrying about it…do all that you can do with love.

At Christmas time this year put Christ in the center of your life…with Christ you will know Hope, you will know Peace, you will know Joy and you will know that the Love of Christ in your heart will help you overcome anything this world can throw at you.

May we all see and know God’s blessings in our lives this Christmas and carry them with us all through the New Year!

Merry Christmas!

What Path Are You On?

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Life is full of choices and decisions.  We all have been given the gift of free will.  The hardest part of this isn’t necessarily making a decision, rather it is holding yourself accountable for what happens after your decision and being open to changing things as you move forward in life.

Look around you…take inventory.  How are things going in your life?  If it is not good from your perspective…look in a mirror…that is the best place to start to make a change in your life, start with you.  On the other hand, if things look ok or pretty good from your perspective, give thanks and praise and begin to think about how you can share and support others.

No matter what your result, good or bad, we all have made decisions in our past that have led to where we are today…right now.  I encourage you to think about what those decisions have been so you can identify what has put you on this path.  If it has been bad look for ways to improve on your current situation…I caution you here, do not believe you can go back to change a decision that occurred in the past to make things better now…instead, live in the present, learn from the poor decision and make new decisions to improve things going forward.  If you can identify decisions in the past that have been good and led to great things learn what you can and share to help others.

This reflection can be helpful because sometimes when we look back things have changed and what we thought was a good or bad decision at the time it was made might be different now and we can learn things for life going forward.  None of this is easy…we were never promised easy…we have always been promised Hope…and you can have Hope every day, if you choose to believe and follow Jesus.  As always the bible provides instructions in this matter…

“Enter through the narrow gate.  For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

                                                                                                                Matthew 7:13-14

I pray we all ask for wisdom so we can make decisions that will lead to Life.

Peace.

Hope, Peace, Joy, Love and Christ

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Reflecting on the season and all that goes on in our lives…I have always been a Christmas guy.  As a kid I enjoyed the lights, the music and family gatherings and of course the presents.  As I and my faith have grown I realize that Christmas was the starting point for me to really deepen my faith.  As an adult in mind and a kid at heart I still enjoy the lights, the music and the family gatherings…I now enjoy the giving far more than any receiving of presents.  Where we live I enjoy the snow and even the cold.  The change of season is natural to me it is God showing us his love using nature.  All that was alive in summer has passed on but it will all be reborn in springtime.  With the shorten daylight we set up lights to add color to the white world.  But most of all it seems to be the one time of year that the most people in the world actually recognizes Jesus Christ and his coming into the world.

At Christmas time I pray you see and feel a sense of…

Hope – God made a promise to you and everyone to love you and to never leave you…believe him and trust him with every area of your life.

Peace – Be content when your basic needs are fulfilled and share with others if you have been blessed with abundance…practice patience.

Joy – Wear a smile more often and make an effort to help others find their smile…focus on the positive in any situation.

Love – Life is more about how you treat others than how they treat you…you can’t control what others will think, say or do so don’t waste time worrying about it…do all that you do with love.

At Christmas time put Christ in the center of your life…with Christ you will know Hope, you will know Peace, you will know Joy and you will know that the Love of Christ in your heart will help you overcome anything this world can throw at you.

May you see and know God’s blessings in your life this Christmas and carry them with you all through the New Year!

Merry Christmas!

By Faith

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When speaking to someone who has experienced a terrible tragedy or is going through a difficult time of trial some will ask, “How are you getting through this?” and from certain people the answer is “by faith” or “by the grace of God” and when this is the response I am sure some askers may be thinking ‘what does that mean?’

Well for me to understand it better I would go to the Guide Book for Life…the Bible.

“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”

                                                                                                                Hebrews 11:1

Faith is based on hope and belief…these my friends are both choices in our life.  This is why so many of us struggle with faith while living in this world.  We live with in a world expecting immediate satisfaction, convenience and me first…not to mention the constant presence of evil and temptations.

As I have reflected this week on the passing of Nelson Mandela all I can think is ‘Wow now that is truly a man of faith.’  The world treated him horribly for so long but he never gave up his hope or his beliefs that the world could be a better place and he could contribute to that with God’s help.  Many organizations are printing quotes from Nelson Mandela in the last few days as we all want to know more about a person who worked for justice in the world…here are a few.

“I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.”

 -Nelson Mandela

“I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.”

-Nelson Mandela

There are many people who will write judgments both positive and negative about Nelson Mandela because of things he did during his life.  I believe by faith that he tried to do what he believed God wanted him to do and he didn’t just wake up one day and decide to do it.  It happened as a part of his journey…his life journey and his faith journey.  He wasn’t perfect, he had his sins just like the rest of us but he also made choices to help others, to be a positive influence and to try and bring justice to other human beings in God’s world.

God has promised many things and it is up to each of us to choose to have hope and to believe in the things we do not see.  We will often fail and fall down but we should never quit.  If we base our faith on how we feel instead of what Christ did for us we will have a difficult time sustaining a faith that is stable and growing.  Faith and life are a journey and we can only live one day at a time on that journey…so I encourage you to embrace each day, thank God for the gift of life and seek what you hope for and what you choose to believe…by faith.

Peace and joy to you this day.