Monthly Archives: December 2011

“What will you do with the gift of the Christ child?”

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Christmas Eve (Luke 2:1-20)  12/24/2011

We are now late into the evening of Christmas Eve and I am quite certain that Santa and his reindeer have successfully navigated their way across the Atlantic and will be arriving shortly. And I hope I am not the first to tell you (and this might be especially important for the men to hear) but there are now zero shopping days left…no more time to run out to the store and buy that perfect gift. This year’s shopping season is now complete; a shopping season that has been closely watched and analyzed, with some good news and some bad news regarding our gift giving habits for this year. Overall sales for the season have apparently improved more than expected as compared to last year’s sales, and that’s the good news.[i] The bad news is that nearly 10% of everything that was purchased will be returned to the store, a few points above the return rate of a “good year” for retailers.[ii] Although there are many reasons for the higher return rate, “buyer’s remorse” is among the most common. “Buyer’s remorse” is the condition where people gaze upon the large pile of sale items they have purchased and begin to wonder if all the turkey and apple pie eaten on Thanksgiving may have caused them to lose their mind for a brief time. All the more reason to follow Santa’s advice and carefully make a list, and check it twice!

There was certainly no buyer’s remorse among the shepherds in the field on that first Christmas night. The shepherds were visited by the angel of the Lord and told of the birth of their Savior, Christ the Lord! Continue reading →

“Our Advent journey – Are we there yet?”

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Advent 2B (Mark 1:1-8)  12/04/2011

“Are we there yet?” I don’t want to keep bothering you, but I was just wondering – “Are we there yet?” Imagine you are driving down the road and there is a voice coming from the back seat of the car, “Are we there yet?” I always wondered to myself; why do young people ask that question all the time, especially on particularly long journeys. Perhaps they ask because they do not know how long the trip will take; or maybe they ask because they are not familiar with important landmarks along the journey or cannot read road signs that would help them determine where they were and how long they had left to go. But that familiar question is not limited to the young ones among us; adults have their own way of wondering, their own way of asking, “Are we there yet?” We like to know certain bits of information in advance of the journey, so we ask others to tell us what the journey will hold for us and what the place is like when we get there. We might investigate our destination on the internet or go to the library to perform some research. We need to satisfy our curiosity. We need to answer our questions in order to demystify the mysteries of unknown places. After all, when we ask “Are we there yet?” and the answer is “Yes, we are here;” we do not want to be disappointed or unprepared. Continue reading →