December 2008

"Praise Remains When the Prose and Props Run Out"

As you read this the rush to Christmas has begun. You know the frill all too well. It is exciting but soon to be exhausting. It is anxiously anticipatory but can give way to the obtrusively obligatory. We cannot wait for it to come and then cannot wait for it to be over with. Too often that seems to be the marching orders for the month.

We will hear the Christmas stories and tell the Christmas stories. We see the story enacted in programs, pageants, and plays. We set the story to song in church and even hear the story in music across the airwaves of secular radio stations. But there comes a point when the prose runs out. We arrive at a point when it is all talked out and the carols have been played enough. The prose runs out and there are not words left.

We arrive at a point, almost simultaneously, when the props have done all they can do. They have served their purpose in helping us out. The trees dry out and the candles burn out. The lights loose their luster, the ceramic angels and wooden mangers fade into the landscape. The props, too, run out.

All that is okay. For when the prose and the props run out, all there remains is praise. That is when we find that we get it. It is more than lip service and natal eye candy. Christmas is about Immanuel - "God with us." We know that the Savior has been born to us and He is Christ the Lord. And we will know that just as fully on December 26th.

Praise remains when the prose and props run out. We praise God for coming among us to live the perfect life we cannot, die the death we will not, and being raised from the dead so that "we will not perish, but have eternal life." We praise God for loving us, forgiving us, saving us, and always being with us in Jesus. Praise is what remains as we embrace in faith the reality of what God has done.

Recite the prose and view the props - the help us in these days. But praise remains for God is with us - His wonders and His ways.

A Christ-filled Christmas to all,

Pastor John

November 2008 Message
June/July 2008 Message
May/June 2008 Message
April 2008 Message
March 2008 Message