Christmas Time Is Here...

All day, that song from the Peanut's Christmas special is in my head. I've always been a "no Christmas until after Thanksgiving" guy, but this year is different. First, all the prep work for Christmas had to be started on much earlier for me than I'm used to, and second, the constant unpacking of boxes in our house has meant that its felt a lot like Christmas for a while anyway.

One of the boxes we have unpacked is the gift my staff and elders in Pocatello gave us as a going away present. It's a wonderful nativity scene, with wise men and shepherds, cows and baby Jesus. Beth collects nativity scenes, but this one is obviously special to us. The staff each wrote a message on the back of bottom of the characters, and I purposely didn't read them until we pulled the set out this year. I wanted to save some of the joy for later, and now it was suddenly later. It was good to think about my friends back in Idaho, and to remember their generosity and grace to us.

All of Christmas is like that. We spend a lot of time being nostalgic, thinking back to Christmases past, remembering friends and loved ones, sharing thoughts of good times we had. And hopefully, we also spend a little time thinking about the greatest gift we've ever received, Jesus Christ coming to Earth to be our Savior. Maybe, in all the hustle and bustle, above the nostalgia and the memories, we can also take some time to think ahead to the day we get to unwrap the rest of the gift of Jesus, the day we see Him face to face. Maybe in the midst of it all, you and I can find some time to think about what waits for us in the future, too. All the generosity of God's grace isn't contained in the past, or even in the present. There's a future to grace, a future with Christ in Heaven, looking at Jesus the way the shepherds did, singing to Him like the angels did, and touching His had like Mary and Joseph must have in that stable.

Just a Christmas thought to start your month.

Lifting the Darkness

Okay, that title sounded more ominous that I meant it to. I'm just saying that I'm going to get back to blogging, so the blog won't be 'dark' anymore.

To all the folks out there who've been praying for my family and I as we make this transition to our new home in Minden, NV, a ginormous THANK YOU!!! We have felt lifted up and held close in all this. Our stuff got packed and transported in one piece, and now we are unpacking most of it in our temporary house. Still praying for the house in Idaho to sell, so feel free to pray with us.

In the same loving and gracious way that our First Baptist Family said goodbye to us, our LifePoint Family has welcomed us here to the Carson Valley. To give you a taste of the welcome: the youth staff found out that Mac is a fan of Mountain Dew, so when we get to our house, there were three cases of Mountain Dew cans hidden around the place or lined up in patterns. Mac was having a teenage boy version of an Easter egg hunt! Hilarious! This week my office was decorated with balloons and dark chocolate Reese's cups. Tasteful and tasty!!

After Curt Harlow shared the message this past weekend and the church prayed Beth and I into place, the work has begun in earnest. I'm learning the ropes, figuring out what I'm supposed to know, and finding all of the Starbucks in the valley. At times it feels like I'm getting further behind, but that's just a part of the transition. I've got great people helping me get up to speed, and we're going to make a dent in it before Easter, that's for sure.

I will get a rhythm going with the blog again soon, and I'm working at Twitter, so we'll see how this all pans out. Thanks for reading, and I hope to keep this informative, encouraging, and occasionally funny. As always, your comments are welcome!