Jordan's 2012 NFL Mock Draft - 4.24.12

Endless Summer

Well, its mid August and it feels like this summer has been endless.
Tons of fun...but very busy.
Here's a run down. (this run down serves as an excuse for the non-existent posting this summer)
May
May 14-18
Week long all day seminary class in Washington DC, early to rise commuting on 95 and 495 ugh.
May 19. All day and church wide Yard Sale fundraiser for Missions Trip.
Memorial Day weekend, the wife and I flew back home to Chattanooga to see family, it was only 3 day, 4 night journey.
June
Seminary - 3 papers due and 2 exams. All within 2 weeks. Plus 2 full days of classes. That kept me busy and a bit insane...but June seems like a year ago now.
June 15th, took the youth group to an Orioles Game. June 23rd had a missions serivce project.
2nd week of June. Put contract on a house.
June 25-29, Victory Jam! Took the middle schoolers to the beach at Harvey Cedars New Jersey...a summer camp for Baltimore area PCA churches...it was a blast.
Every Wed. in the summer was college and career group.
June 29- Drop off kids from camp and run to closing on the purchase of our townhouse!
July
Starting in July and through August, every Thursday was MS and HS Y2, basically another opportunity for the kids to get together and have fun and a have a Bible Study
July 7th- Took MS and HS to Hershy Park Amusement Park. Oh yeah, lots of chocolate, coasters and drenching water rides.
First two weeks of July, Moving all our stuff to new home!
July 9-13
MS VBS at our Church. I had to run the whole thing, games, lessons, etc. Lots of crazy fun in excessive heat!! Oh yeah...almost 40 kids, only 1 helper! : )
July 16th - MS Swim Party
July 29- August 4th - HS Missions Trip to Toronto Canada!! Great time.
August
August 1-4 - Missions Trip.
August 12- HS Pool Party and Cookout
August 18 - Paintball Outing.
August 25 - MS Pool Party

Sept 1- 9 - My Vacation!!!!!
Going on a cruise in the Southern Carribbean!!

So a busy but enjoyable summer is coming to a close, and I am looking forward to my favorite season of the year!! Fall. And hopefully the opportunity to post more often. : )

Former Radical Muslim Speaks Out

I think I have been away from blogging for a long while. I guess I can ease back into it by posting articles I find important to read. Here is my first such post.
If you would rather read this article straight from the source, here is the link.

Click here for link to story.



I was a fanatic...I know their thinking, says former radical Islamist
By HASSAN BUTT - More by this author »

Last updated at 07:38am on 2nd July 2007

Comments (21)

When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network - a series of British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology - I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.


By blaming the Government for our actions, those who pushed this "Blair's bombs" line did our propaganda work for us.


Read more...

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More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.

The attempts to cause mass destruction in London and Glasgow are so reminiscent of other recent British Islamic extremist plots that they are likely to have been carried out by my former peers.

And as with previous terror attacks, people are again saying that violence carried out by Muslims is all to do with foreign policy.

For example, on Saturday on Radio 4's Today programme, the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, said: "What all our intelligence shows about the opinions of disaffected young Muslims is the main driving force is not Afghanistan, it is mainly Iraq."

I left the British Jihadi Network in February 2006 because I realised that its members had simply become mindless killers. But if I were still fighting for their cause, I'd be laughing once again.



Mohammed Sidique Khan met with the author on two separate occasions

Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the July 7 bombings, and I were both part of the network - I met him on two occasions.

And though many British extremists are angered by the deaths of fellow Muslim across the world, what drove me and many others to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain and abroad was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary worldwide Islamic state that would dispense Islamic justice.

If we were interested in justice, you may ask, how did this continuing violence come to be the means of promoting such a (flawed) Utopian goal?

How do Islamic radicals justify such terror in the name of their religion?

There isn't enough room to outline everything here, but the foundation of extremist reasoning rests upon a model of the world in which you are either a believer or an infidel.

Formal Islamic theology, unlike Christian theology, does not allow for the separation of state and religion: they are considered to be one and the same.

For centuries, the reasoning of Islamic jurists has set down rules of interaction between Dar ul-Islam (the Land of Islam) and Dar ul-Kufr (the Land of Unbelief) to cover almost every matter of trade, peace and war.

But what radicals and extremists do is to take this two steps further. Their first step has been to argue that, since there is no pure Islamic state, the whole world must be Dar ul-Kufr (The Land of Unbelief).

Step two: since Islam must declare war on unbelief, they have declared war upon the whole world.

Along with many of my former peers, I was taught by Pakistani and British radical preachers that this reclassification of the globe as a Land of War (Dar ul-Harb) allows any Muslim to destroy the sanctity of the five rights that every human is granted under Islam: life, wealth, land, mind and belief.

In Dar ul-Harb, anything goes, including the treachery and cowardice of attacking civilians.

The notion of a global battlefield has been a source of friction for Muslims living in Britain.

For decades, radicals have been exploiting the tensions between Islamic theology and the modern secular state - typically by starting debate with the question: "Are you British or Muslim?"

But the main reason why radicals have managed to increase their following is because most Muslim institutions in Britain just don't want to talk about theology.

They refuse to broach the difficult and often complex truth that Islam can be interpreted as condoning violence against the unbeliever - and instead repeat the mantra that Islam is peace and hope that all of this debate will go away.

This has left the territory open for radicals to claim as their own. I should know because, as a former extremist recruiter, I repeatedly came across those who had tried to raise these issues with mosque authorities only to be banned from their grounds.

Every time this happened it felt like a moral and religious victory for us because it served as a recruiting sergeant for extremism.

Outside Britain, there are those who try to reverse this two-step revisionism.

A handful of scholars from the Middle East have tried to put radicalism back in the box by saying that the rules of war devised so long ago by Islamic jurists were always conceived with the existence of an Islamic state in mind, a state which would supposedly regulate jihad in a responsible Islamic fashion.

In other words, individual Muslims don't have the authority to go around declaring global war in the name of Islam.

But there is a more fundamental reasoning that has struck me as a far more potent argument because it involves recognising the reality of the world: Muslims don't actually live in the bipolar world of the Middle Ages any more.

The fact is that Muslims in Britain are citizens of this country. We are no longer migrants in a Land of Unbelief.

For my generation, we were born here, raised here, schooled here, we work here and we'll stay here.

But more than that, on a historically unprecedented scale, Muslims in Britain have been allowed to assert their religious identity through clothing, the construction of mosques, the building of cemeteries and equal rights in law.

However, it isn't enough for responsible Muslims to say that, because they feel at home in Britain, they can simply ignore those passages of the Koran which instruct on killing unbelievers.

Because so many in the Muslim community refuse to challenge centuries-old theological arguments, the tensions between Islamic theology and the modern world grow larger every day.

I believe that the issue of terrorism can be easily demystified if Muslims and non-Muslims start openly to discuss the ideas that fuel terrorism.

Crucially, the Muslim community in Britain must slap itself awake from its state of denial and realise there is no shame in admitting the extremism within our families, communities and worldwide co-religionists.

If our country is going to take on radicals and violent extremists, Muslim scholars must go back to the books and come forward with a refashioned set of rules and a revised understanding of the rights and responsibilities of Muslims whose homes and souls are firmly planted in what I'd like to term the Land of Co-existence.

And when this new theological territory is opened up, Western Muslims will be able to liberate themselves from defunct models of the world, rewrite the rules of interaction and perhaps we will discover that the concept of killing in the name of Islam is no more than an anachronism.

Grover Cleveland

Grover Cleveland

The First Democrat elected after the Civil War, Grover Cleveland was the only President to leave the White House and return for a second term four years later.

One of nine children of a Presbyterian minister, Cleveland was born in New Jersey in 1837. He was raised in upstate New York. As a lawyer in Buffalo, he became notable for his single-minded concentration upon whatever task faced him.

At 44, he emerged into a political prominence that carried him to the White House in three years. Running as a reformer, he was elected Mayor of Buffalo in 1881, and later, Governor of New York.

Cleveland won the Presidency with the combined support of Democrats and reform Republicans, the "Mugwumps," who disliked the record of his opponent James G. Blaine of Maine.

A bachelor, Cleveland was ill at ease at first with all the comforts of the White House. "I must go to dinner," he wrote a friend, "but I wish it was to eat a pickled herring a Swiss cheese and a chop at Louis' instead of the French stuff I shall find." In June 1886 Cleveland married 21-year-old Frances Folsom; he was the only President married in the White House.

Cleveland vigorously pursued a policy barring special favors to any economic group. Vetoing a bill to appropriate $10,000 to distribute seed grain among drought-stricken farmers in Texas, he wrote: "Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character. . . . "

He also vetoed many private pension bills to Civil War veterans whose claims were fraudulent. When Congress, pressured by the Grand Army of the Republic, passed a bill granting pensions for disabilities not caused by military service, Cleveland vetoed it, too.

He angered the railroads by ordering an investigation of western lands they held by Government grant. He forced them to return 81,000,000 acres. He also signed the Interstate Commerce Act, the first law attempting Federal regulation of the railroads.

In December 1887 he called on Congress to reduce high protective tariffs. Told that he had given Republicans an effective issue for the campaign of 1888, he retorted, "What is the use of being elected or re-elected unless you stand for something?" But Cleveland was defeated in 1888; although he won a larger popular majority than the Republican candidate Benjamin Harrison, he received fewer electoral votes.

Elected again in 1892, Cleveland faced an acute depression. He dealt directly with the Treasury crisis rather than with business failures, farm mortgage foreclosures, and unemployment. He obtained repeal of the mildly inflationary Sherman Silver Purchase Act and, with the aid of Wall Street, maintained the Treasury's gold reserve.

When railroad strikers in Chicago violated an injunction, Cleveland sent Federal troops to enforce it. "If it takes the entire army and navy of the United States to deliver a post card in Chicago," he thundered, "that card will be delivered."

Cleveland's blunt treatment of the railroad strikers stirred the pride of many Americans. So did the vigorous way in which he forced Great Britain to accept arbitration of a disputed boundary in Venezuela. But his policies during the depression were generally unpopular. His party deserted him and nominated William Jennings Bryan in 1896.

After leaving the White House, Cleveland lived in retirement in Princeton, New Jersey. He died in 1908.

Letters from a Nut

What lies below is a real letter written to a real company. The letter is outlandish, funny, sarcastic and meant to provoke a response. The author of this letter is using a psuedo name to protect his identity.
(I'm almost positive the author of this book of letters is none other than Jerry Seinfeld, who I've seen in person.)
The author has put together a pretty funny book of his crazy letters and called it "Letters from a Nut" by Ted L Nancy.

What follows is one such letter and response:

Dear Nordstrom Deptarment Stores,

I am a regular shopper at your Nordstorms stores in Glendale. In the last few weeks I have noticed that a new mannequin you have out in the store looks just like my deceased neighbor. I have passed mannequin from many directions and the resemblance is uncanny. In every way - nose, cheekbones, hair, etc. Look at it from any angle. It looks like the neighbor I was friendly with. Even the clothes that the mannequin was wearing was the kind of lightweight windbreaker jacket my neighbor would wear. It is UNBELIEVABLE that this mannequin looks so much like my neighbor.

Is it possible to buy this mannequin (after its use) so I may present it to my neighbor's family? They would think this would be a VERY sentimental gesture. I think his co-workers would also like to have him remembered, so having him "there" would be good, theraputic behavior for all.

I was told to write to your stores HEADQUARTERS OFFICE afterI inquired about buying this mannequin to the sales lady (Very, courteous, I might add.) She suggested that only the stores main office could assist me in this purchase. But she was very helpful with my socks purchase.

Thank you, Nordstrom, for being a store that cares about its customers. I am a long time shopper. I keep lots of things in your Nordstrom bags. Fishing gear, etc. I have a garage full of Nordstrom bags full of old shoes, wire hangers, etc. Thats how I know I've been to your store so much. Let me know about the mannequin. This family is in some need of good loving. This will help!

Sincerely,
Ted L. Nancy


Nordstrom's response Letter:

Dear Mr. Nancy:

Yours is one of the most interesting requests I have ever received. Candidly, I can't imagine any family who has lost a loved one wanting to see a mannequin that resembles that person.

Of course, we want to respond to our customers as positively as possible, but we definately do not sell display materials while they are being used by the company. I see no reason why (when it comes time for a change of mannequins) that we wouldnt sell it to you at the same price we would get from our normal resources.

If you should be interested in that, simply talk to our store manager there at Glendale, Diane Kantor, and she will let you know when the time comes. Unfortunately, mannequins are used for a number of years before they are phased out.

Sincerely
Bruce Nordstrom

Blood Diamond

Go see this movie. TWO very enthusiastic thumbs up. Its violent in parts, but its only depicting true representations of a civil war. This movie captures various elements about the human condition and it does so in a very engaging way.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Djimon Hounsou both do fantastic jobs as well.
I will comment more about the movie later...but for now, take my advice, go see this movie before its off the big screen.

Why I don't always write.

Okay, I go through spurts of inspiration to post on my blog. The same was true for my journals I kept up with in high school and college. Lately, that motivation hasn't been there. It seems that I must have something very profound to say in order to post. For better or worse, I am a creature made by God that likes to jump head first into the deep matters of the heart, of life, of eternity. That being said, making my abode in the deep for long periods of time is hard. So I find myself washed up on shore, then aware of how fun the shallows can be, no fear of large sea creatures or of drowning, I frolic around on the surface. So I indulge myself. I take life easy. I move from one moment to the next, from one event to the next, from one moment of entertainment to the next. Then dawn of something bigger falls upon my face again, and I realize the promise of the shallows literally don't hold enough water for me; I vaguely hear the larger waves off shore crash and I am enticed. I remember the ocean of life is bigger than the shore, in fact most of life is out in the ocean. I dive into the next wave headfirst, eager to head out into the depths. Where life is uncharted. Where God can use me, rather than me clinging to the habits of comfort that keep me in shallow waters. Faith and depth is being where you cannot touch the ground. Faith and depth is praying to my creator each day, and in every moment of the day. Faith and depth is opening scripture to have His word impact me, unravel me and enrapture me all at once. Faith and Depth is letting go of all that I cling to in the shallows and letting God chart my course in the depths where life may seem more dangerous but is so much richer!

This is what I hope to capture with my words. This is what I hope to post with each post. But I know I cannot come close to capturing that piece of eternity, that depth, that is in my heart. And knowing the state of my being, the state of my heart, Paul's words in Romans ring so true...For the creation was subjected to frustration...in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. Romans 8:21-23

I may never be able to quite capture that depth. That essence of eternal inside me. But I thank the Lord for giving me something bigger than myself to cling to. I thank him for coming to my rescue. I thank him for giving me his Son.

Shine On!

A cool video, and a very cool song. Turn up the volume and jam! By the way, props go to Kathryn for posting this on her blog in December, I've repeatedly gone back to it to play it and then I thought, hmm...why dont I just post it. Problem solved.

Merry Christmas!

So Christmas is like in 4 days. Crazy quick.
This blog entry may not look quick, but its a quick read because its so good.

If your looking for a devotional on Christmas you came to the right place.
The following cut and paste article is Tim Keller's take on the Purpose of Christmas. Tim Keller, from Redeemer in NYC. So get your Bible handy, read 1 John 1:1-4 and see what how 1 John 1:1—4 gives us the teaching and the purpose of Christmas.

For those not near a Bible, here is the scripture:

"1:1 This is what we proclaim to you: what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and our hands have touched - concerning the word of life – 1:2 and the life was revealed, and we have seen and testify and announce to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us. 1:3 What we have seen and heard we announce to you too, so that you may have fellowship with us and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. 1:4 Thus we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete."

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete.

Christmas is about the word incarnation. We sing it every year in our Christmas carols, especially in "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing." Charles Wesley wrote that, and one line you've sung says, "Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see; Hail the incarnate Deity."
If you understand the word incarnation, you'll understand what Christmas is about. The Apostles' Creed doesn't use the word incarnation, but it teaches the doctrine of the Incarnation when it says, "conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary."

Where do we go to understand what Christmas is? The first two verses of our text give us the teaching of Christmas, and the second two give us the purpose of Christmas.
Let's take a look at the first two verses. We see here the teaching of Christmas is two things.

It's frankly doctrinal, and it's boldly historical. We have to grasp this before we move on to how it changes our lives.

Christmas is frankly doctrinal
What do I mean by "frankly doctrinal"? I used the word doctrinal on purpose. I know it's a negative word. It's part of a family of words that have negative connotations. Doctrine or dogma connotes being narrow, being rigid or closed. The word doctrinaire gets that across well. Doctrinaire is bad. It is bad to be narrow. It is bad to be closed. It is bad to be haughty. It is bad to not be open to reason. It is bad not to listen to others. But in our fear of being doctrinaire, we are not frank, we are not honest, about the fact we are all doctrinal.

A doctrine is a belief we base our lives on, and it's something we contend for, we insist on. In other words, a doctrine first of all is a faith position. It's not something we can prove scientifically. It's not something we prove empirically.
Secondly, it's something we live on, we commit ourselves to, we base our lives on.
And thirdly, it's something we push, we contend with other people over. That's a doctrine. And even though we shouldn't be doctrinaire, we are all doctrinal.

Illustration: I'll give you an example. Mr. A is a Christian. His friend, Mr. B, is not. Mr. A one day sits down with Mr. B and says, " I wish you could believe Jesus is Savior and Lord. Let me try to convince you." Mr. B says, "Nobody can know anything definite about God. And secondly, you should not try to persuade other people to see things your way. That's not right."
When Mr. B says, you can't know anything definite about God, what is that? That is a faith position. That's not scientific. That's not empirical. It's a belief. And secondly, when he says you mustn't try to convince other people your take on spiritual reality is the right one, he at that moment is trying to say to Mr. A, "You ought to see it my way." In other words, he's saying, "I have a relativistic take on spiritual reality, and you ought to take it." He's doing the very thing he's forbidding as he's forbidding it.
Both Mr. A and Mr. B are being doctrinal. They have a faith position. They've bet their lives on it. Mr. B has bet his eternal destiny on the idea that nobody can know anything definite about God. And they're both contending for it. Here's the difference. Mr. A is being openly doctrinal. He's being frank about his doctrine. Mr. B is not. Mr. B is in denial.

Let's try not to be doctrinaire. But we cannot avoid being doctrinal. Everybody has faith assumptions about God, about eternity, about human nature, about moral truth. We bet our lives on them and press for them, and there's no way to avoid being doctrinal.
Christmas is frankly doctrinal. The text says the invisible has become visible, the incorporeal has become corporeal. In other words, God has become human. The absolute has become particular. The ideal has become real. The divine has taken up a human nature. This is not only a specific doctrine, but it's also unique. Doctrine always distinguishes you. One of the reasons we're afraid to talk about doctrine is because it distinguishes us from others. Here's why the doctrine of Christmas is unique.

On the one hand you've got religions that say God is so imminent in all things that incarnation is normal. If you're a Buddhist or Hindu, God is imminent in everything. God is the divine spark in everything, and therefore incarnation is normal. God is incarnate in all sorts of people and things. Christians say Jesus is the God, and people from that family say sure. On the other hand, the family of religions like Islam and Judaism says God is so transcendent over all things that incarnation is impossible. Jesus as God is blasphemous.

But Christianity is unique. It doesn't say incarnation is normal, but it doesn't say it's impossible. It says God is so imminent that it is possible, but he is so transcendent that the Incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ is an event. Christianity has a unique view on this that sets it apart from everything else.

Christmas is boldly historical
Christmas is not just frankly doctrinal; it's also boldly historical. Look at what John says:
We saw it. We heard it. Our own eyes, our own ears. We felt it, this eternal Life.
Here's what he's saying: When we give you these accounts of Jesus walking on the water, of Jesus rising from the dead, of Jesus speaking these words, these are not legends. These are not things we made up. These are not wonderful spiritual parables. These are things we saw. We saw him do this. We heard him do this. We felt him do this.

In other words, the doctrine of Christmas is that God became historical. The manger, the resurrection, the story of Jesus is not just a story. It's true. It actually happened in history.
This goes completely against what the average person believes. The average person says these are wonderful stories, but they're parables. They're legends. They didn't really happen.

Here's the one thing Christmas presses us on. First John 1:1—2 is saying: These are either lies you're reading in the New Testament or they're eyewitness accounts, but they can't be legends. Many scholars of ancient literature have told us this. Today modern fiction throws in details that give a realistic sense, but ancient legends were never written like that.
For example, the story of Jesus walking on the water in John 6 says, "When they had rowed three or three and a half miles, they saw Jesus approaching the boat, walking on the water." You may not be an expert in ancient literature, but think of The Iliad or The Odyssey. Can you imagine Homer saying, "And Achilles met Hector in combat, and they were either three or three and a half miles from the wall of Troy"? He wouldn't have said that, because in ancient legends they didn't put in details that didn't help the plot or develop the character. Therefore, when a man back then was writing a legend he wouldn't say, "They were three or three and a half miles out." It wouldn't have occurred to him unless he was writing an eyewitness account.
When John says, "I saw him, I felt him, I heard him with my own ears, I saw him with my own eyes," everyone would know immediately he was claiming to be an eyewitness. Therefore, every reader of the New Testament knew either these were deliberately fabricated lies or they were true eyewitness accounts, but they couldn't be legends.

If they are lies, they're some of the stupidest lies ever made. Here's why. These accounts were written down within the lifetime of the people who were there. If you're going to write that 500 people saw Jesus risen from the dead in the Kidron Valley, you wouldn't write it 40 or 50 years later like the Gospels were written. You would write it 100 years later, when everybody who lived in the Kidron Valley at the time was dead. If you falsely write that 500 people saw Jesus in the Kidron Valley, and lots of people are still living the Kidron Valley who were there at that time, you're never going to have a religion that gets off the ground. But it did get off the ground, because they wrote these accounts and they weren't contradicted.

The point of Christmas is that Jesus Christ really lived, and he really died. It happened in history. He did these things. He said these things.

You may think, What's the big deal? You're being doctrinaire here. No. People say, "I like the teachings of Jesus. I like the meaning of these stories. The meaning of these stories is to love one another, serve one another. I like that. But it doesn't matter if these things really happened. Doctrine doesn't matter. What matters is you're a good person."

The great irony is, that is a doctrine, but they're not being frank about it. It's called the doctrine of justification by works. When somebody says that, they're saying it doesn't matter that Jesus actually lived the life we should have lived and died the death we should have died; all that matters is we can follow his teaching. That is a doctrine that says: I'm not so bad that I need someone to come and be good for me. I can be good. I'm not so cut off from God and God is not so holy that there has to be punishment for sin. That doesn't matter.

The gospel is not that Jesus Christ comes to earth, tells us how to live, we live a good life, and then God owes us blessing. The gospel is that Jesus Christ came to earth, lived the life we should have lived, and died the death we should have died, so when we believe in him we are accepted and live a life of grateful joy for him. In other words, if these things didn't happen, we can't be saved utterly by grace. If these things didn't happen, if they're just parables, what you are saying is you believe the doctrine of salvation by works—that if you try hard enough God will accept you. See, you cannot avoid doctrine.

The doctrine of Christmas is that Jesus came. If he didn't come, the story of Christmas is one more moral paradigm to crush you. If Jesus didn't come, I wouldn't want to be anywhere around these Christmas stories that say we need to be sacrificing, we need to be humble, we need to be loving. All that will do is crush you into the ground, because if it isn't true that John saw him, heard him, felt him, that Jesus really came to do these things, then Christmas is depressing.
Every year I see stories in newspapers saying Christmas is the time of year for depression. It is, but not if you believe these first two verses, not if you understand Christmas is not just an inspiring story we can live up to, but it's frankly doctrinal and boldly historical.

Christmas makes you deeply mystical
Verses 3 and 4 tell us that if you grasp this idea—not that Christmas is a sweet story but that Jesus Christ came to earth, God became flesh and lived the life you should have lived, died the death you should have died, as a Savior, not just as a teacher or an example—then Christmas will do four things to you. It will make you deeply mystical, happily material, fiercely relational, and free to be emotional.

First of all, Christmas will make you deeply mystical. First John 1:3 says, "Our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son." This word fellowship, which is koinonia, means that if Jesus Christ has come, if Christmas is true, then we've got a basis for a personal relationship with God. God is no longer a remote idea or just a force we cower before, but we can know him personally. He's become graspable.

Let me give you an example. Scholar A and Scholar B are both trying to write a biography of Sir John Doe. Sir John Doe lived in East Anglia and died in 1721. Both Scholar A and Scholar B believe Sir John Doe wrote five letters to his wife, and they can learn a lot from that. But then there's a 500 autobiography, and it says it's written by Sir John Doe. Scholar A says, "I believe that's genuine." Scholar B says, "I don't." So they sit down to write their biographies. Those biographies are going to be different. Scholar A's biography of Sir John Doe is going to be much more detailed, much more personal. When you're done reading you're going to feel you know this guy. But Scholar B's biography is going to be much more remote, much more general, much more speculative. You're going to feel you hardly know him at all. It all comes down to whether the autobiography is genuine.

Here's the point. If Jesus Christ is actually God come in the flesh, you're going to know much more about God. He's going to be graspable. He's going to be somebody you can relate to. You're seeing him weep. You're seeing him upset. You're seeing him cast down. You're seeing him exalted. If Jesus is who he says he is, we have a 500 autobiography from God, in a sense. And our understanding will be vastly more personal and specific than any philosophy or religion could give us.

Look at what God has done to get you to know him personally. If the Son would come all this way to become a real person to you, don't you think the Holy Spirit will do anything in his power to make Jesus a real person to you in your heart? Christmas is an invitation to become mystical. Christmas is an invitation to know Christ personally. Christmas is an invitation by God to say: Look what I've done to come near to you. Now draw near to me. I don't want to be a concept; I want to be a friend.

Christmas makes you happily material
Greek and Roman readers of this verse would have been astonished when John said he felt the eternal, he saw the eternal. Greeks and Romans and even traditional religious people today believe matter is bad; divine is good. The divine would not come down. Traditional religion says salvation is escaping out of this world into the kingdom of God, but the gospel of Christmas is that salvation is the kingdom of God coming into this world. Traditional religion says the world is bad. Let's get away from cancer. Let's get away from poverty. The gospel is that salvation is the kingdom of God coming down into this world. The body is important. Matter is important. This world is important. He took on physical flesh. Therefore, Christians know in the name of Christ we share our faith, but in the name of Christ we also help a poor person get a decent house. That's part of testifying to the gospel of Christmas. The kingdom of God is here to rehabilitate this world, not to save us out into some kind of ethereal paradise. The future of traditional religion is paradise. The future of the gospel is a new heaven, a new earth.

Christmas makes you fiercely relational
Thirdly, not only does the gospel of Christmas make us deeply mystical and happily material, but it makes us fiercely relational. The Incarnation imprints on us an attitude toward relationships. Jesus says, I want fellowship with you. The test that you know what Christmas is about is that you become more desirous of intimate personal relationships with other people and better at getting them, because the Incarnation is the secret of good personal relationships.
When two people are different culturally and linguistically, how are they going to have a relationship? One must learn the other's language, speak in a broken dialect, and become vulnerable and weak. If you enter into another person's world you become weak; the other person keeps the power. But then you have a relationship.

If you follow the way of Jesus you say, "I will not work so much on being understood but on understanding. I will not work so much on getting my needs met but on meeting needs. I will work on entering into her or his world and giving that person what they consider love, not what I consider love." Incarnation, if it's imprinted in you, if you see what Jesus Christ has done, is going to make you unbelievably good at personal relationships.

Christmas makes you free to be emotional.
Look at verse 4. John says: I want you to have fellowship with us. I want you to believe what we are saying. I want you to understand the doctrine of Christmas. I want us to be united in a community. I want us to be united in belief.
And then he says: I'm doing all this—why?—so my joy will be complete.
He doesn't say: I need your lives to be okay so I can have any joy at all. He's already got joy. He says: You need to get your act together for my joy to be complete. There's a balance there. He's got a joy no matter what they do. Christmas gives you a subterranean joy.

Kathy and I used to own a house in Philadelphia. It was always damp in that basement, and always mucky in the backyard. Somebody said, "Didn't you know before you bought the house? There's a subterranean river that goes underneath all the homes on this street. It's always flowing, even in a drought."

On the one hand, Christmas gives you a subterranean river of joy, and no matter how bad it is on the surface, no matter how bad circumstances are, the joy is always there. It keeps you green. It keeps you fresh. After all, Jesus Christ has landed. The Lord has opened a cleft in the pitiless walls of the world, and the kingdom of God is coming, come hell or high water. That's subterranean joy.

But on the other hand, John says: I can't have complete joy unless you believe. That means this. Many of us are afraid to enmesh ourselves in the lives of other people, because we can't stand the idea of tying our hearts to other people. If they're unhappy, we're unhappy. So we pull back. We withdraw. We don't get involved in the lives of people. But the Incarnation means that Jesus Christ, God himself, got enmeshed in our brokenness. He got involved in a major way. He was weeping. He came in and he fell, and he had nails in his hands.
But here's what's great. It's a subterranean joy. It's a joy that cannot go out, and it will give you the freedom to get involved in the lives of other people. Christmas makes you free to be emotional. It makes you realize the emotion of grief is not going to take you all the way down, because you have a subterranean joy.

If you believe the doctrine of Christmas, it makes you deeply mystical. It makes you happily material. It makes you fiercely relational. It makes you free to be emotional. What else could you want? Think about that the next time you say to somebody, "Have a merry Christmas."

Nesting.

Why do I have a picture of a nest?
Because at a Christmas party on Friday night, one of two for the weekend, and we were invited to another we couldn't attend, an older gentleman was inquiring about my newlywed status. How are things going? I responded by saying that we are accumulating things. He replied, "Ah, your nesting." Yes. We are nesting.
Jess and I just spent a good amount of money accumulating Christmas decorations for the house. A wreath here, a nutcracker there, a stocking holder, a snowman that lights up, a Victorian village, (my favorite), candles for the windows, bows, wrapping paper, ornaments, a tree skirt, and we haven't even started buying Christmas gifts.
I have been excited to buy these things. It makes me happy to feel like we are making a home. At the same time I see the bill piling up. And I reason that these Christmas purchases are an investment, we will use them over the years.
And so my thoughts return to nesting. To building a home. A place that Jess and I can call our own. That somehow the things we surround ourselves with say something about us and give us comfort.
We've definately been enjoying our first Christmas holiday together. Knowing that in years to come we will remember how we started to nest at Christmas when we got these shiny new things that will one day be worn but will be sacred in our chest of memories.
We also added a new family member this weekend. Dougy. Dougy is a Douglas Fur Christmas Tree. He stands at about 7 feet tall and when you walk in from the cold and step inside our living room its as if you walked into an evergreen forest.


We both like Dougy very much. We also got two nutcrackers. Jess didnt really like them but you cant have Christmas decorations without a couple nutcrackers. I named them Victor and Hugo. It was off the top of my head but it fits. Victor Hugo lived in the early 19th century, the same era as the nutcrackers costumes. This is the era of Napolean Bonaparte, the Count of Monte Cristo, the Three Musketeers.

Since that Friday night Christmas party, I have been asked about life, about marriage several times and have responded by saying, we're nesting. The inquisitor then slightly smiles and nods the head in response.
Well, enough with the nesting. Bring on the gifts!!