Some Thoughts (Seasonal?)

Have you ever noticed...

They start playing christmas music the day after Thanksgiving?

That Thanksgiving gets comparatively short shrift, as a holiday?

That Thanksgiving isn't a huge, overcommercialized holiday?

• Is it because we don't give presents?
• Is it because we don't feel compelled to put up decorations like christmas?
• Is it because it's actually a Christian holiday, rather than only nominally so?

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Why is it christmas that everyone (practically speaking) loves dearly, regardless of what they think of Jesus?

Christmas junk has been in stores since August.

Something possesses non-christians to have a "christmas spirit;" and when I look around, it's not the Holy Spirit.

Why is it that christmas with all its appurtenances is pretty much exactly what I would expect a worldly holiday to be, other than the fact that Christians love it? This smacks of a horrible deception to me, and it's not the non-Christians who are deceived. They know that christmas is all about the presents and the tree and the food.

The Battle

The battle is not won in ornate palaces with stained glass windows. The battle is not won by those who sit and imagine what it will be like when they taste the sweet fruits of victory. The battle is not won by enthusiastic planners of great campaigns. The battle is not won even by the mighty warrior who is the hero of every little boy.

The battle is won by the housewife, the battle is won by the man who provides for his family, the battle is won by the youth in school. The battle is won by those who live day by day uprightly, productively, thoughtfully, persistently, and above all, charitably.

The battle isn't won on sunday mornings. It's won on monday morning, and tuesday mornings, and wednesday mornings, and thursday mornings, and friday mornings, and saturday mornings.

Shouldn't we come on sunday morning, not to get the victory, but to declare the victory that we have won all through the rest of the week?

Something Wrong?

Is there something wrong when:

I witness with trepidation because I can't point to a group of people and say "You see those people? They're Christians. They have the same fantastic life and God-given power that I just told you about. On sunday, let me pick you up, and we'll go to their meeting and you can hear them tell about what God has done in their lives and see for yourself what Christians are like and what they believe."

Is there something wrong when:

Every sunday, like clockwork, I go to another meeting where everyone just sits in their pew and the pastor gets up in the pulpit and talks about who-knows-what for 45 minutes and then I wonder if I should have done more than just sit there and look slightly interested.

Is there something wrong when:

I even consider standing up and telling the next pastor that has the gall to say "Nobody can live a holy life until they get to heaven" that he has no right to stand up there and pass himself off as a man of God who is teaching what God wants to be taught, and that unless he is going to teach that we must be holy even as He is holy just as the holy men of God taught and wrote as the Holy Spirit inspired them to teach and write in the holy scriptures, then he should stop calling himself a preacher of God's word.

Is there something wrong when:

It makes me sick to think that all those people are just soaking up this teaching that sin is a necessary, though unwanted, component of a Christian life -- and hardly anybody knows enough to even realize that there's something wrong with that picture; or if they do, they either don't care enough to say something or they aren't brave enough to speak out against it.

Is there something wrong here?