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.

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?

Walking in Love and Truth

If we live in the Spirit of the Lord
Then let’s walk according to His Word
You and I can walk in love and truth

Live so they see
Our words and deeds agree

If we live in the Spirit of the Lord
Then let’s walk according to His Word
You and I can walk in love and truth

Walk in the light
‘Cause He is in the light

If we live in the Spirit of the Lord
Then let’s walk according to His Word
You and I can walk in love and truth

You say you do
Does your life prove you’re true?

I Don't Know (Song for the Quakers)

I don’t know what I should do with my life
I don’t know if I should mar-ry me a wife
Or be single

I opened up my Bible and listened real hard
I listened and ah listened ‘til I grew real tahred
An’ I don’t know

(chorus:)
I listened and I read
But all it ever said
Was “boy, whatever you’re doin’ with your life
Do it to the Lord and you can do it right.”

Seems scripture alone can’t come alongside
Seems scripture just don’t help me decide
What I should be

(chorus:)
I listened and I read
But all it ever said
Was “boy, whatever you’re doin’ with your life
Do it to the Lord and you can do it right.”

(2nd chorus:)
I guess I need a friend
Who can tell me more than
Just “boy, whatever you’re doin’ with your life
Do it to the Lord and you can do it right.”

Who can ah ask tuh show me the right way
Who but the Spirit o’ God can show me today
And say more than

Just “boy, whatever you’re doin’ with your life
Do it to the Lord and you can do it right.”