What Time Is It?

I'm having trouble keeping track of the time - not the hours of the day but the seasons of the year. This time of year is really mixed up for you - Thanksgiving, Black Friday (seems to have earned a special holiday status of it's own), Advent (new for me - we saw the first coming of the King), and Christmas (good reason to keep celebrating the birth of God as man!).

But they all seem to be jumbled up with each other. Thanksgiving is buried with advertisements for Black Friday which is all about shopping for Christmas and - what happened to Advent? Lost in the shuffle.

I heard some interesting sermons at what has become home church for Dr Luke - Our Savior Lutheran Church in Gladwin, MI. Pastor Matthew Schultz preached on Thanksgiving about being thankful for God's gifts instead of being discontented after being bombarded with all the advertisements - you really can't seem to escape from them... and it appears you really NEED a lot of things you didn't know about. And then this past Sunday he preached about 'Black Ops' - being ready for the mission we have as Christ's followers. An interesting comparison of the birth of Christ to a covert operation, God inserting an 'agent' behind enemy lines; and then our part as 'agents' of Christ in our world.

In the end I leave you with a favorite word I used in the Gospel (pay special attention to verse 14, 42, 44 and 58) that I wrote: agalliao and agallisis - which loosely translates to PARTY!!! Exceeding great joy! We are joyful in the extreme these days, not because we have so much, or can get so much on sale, but because we are loved so much by Jesus who joined us in our humanity and saved us from our sin.