Against Nothingness

December on my blog... fail.  Back at the end of November  I pretty much gave myself permission to not blog.  This was a singularly bad idea as that permission became my banner for the month.  I raised my head from the black depths of self-fulfilling prophecies briefly on the 9th with my only post of the month.   Shockingly, if I were to make a top 3 lists of post views in December, you would find it at the top.   What did I learn? That with no intention to write, it just doesn't happen.  That I find it very easy to fill my time with other things.  That I miss blogging and writing when I leave it for so long.  That blogging and writing are not  the same thing.  That preaching really does suck up a lot of energy.  So, nothing new.  When the last Advent Sunday passed I thought to myself, 'Hmm, maybe I will blog a bit before Christmas.'  I even started a post.  But let me tell you, nothing kills the creativ...

Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year.  Not so much because of all the stuff, like decorations and presents and parties (though I like these too), but because of the story.  The advent story is so full of goodness.  I hear it every year, and each year I learn more.  This year I have been thinking about how messy it all was.  Mute old man, pregnant teenager, displaced families, murdered infants, and on and on.  I know, we like to make it all clean.  Silent nights, pretty cradles, and clean animals.  But Jesus was born in a cave surrounded by stinky animals and I am pretty sure he cried.  For songs about Jesus birth I much prefer this song , from Behold the Lamb of God .  Things were not just messy on earth as a consequence of Jesus coming down to us.  They got messy in heaven too.  Take a look at Revelation 12 if you want to know what I mean.  We dare not forget this side of Christmas. You might wonder wh...