Some things are bigger than football. This man’s life is in danger. Please pray for Damar Hamlin.

I recently started reading a book that I’ve had in my collection for quite a while but had never gotten around to. I don’t have a good reason, except maybe I forgot I had it.

It’s not what you’d expect if you’re only familiar with Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. It started as him writing a letter from Santa to his then 3 year old son as a way of explaining why Santa might not always bring him everything he asks for. It progresses with some additional characters showing up to make things more unpredictable and interesting. It’s basically a book for kids.

But I like it. It stirs up my sometimes dormant childlike imagination. It reminds me of how I saw Christmas when I was very little, and how Santa just had to be real to bring me all those wonderful presents. It takes me back to those Christmas Eve nights when I was so excited for the next morning that I could hardly bring myself to sleep.

I recommend the centenary edition that came out in 2020. It has reproductions of Tolkien’s original handwritten letters, along with the envelopes. It might be something to read to your young children (I’d read it to my cat, but I don’t think she has the attention span for it just yet).

As much as I love ebooks and audiobooks, there’s just something about holding a physical book in your hands that you can see and feel and smell all at once. But I digress.

Letters From Father Christmas, Centenary Edition https://a.co/d/0x9nisq

With only 16 minutes left in 2022, I’m reminded of an old favorite. It’s a poem by Deitrich Bonhoeffer about New Year’s Day. May it be our prayer for the soon to arrive 2023:

“With every power for good to stay and guide me,
comforted and inspired beyond all fear,
I’ll live these days with you in thought beside me,
and pass, with you, into the coming year.

While all the powers of Good aid and attend us,
boldly we’ll face the future, be it what may.
At even, and at morn, God will befriend us,
and oh, most surely on each new year’s day

The old year still torments our hearts, unhastening:
the long days of our sorrow still endure.
Father, grant to the soul thou hast been chastening
that Thou hast promised—the healing and the cure.

Should it be ours to drain the cup of grieving
even to the dregs of pain, at thy command,
we will not falter, thankfully receiving
all that is given by thy loving hand.

But, should it be thy will once more to release us
to life’s enjoyment and its good sunshine,
that we’ve learned from sorrow shall increase us
and all our life be dedicate as thine.

To-day, let candles shed their radiant greeting:
lo, on our darkness are they not thy light,
leading us haply to our longed-for meeting?
Thou canst illumine e’en our darkest night.

When now the silence deepens for our harkening,
grant we may hear thy children’s voices raise
from all the unseen world around us darkening
their universal paean, in thy praise.

While all the powers of Good aid and attend us,
boldy we’ll face the future, be it what way.
At even, and at morn, God will befriend us,
And oh, most surely on each new year’s day!”

I think if I ever become unexpectedly rich beyond my wildest imaginings, then I want a Narnia library in my mansion. Not just any kind of library will do. It has to be a Narnia one.

Basically, it’s a wardrobe with a door at the back that leads to a secret room filled with books and wood paneling and comfy chairs and a fireplace. I tried to screenshot a picture from a video, and even though it’s a bit blurry and has writing all over it, you can mostly see what it looks like.

Most guys my age or younger dream of having a man cave, but I’d rather have a room devoted to quiet reading (and possibly quiet drinking of hot tea or coffee). I might store my Christmas tree and decorations back there after the holiday season is over, so I could get my Narnia and Christmas fix all in one.

If I ever get one, you are all invited to visit. And if you get one, please invite me over some time. I’ll even bring my Narnia books with me.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wasted my weeks waiting for the weekend. I wonder how many weekdays I missed because I was so focused on Friday, specifically 4:30 pm on Friday afternoon (and not a second later).

I confess that I’ve never ever wanted to rush through a night to get to the morning. If anything, my wish tends to be for 5 more minutes, please, after my alarm goes off.

But it’s true. How many of us miss so much in our present because we’re preoccupied with the past or intently focused on any number of possible futures? How we neglect our childhoods wanting to be grown up. We wasted our singleness wanting to be married. We rush through the early part of marriage in order to get to having kids, and then we rush through their childhood wanting them to be grown up and move out to have our lives back. So many of us are never satisfied with where we are because of wanting to get to the next step, the next phase.

I’ve learned that I miss God when I look back and look ahead because God is right in front of me. He is speaking to me in the present, and I can’t hear him when I’m listening to voices from the past or trying to figure out my future. I’ve often created a whirlwind of noise and thoughts to where the still small voice gets lost in the cacophony.

Comparison may be the thief of joy, but lusting for that fabled future comfort is the thief of enjoying our lives now.

“Wherever you are, be all there! Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God” (Jim Elliot).

“Sad news: The guy who invented the ‘wind chill factor’ just passed away.

He was 86. But he felt like he was only 65″ (stolen from Brant Hansen’s page).

Wind chill is weird. At least to me. You can throw in factors like humidity and wind and then you get a new temperature. But it’s not the real temperature. It’s sorta like a fake temperature designed to throw you off and make you put on more clothing than is necessary. Maybe it will make you go to Old Navy and buy more scarves and gloves, or maybe you’ll end up at Starbucks with a venti Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate.

I admit I like cold weather. To a point. Add in wind chill and it can get extra annoying, especially around the face, neck, and ears areas. But if I absolutely had to choose between wind chill and hot humidity, I’ll take the wind chill every time. You can add layers and run your hands under warm water and drink hot stuff to warm up, but there’s only so much you can take off before it’s illegal and immoral and you’re “banned from Wal-Mart.”

Still, my ideal is somewhere between 40-60 . . . without wind chill, please.

I’m a bit behind on cultural phenomenons, but I finally broke down and watched the Baz Luhrmann Elvis movie. It’s supposed to be a biographical movie about Elvis, but I also understand that it’s a Baz Luhrmann movie first and foremost. That means lots of flash and spectacle, lots of fast-moving and colorful visuals.

I can’t speak to the factual accuracy of the movie. I was not there. I can speak to the fact that Austin Butler absolutely captures the essence of Elvis as the world saw him. It tries to get all the facets of the person known as Elvis Presley, not just the good parts. It shows that Elvis was a complicated individual with struggles and personal demons but also a heart to make his world better the best way he knew how.

I noticed that the film almost entirely omitted Elvis’ love for gospel music. Throughout his career, Elvis recorded many sacred songs as well as inserting them into his live shows. Again, I can’t speak for Elvis’ personal beliefs, but I know that he was deeply influenced and informed by gospel music of both black and white varieties.

There’s a part of the movie that made me a bit sad. It’s one where Elvis is lamenting that he will soon be 40 and is certain that no one will remember him after he’s gone. If only he had known how wrong he was. Elvis has made and continues to make more money after his passing than he ever made when he was alive. He’s one of those rare few artists who only need to be introduced by their first names and instantly, you know exactly who it is.

Ultimately, as the film points out, his legacy wasn’t in the amount of gold records he had or how many sold-out concerts he gave or how many millions he made. It was about giving love to his fans throughout the entirety of both his career and his life. It was a legacy of sacrificial love.

That’s not a bad legacy to leave behind.

Well, we’ve reached that time of the year when we’re confused, full of cheese, and unsure of the day. I know yesterday was Christmas. I know today is Boxing Day. All I know about tomorrow is that it’s most likely a Tuesday. It’s also possibly the 3rd day of Christmas, featuring three turtle doves.

I could go for some good cheese lately. Maybe some queso and chips at a good Mexican restaurant. I actually ordered queso at a Mexican restaurant lately, but the waiter apparently never heard me and I decided at some point that I didn’t really need any since I already had fish tacos.

Something about this time of year that makes me want to eat all the food. Especially if the food has chocolate and/or peanut butter involved. I should probably specify. I don’t really want to eat all the celery or all the kale. I do want to eat all the foods that are bad for me but taste good to me. Especially of the chocolate and peanut butter variety.

2023 is what I start living right and eating right and being sad. Until then, I have 5 more days to be festive, confused, and full of cheese. Merry Day after the Day after Christmas!

“We have not come like Eastern kings
With gifts upon the pommel lying.
Our hands are empty, and we came
Because we heard a baby crying.

We have not come like questing knights
With fiery swords and banners flying.
We heard a call and hurried here –
The call was like a baby crying.

But we have come with open hearts
From places where the torch is dying.
We seek a manger and a cross
Because we heard a baby crying” (Philip Britts).

 “How proper it is that Christmas should follow Advent. For him who looks toward the future, the manger is situated on Golgotha, and the cross has already been raised in Bethlehem” (Dag Hammarskjöld).

If you look at the whole of Jesus’ life, then you know that Christmas and Easter are not opposites in any way. In fact, you could almost say that they are one continuous holiday. Jesus’ mission started in the manger and led to the cross. His first recorded words were “I must be about my Father’s business” and His last were “It is finished.” Everything in between was His Father’s business. Everything.

Our business should be the same as Jesus — being about our Father’s business. The mission of my church is to be able to “engage the whole person with the whole gospel of Jesus Christ anywhere, anytime, with anybody.” Just as Jesus came to seek and to save the lost, we’re here to help people find Jesus. Better yet, we’re here to lead people to Jesus.

That’s not a Christmas Day or an Easter Sunday thing. That’s a 365 days out of the year thing. That’s an every day thing.

This comes from The Last Battle, the concluding book in the Chronicles of Narnia. In this book, we find that the door to the stable is a gateway to another world, a sort of new Narnia. But the reference is one every believer should get — the Creator of the universe born as a helpless infant.

Just as that infant contained within the stable was (and is) bigger than our whole world, so is Christmas bigger than one day. That’s helpful to remember during the post-Christmas Day letdown that inevitably occurs leading into January.

But the spirit of Christmas remains. The infant whose birth we celebrate on this day doesn’t live in our hearts one day of the year, but all the days of all the years (to paraphrase a line from the movie A Christmas Carol).

God is bigger than Christmas, especially the commercial spectacle we’ve turned it into. God is bigger than one day out of a calendar year. God is so much bigger than most of us have made Him out to be, which is really just a slightly stronger version of ourselves. God is the only hope the world ever had, vastly superior to any other, completely other than any of us, and of course much, much bigger than the universe and everything in it.

Am I saying you should watch Christmas movies all year round and keep your decorations up in July? Maybe. I am saying that that hopeful feeling you get with Christmas shouldn’t die out on December 26. It should live on just as the infant who was the Word made flesh lives on and lives to intercede for those He loves.

So merry Christmas 365 days out of the year, 24/7, May it always be focused on Jesus and may it always be joyful.