Last night at Kairos, Pastor Mike talked about emotional resilience in the context of the story in Genesis 37 of Joseph. This is the Joseph who had God-given dreams about his destiny. Throughout his story, it seems that poor old Joseph keeps getting punched in the face by life. He was thrown into a pit and later sold into slavery by jealous brothers, he was falsely accused of sexual misconduct by his master’s wife, and he spent two years in prison for the crime he didn’t commit.

Yet the key phrase that defines Joseph in the midst of his troubles was that “God was with him.” Whatever anyone else meant for evil and for harm, God turned to good. Spoiler alert: In fact, God used Joseph’s story to bring about the redemption of a whole race of people who later became Israel.

Two things from Mike’s sermon stood out to me. One was that Joseph trusted in the Dream-giver more than he trusted in his dreams. Even when his circumstances didn’t match his calling, Joseph clung to faith in the God of his great-grandfather Abraham, his grandfather Isaac, and his father Jacob.

Also, he was able to frame his story within the context of God’s greater story. He grew up hearing all about how God had led Abraham to leave a comfortable existence and follow Him without knowing the destination. Joseph heard all the stories time and time again of how God was faithful to fulfill all His covenant promises.

As a wise pastor once said, what you think and what you feel will sometimes lie to you, so you trust in what you know to be true. You trust in the same God who was with Joseph and who is still able to deliver you today.

“To wait upon God is not to sit with folded hands and do nothing, but to wait as men who wait for the harvest. The farmer does not wait idly but with intense activity; he keeps industriously ‘at it’ until the harvest. To wait upon God is the perfection of activity. We are told to ‘rest in the Lord,’ not to rust.” (Oswald Chambers, The Place of Help).

Waiting on God is not a passive sport. It’s like the farmer cultivating his field, preparing it to receive the rains that will come. It’s you and I cultivating our lives, preparing our hearts, and removing anything in our lives that might hinder our usefulness to God. It’s being obedient to what God has already revealed to you. It’s being faithful in small things, wisely stewarding the talents God has given you, so that God will be able to trust you with bigger things.

Ultimately, waiting the right way means that you trust the Giver more than the gifts. You trust that God is good whether you receive what you’ve prayed for and longed for or not. In God’s economy, if God withholds your desire from you, it is only to give you something better — something that you would have asked for in the first place if you knew then what God knows.

May we learn to wait well in 2022.

I think if you had to pick just one resolution for the new year, this would be a good one.

Even if you have other goals for 2022, you can make knowing Christ the foundation for all the rest. As I’ve learned, anything else won’t last. Any other goal outside of knowing Jesus and being found in Him won’t satisfy. Any other aim will ultimately fall short.

“To truly know him meant letting go of everything from my past and throwing all my boasting on the garbage heap. It’s all like a pile of manure to me now, so that I may be enriched in the reality of knowing Jesus Christ and embrace him as Lord in all of his greatness.

My passion is to be consumed with him and not cling to my own “righteousness” based in keeping the written Law. My only ‘righteousness’ will be his, based on the faithfulness of Jesus Christ—the very righteousness that comes from God. And I continually long to know the wonders of Jesus and to experience the overflowing power of his resurrection working in me. I will be one with him in his sufferings and become like him in his death. Only then will I be able to experience complete oneness with him in his resurrection from the realm of death.

I admit that I haven’t yet acquired the absolute fullness that I’m pursuing, but I run with passion into his abundance so that I may reach the purpose for which Christ Jesus laid hold of me to make me his own. I don’t depend on my own strength to accomplish this; however I do have one compelling focus: I forget all of the past as I fasten my heart to the future instead. I run straight for the divine invitation of reaching the heavenly goal and gaining the victory-prize through the anointing of Jesus” (Philippians 3:8-14).

We’re only two days into the new year, and already we’ve gone from shorts weather to snow and sleet. We probably came a few degrees shy of reaching all four seasons in 48 hours. On top of that, there were severe storm warnings yesterday afternoon. Basically, it was a typical Tennessee weather weekend.

I’ve become jaded to all the extreme temperature changes. Dropping 40 degrees in one day? Bring it on. From sandals to snow in 24 hours? What else you got? At this point, an ice storm in July wouldn’t faze me.

Imagine if you live in a place like San Diego where it’s a constant 72 all year round. All that boring perfect weather. No wonder everybody’s moving to Middle Tennessee. Predictable weather is as passé as parachute pants. Besides, it’s fun not knowing whether you need to put out a winter coat and lined jeans or a t-shirt and flip flops to wear in the morning.

If it actually does snow? That’s when the wacky frivolity really begins. People around here don’t know what to do with snow. Everything shuts down when there’s a 1/2 inch of snow on the ground. That’s probably for the best, since almost no one knows how to drive in the rain, much less in snow and ice.

My favorite part is that if you don’t like the current weather, just wait around for a day or two. It’ll change.

Well, I did something unexpected recently. I got a record player (or as the cool kids call it, a turntable).

It was a Christmas present that I asked for and only halfway expected to receive. Still, it will be an interesting and fun journey as I rediscover all things vinyl.

First of all, I am absolutely not an audiophile. I don’t necessarily think everything sounds better on vinyl. Second, despite all that I’ve said up to this point, I call them records. I’m not hipster enough to call them vinyl out loud.

But there is something transcendent about dropping that needle on to the record and and hearing that telltale crackly sound, almost like logs burning on a fire. You have to be more deliberate about selecting a song or an album. It’s not like going to Spotify and listening to an artist on random. You pretty much have to listen to the albums in their original order.

Also, there’s a certain joy in holding opening up the sleeve and pulling the record out of its jacket. You can feel those tiny grooves that the needle on the record player will turn into glorious sounds coming out of your speakers.

I had a record player a long, long time ago. It was long enough ago that I can’t even begin to remember what kind it was. All I know was that’s how my introduction to and love for music began. And since I’m old school, it only makes sense to go old school musically now and then.

“Have you ever missed an opportunity because of one decision? Have you ever lived with questions wondering how different the outcome would have been? Have you ever lived with a measure of regret over the road not traveled? Did you make a decision like this in 2020? The good news is, God has ways of making it work out for good, even if our decision was bad at the time. Romans8v28″

I stole this quote from someone on social media about 9 years ago. I updated it to make it work for the current year and situation. They key to a happy new year is knowing God has ways of working all things — including pandemics and natural disasters and bad decisions — for good.

My hope isn’t contingent on the absence of Coronavirus or political strife or famines or wars or storms or anything like that. My hope isn’t predicated on me or those around me making better choices. My Bible tells me that in this world, I can expect trouble, but it also tells me that Jesus has already overcome all of that. So my hope doesn’t rest on getting the “right” politicians elected or the “right” laws passed. My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus and His blood and His righteousness and His finished work on the cross. Nothing less. Nothing more.

That makes a whole lot of sense. It seems to me that your perspective determines how you see things. Sometimes, it determines what you see as well. If you only focus on the negative, what’s wrong with the world, and how people in general are bad, then you will see only what’s negative, wrong, and bad. But if you choose to look for the good, you will often find it.

It’s easy to write 2021 off as another year lost to the never-ending pandemic, but you can also see it through the framework of blessings if that’s what you choose to focus on and seek out for others and yourself.

Plus, I’ve noticed that sometimes singing helps me not to pay as much attention to my sore feet.

I don’t know what it is about colder weather that makes me sleepy, but lately, I am in perpetual need of a nap. Of course, it could be that it gets dark at 3 pm. Or it could be the grey rainy days we’ve been having of late.

I sincerely regret all the naps I skipped or pretended to take when I was little. I wish I could have those back. Or I wish I could have rollover nap minutes from all that sleep I missed out on back when. These days, all I need is a comfy chair and I get sleepy. I must be getting old or something.

My favorite days are those where I don’t have to be anywhere super early and I can turn off the alarm and sleep until whenever I feel like waking up. Lately, that tends to be around 9 am, as opposed to sleeping in until noon like I probably did when I was a teenager. But I still love that moment when I wake up at 5 am and realize that it’s Saturday and then promptly roll over and go back to sleep.

So seriously, when does that hibernating thing start? ‘Cause I am all over that.

That’s one of my new favorite Christmas quotes. It blows my mind that the God who is bigger than creation itself, who spoke that very creation into existence, became as small and helpless as an infant. The God who exists outside of time — who created time — stepped into time and was wrapped snugly in swaddling cloths and laid in a manger where animals fed.

The same God who became small is bigger than anything you or I will ever face. He’s bigger than the people who hurt us or the jobs that stress us out or the tragedy that takes our loved ones away from us. God is big enough and strong enough to hold our whole world together. The very word glory has the connotation of weightiness, as in God is able to keep all the pieces of our lives from flying apart and keep them in orbit. He’s able to get us through the valley of the shadow of death.

He is God, and He’s here to stay.

“Somehow I realized that songs, music, good feelings, beautiful liturgies, nice presents, big dinners, and many sweet words do not make Christmas. Christmas is saying ‘yes’ to something beyond all emotions and feelings. Christmas is saying ‘yes’ to a hope based on God’s initiative, which has nothing to do with what I think or feel. Christmas is believing that the salvation of the world is God’s work and not mine. Things will never look just right or feel just right. If they did, someone would be lying… But it is into this broken world that a child is born who is called Son of the Most High, Prince of Peace, Savior” (Henri Nouwen, The Road to Daybreak).

It’s easy to make Christmas an event. You spend roughly a month or so getting everything just right, buying all the presents, decorating the house up, wearing all the festive clothes, and then bam! it’s over. All that frantic activity for one day. Then there’s the post-Christmas letdown.

But if Christmas becomes a state of mind — keeping in your mind’s eye the picture of the holy infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in the manger, surrounded by Joseph and Mary and shepherds — then the joy can stay after the presents are put away and the decorations go back in the box and the festive attire returns to the back of your closet. You can conjure up warm memories of Advent and Christmas at any point of the year and not just in December.

I admit that I have OCD — Obsessive Christmas Disorder. I love the season of Christmas maybe a little too much. That’s why I tend to go overboard on the ornaments and the shirts and the sweaters and everything else Santa and Jingle Bells and Deck the Halls. I have a dream where I own a big enough house where I can have a dedicated Christmas room with the tree still lit and decorated where I can go when I need a break from the world.

But if I keep the spirit of Christmas, I don’t have to wait another 364 more days to experience the joy. I can carry it with me all through the year.