WELL, HERE IT IS!

H A P P Y

N E W

Y E A R!

See...it just can't happen.

A virgin cannot become pregnant and have a child.

That is an anatomical impossibility.

We know that.

The fact that it happened is what makes it a miracle.

What miracle is there to an event that happens tens of thousands of times a day?

None.

But for a virgin to become pregnant and bear a child...

That's a miracle.

And what a son!

(By the way, did anyone notice that she knew ahead of time that it would be a son...even without ultrasound?)

He was not only her son...he was God's son.

That just makes my head spin.

I wish I could figure out how that was done and all that it means.

But I cannot.

All the college, university, post graduate work and seminary training I received never came close to preparing me for its reality.

My wildest imaginations cannot fathom how the Holy Ghost accomplished it.

My most intellectual musings cannot begin to scratch the surface of all that it means.

To say that the birth of Messiah is extraordinary does it no justice whatsoever.

Neither you nor I have the words to express what went on.

This I do know, however: No other birth in the history of the universe has affected mankind like this one.

America, and other countries, too, may try to disparage, deny and denigrate it.

They may try to outlaw it, banish it and ridicule it.

But try as they might, they cannot squelch it.

Not even Wal-Mart could stand up to it.

On this day (yeah, I know, we can reasonably question the actual date) we celebrate the second most meaningful event ever...the birth of Yashua bar Yoseph ben Nazareth; Jesus, the Christ.

(The first occured after it: the resurrection of Christ, without which, Paul wrote, we would all be fools.)

I am so awed by it

So confounded by it

So humbled by it

That all I have left to say is:

MERRY CHRIST MAS!

Denominationally Speaking

Being a politically correct type, a worship leader and not wanting to insult women of a certain hair color, I submit the following:

A worship leader goes to the post office to buy stamps for Christmas cards.

He tells the clerk, "May I have 50 Christmas stamps?"

The clerk asks, "What denomination?

Puzzled, the worship leader exclaims, "God help us!" Has it come to this? Give me six Catholic, 12 Presbyterian, 10 Lutheran and 22 Baptist."

Worship leaders are a unique bunch; a strange blend of creativity, practicality and spirituality that, hopefully, translates into meaningful worship.

However, they have pecular habits.

Do you know how worship leaders turn pages?

Lick left index and middle fingers;
turn pages with right index and middle fingers...
Lick left index and middle fingers;
turn pages with right index and middle fingers...
Lick left index and middle fingers;
turn pages with right index and middle fingers.
(Try this in real life and you'll get the point).

Ode To the New Worship Leader

Here's to the new slick Minister of Music
A most delightful fella.
When he's directing and you're not expecting,
He'll switch to acappella, then
Isn't it a lovely sound,
With no instruments to drown
All of the voices blending so?
Isn't it a pure delight?
Wonder how the Campbellites
Found out about it long ago.
You'll not regret a Sunday operetta,
Just pay your tithe and come on in.
And for religion We'll get a smidgen
Between the special music and the parting hymn.
A-men.....A-women.

A worship leader was out on the lake in his fishing boat.

The Fish and Wildlife officer pulled up beside his boat and declared, "I must come aboard for a safety inspection."

"Welcome aboard," declared the worship leader. "When you're through inspecting, join me for some fishing."

"Will do!" said the officer.

At that point the worship leader pulled out a stick of dynamite, lit its fuse and tossed it in the lake.

It exploded and dozens of fish floated to the surface, which the worship leader just scooped up with his net.

"Hey!" shouted the F & W officer, "Don't you know that's illegal? Why I could fine you $700.00 for each time you do that!"

With that, the worship leader reached into his box, pulled out a stick of dynamite, lit its fuse and tossed it to the Wildlife officer, who caught it in mid air.

As the fuse quickly burned shorter, the worship leader asked, "Well, tell me, now...are you talkin' or fishin?"

Murphy's Factoids

-- Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

-- He who laughs last, thinks slowest.

-- Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

-- Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't.

-- Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.

-- The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of gettingsomething right, there's a 90% probability you'll get it wrong.

-- If you lined up all the cars in the world end to end, someone would be stupid enough to try to pass them, five or six at a time, on a hill, in the fog.

-- If the shoe fits, get another one just like it.

-- The things that come to those who wait will be the things left overby those who got there first.

-- Flashlight: A case for holding dead batteries.

-- The shinbone is a device for finding furniture in a dark room.

-- A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.

(I promise...I'll get to Christmas...hopefully before Christmas of this year.

THE MORONIC OXYMORON REVISITED

In my Sunday School classes over the years I have posed the question that I asked in the blog-before-last.

Here is the question:

If a scientist were able to create life in a test-tube, would that be evidence for or against the intelligent origin of life?

I almost always got the same reaction I got from you, dear blog-reader. A blank stare that seemed to say, "Duhhhhh...what's he talking about?"

Here's the explanation.

If a person is a scientist he/she is supposed to be intelligent.

If a scientist is intelligent, he/she would realize that by simply mixing what already exists (ie:the elements in the test-tube) he/she is not creating, mearly re-arranging.

If the re-arranging of the elements brought forth life, one thing is clear: that life neither "created" itself nor happened by accident.

If it did not happen by itself or by accident, then it must have been by design.

One may conclude, therefore, that the life resulted from intelligent intervention.

If we try to assume that the life happened by itself or by accident, then we must conclude that the scientist is not intelligent. Not an altogether foolish postulation.

It requires the obvious: Life could not possibly have happened by itself or by accident, therefore must have been created by intelligent design, whom we call (upon prompting from Scriptre) God.

I love questions like this, for they reinforce my faith, all of which comes from The Creator, Himself, to begin with.

How cool is that?

FRUSTRATION PERSONIFIED!

For some time, Blogger has had an encouragement to me in my "dashboard" to switch to the new format.

Today I finally gave in.

Guess what! It would not let me change!

Furthermore, I could not comment on many of your blogs which had been changed over because they would not recognize my username and password!

This was not universally true, but seemed random.

There was a link to a lame explanation...something to the effect that they were changing a few at a time.

Then, pray tell, why did they seem so insistant that I change?

Grrrrrrrrrrrrr!

THE MORONIC OXYMORON

Here is a question for you to ponder:

If a scientist were able to create life in a test-tube, would that be evidence for or against the intelligent origin of life?

Montana Cowboy

My sweet wife, Bonnie, has a new web site. Its address is:

http://www.freewebs.com/friendsareagift/index.htm

A mutual friend send a story to the two of us.

Bonnie posted it on her website.

No to be out-done, and to preserve the fine art of blogelony theft, I am posting it, too.

Here it is:


A Montana cowboy was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him.

The driver, a young man in a Baryon suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?"

The cowboy looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure, Why not?"

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.

The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg , GermanyWithin seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored.

He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with e-mail on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy andSays, "You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves."

"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," says the cowboy.

He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then the cowboy says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?"

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?"

You're a Congressman for the U.S. Government," says the cowboy.

"Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"

"No guessing required," answered the cowboy. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about cows, this is a herd of sheep.

"Now give me back my dog."

Ramblin' Prose

I've been listening to different preachers lately.

A good message is priceless. Sadly, I don't hear many.

Scripture dictates the topic of a "Topical Sermon." (As opposed to finding a topic and seaching for some Scripture that supports the point of view. )

The other method of preaching exposes the Scripture verse-by- verse (which I personally like best.)

In either message, the preacher must have a point he wants to get to. (In my humble, but correct opinion, that should be how to be saved and grow closer to God through trust in, and only in, the finished work of Christ at Calvary.)

Each element of the message should lead logically to the next and move the speaker prgressively toward his/her point.

The sermon should end with a climax that points the audience to Jesus.

Instead, most of the sermons I hear go like this:

"Our text is II Hezekiah 4:12

"Ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, chase a rabbit...off topic, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, tell an unrelated joke, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble.

"Anybody here want to come to Jesus?"

I can hardly express my underwhelmment.