Pastor Tim’s Blog

CHRISTMAS MUSINGS…

As I write this on the morning of December 23rd, I’m feeling pretty good about being ready for Christmas! Presents are purchased, all our wrapping is done, my messages for Christmas Eve and for the Sunday after Christmas are prepared, and I already did my first grandfatherly task of assembling a gift we’ll be giving our new granddaughter on Christmas morning. I’m ready!

I will confess though to a little melancholy this Christmas, as it’s the first time in many years that we won’t be traveling to spend days with my parents in between Christmas and New Years—and seeing other family members who will gather there. And we won’t be with two of our three kids and their spouses at all over Christmas. (We spent Thanksgiving with our son and his wife and are choosing to wait until the end of January to make a trip to see our daughter and her husband in Ohio when our grandbaby “Katelyn Nicole” is born!) And while we’ll have a great Christmas dinner with our daughter and son-in-law who live nearby, along with our new 4-year-old granddaughter, there’s still something within me that longs for the whole family to be together “like it used to be.”

I’m feeling checked in my complaining though. I recently had cause to reflect on how blessed I am in so many ways. It’s almost not fair that Cindy and I have been so blessed, for I know a lot of really wonderful people who have to struggle in so many ways that are foreign to us. I recently read a couple of facts that poked a hole in my complaints—
• If you have food in your refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75% of this world.
• If you have money in the bank and in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace, you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealthiest.
• If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture or the pangs of starvation, you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.
Wow! So much for my complaining!

So, I’m counting my blessings today, and choosing to approach Christmas in a spirit of joy and peace and gratitude—rejoicing that Jesus our Savior is Immanuel, God With Us! What greater blessing could any of us experience in life than to know God’s love and His grace and His abiding Presence? What else really matters in the long haul?

Joyfully,

Tim Pusey