Presby-Musings

As a pastor, I often find the scheduling of the Fourth Sunday of Advent to be a bit off---especially this year.  The fact that the final Sunday in this season of expectation is literally the day before   Christmas Eve offers a temptation of sorts. I'll call this temptation The Temptation of Tomorrow . Tomorrow is fairly tempting in its own right, especially when Today is not shaping up to be that spectacular, if you know what I mean. But when Tomorrow is Christmas Eve... that's a whole other level of temptation, my friend, especially since we find ourselves at the end of a very long, and difficult Advent. Let me ask you something.  Are you limping to the finish line this year?  Are you ready for all of this to be over and for December 25th to finally arrive?  Are you feeling a bit battered by the gauntlet of shopping traffic and other assorted obstacles that you have had to face each and every blessed Advent day? I feel you. And so I give you a sto...

When I was a kid, one of the characters in the Bible that intrigued me more than most was John the Baptist .  I remember reading the description of this wild man from the desert, who preached that the Messiah was coming and baptized people in a river, and my imagination was sparked.  John the Baptist looked, dressed and acted like a lunatic. It was said that he wore camel hair clothes---not the cool, hipster sort of camel hair, but real, gross, wiry camel hair that smelled like camels.  And he had a leather belt tied around his waist to hold the smelly camel hair in place.  I always imagined this belt was big and wide---the sort of belt that a pirate would wear to stuff his pistols and sword into while he swashbuckled. Then came the kicker:  John the Baptist ate locusts and wild honey.  This freaked me out as a kid. Heck, it freaks me out as an adult.  I ate a chocolate covered grasshopper once.  It was crunchy and tasted like chocolate, but...