Huevos Rancheros, Fat Cats, and Christmas?

My mind is going a mile a minute today.  Listening in isn't something that I usually recommend.  A day in my head can be a frightening thing, but today it is amusing me....and making me cry....and I want to share it with you.

Huevos Rancheros  - my lunch.  Sounds much better in Spanish.

Scrambled eggs and salsa just doesn't sound as yummy.  Mine didn't look as yummy as the picture, but yummy it was. (For the record I am still starving...maybe I need huevos X dos!)

Christmas isn't a season....is it?  I mean if you are a Bible believing Christian, then you ought to behave like it is December 365 days out of the year, not just the 25 days leading up to Christmas day.

Maybe I am wrong...but seems to me that December is the season where the world lets us get away with talking about Jesus...as long as He stays a baby in the manger and I bring a gift with the me no one gets very upset about the noise I make.  However, just because it is December doesn't mean that the message is any different.  I ought to share it all of the time.

When the cat leaves you a message outside the box it is time to do something about the box.  However, you do NOT have to feed the cat every time it meows at you as you walk through the kitchen.

I want to give my friends and family great gifts. I want to make them smile and feel encouraged.

People are like snowflakes, we are all different, all fragile, all in need of a fresh breath of life to come in and boost us over the next hurdle.  Pain is pain - it really doesn't matter what is causing the pain, if you feel it, it is real and I should respect that.  I don't need to compare your pain to mine, or mine to yours.  It is all the same.  We are all in need of a cure......

Christmas is about the cure, not the baby.

I believe in the Bible.  I don't understand all of it, but I choose to believe all of it anyway.  I figure God will fill me in on the answers that I need, and the rest of them I will let him handle.

In it I am told that God created the world and everything in it with the words from his mouth.  This in itself is amazing.  My words hold nothing like that kind of power.

When He was done creating, He set man in charge of everything.  It was a well oiled clock, new out of the package.  All man had to do was pick fruit and enjoy life with God.

There was ONE rule, "Do NOT eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." Can you imagine living in a place where that was the only rule.  Wow!  AND you get to wander around and visit with THE Creator every day.  We could have asked Him what was up with the giraffe's long neck or the platypus bill.  All of the whys in this world and we would be free to ask them of the one person who could give us the right answer.  Just the thought makes me giddy.

There was no laundry to do either!  Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed.  What a gig.

Didn't last long.  I don't know how long it lasted, but the Bible doesn't waste much time in telling me that they broke the rule.  That one rule, the only rule they had to keep, BUSTED.  With it man's eyes were opened and the beautiful creation, that clock right out of the package began to crumble.  Creation was no longer perfect.

You and I live with imperfection all the time.  It is just how things are....now.  God on the other hand does not.  I don't know why.  He puts up with a lot, but not that.  Maybe it is His one rule.  I don't know. However, if He is big enough and powerful enough to create everything with a word then I'm going to let Him have that one.  God requires perfection.

At this point man was, excuse the expression, screwed.  Kicked out of the garden, needing to work for his living, no more walking with God, AND now he had to wash laundry too.  We've been messed up ever since.

All of that happens in the first few chapters of the first book.  Kind of depressing isn't it.  Kind of like the world we live in.  Broken.  Painful.  Hopeless.

BUT

This is the good part, pay attention.  BUT God (the two best words in any language) knew all along what was going to happen and had a plan to fix things.  (He had the plan to fix it before we broke it.  How cool is that?!)

He set His plan in motion to fix things a very long time ago.  Basically, the plan is called Jesus.  Yes, Jesus the baby in the manger that gets celebrated at Christmas.  That Jesus.  The point isn't Jesus though, the point is that he came to fix the problem.

God sent his only begotten son, Jesus, so that we could be reunited with Him, God, even though we are NOT perfect, broken, laundry doers.  

Jesus fixes the problem once and for all.  God knows we are broken.  God knows we are going to screw up again and again.  God knows that the world as it stands now is broken - full of death and decay - not at all like the creation He started with.  Jesus came so that he could die, like the animal sacrifices of long ago, he died to make things right.  Unlike the lambs slaughtered in the Old Testament, Jesus's sacrifice is permanent.

BUT the world is still broken.  Yep, it is.  But the Bible says that one day Jesus will come again and in That day it will be fixed for good.  Return to Eden, life with God face to face, no laundry!

Christmas isn't the baby, or the gifts we give each other, or evergreen trees with pretty lights, it is so very much more.  When everything else fades, when December 25, 2013 is a long lost memory, and the let down after the party hits, remember that there is another Christmas coming.

That, my friend, is the most precious thing I own.  The faith that one day it will all be fixed.  The knowledge that God has a plan for our good.  

The most precious thing I own was and is free.  I didn't have to do a thing, no sacrifices, no offerings, no special prayer, or perfect behavior required.  All I did was choose to believe that it is true, and the weight of the big broken world that I live in was lifted from my shoulders.  I accepted a gift freely offered.

I've done my best to offer the same gift to you.  With it may the joy of The Christmas to come fill you from head to toe and light you from within.  May it warm you when you are cold and fill you when you are hungry (that and a tasty meal which I would attempt to feed you were you sitting next to me.)  and may it make you giggle just a little the next time you are faced with a mountain of dirty laundry.

Merry Christmas my friends!