Scott's Thoughts

One great Christmas

My hopes for Christmas this year were pretty simple: don't get sick. After spending last Christmas day in bed with a stomach virus (with Meredith next door in her bed with the same virus!), I just wanted to be healthy for the day. I'm glad to say this year's Christmas met and exceeded my hopes!

My parents drove all the way from Big Sky country (Montana) to be with us for the week. On Christmas Eve, we had a special service at the Doerfels' house with lots of hymn singing and Scripture reading. I gave a brief devotional message on the sacrifice God made in giving up his Son for our salvation. Part of the message was telling the story of the "Gift of the Magi", by O. Henry. If you've never read this story, read it sometime. You'll enjoy it.

We had a "normal" Sunday morning (as normal as it gets on Sunday mornings!), getting ready for church. We had a good time of worship and fellowship at church. (I'm glad to say that nobody suggested we shut the doors for Christmas day!)

After the service, we came home to eat and open presents. My mom made Swedish Tea Ring, a Johnson family tradition. After lunch, the fun began. My favorite gift was from my wife (with some help from her parents) - promised airfare, lodging, and tickets to a St. Louis Cardinals game. Since they are playing in a brand-new stadium next year, I can't wait to go and check it out. My second favorite gift was an mp3 player from Robyn's dad. I felt like a little kid again playing with my new toy as I tried to figure out how to use it. I'm still working on it. The highlight of the gift opening was the unveiling of a home-made dollhouse that my parents made for the girls. My mom spent hours creating this cute little two-bedroom home, complete with furniture, decorations, a five-member family, and even a little golden retriever. The girls loved it, of course!

The next day, Monday, this being an Oklahoma "winter", my dad and I played 18 holes of golf in Chickasha. Then, for the next few days, we did some fun things with my parents: going to dowtown OKC, watching a video ("Bambi"), and playing two games, Cranium and Settlers of Cataan.

All in all, a great Christmas! Only 360 more days until Christmas next year!

Grace e-mail bulletin - 12/19/05

J.I. Packer on the Christmas spirit

One of my favorite Christian authors is J. I. Packer. He has a gift for communicating theological truths in a clear, succinct, and precise way. Last Sunday, I cited a passage from his book "Knowing God" in which Packer speaks of the Incarnation. I thought it would be worth putting on my blog since it is a perspective on Christmas we don't often consider. As Christians, our perennial concern with Christmas is the way it has become an orgy of consumerism and materialism instead of a time to reflect on the birth of Christ and celebrate the coming of the Savior into the world.

However, there is another aspect to the Incarnation that we sometimes miss. And that is, the pattern Jesus has set for us in his laying aside the riches and glory of heaven to bear the ignonimy of being born a human being, his coming in the "likeness of sinful flesh" (Romans 8:3). Speaking of 2 Corinthians 8:9 ("For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich."), Packer writes:

"...the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor - spending and being spent - to enrich their fellow humans, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others - and not just their own friends - in whatever way there seems need" (Knowing God, pg. 64).

If we can redeem the crass worldliness of our culture's Christmas celebration, it will be both by pointing others to the Savior in the manger, and by putting on Christ-likeness in lives of humble, self-denying service to others in the name of that Savior.

Grace e-mail bulletin - 12/15/05

The whole Bible in one year

One of the great privileges of being a pastor is the opportunity to spend extended time each week in the study of Scripture. It is also a responsibility; after all, preachers are supposed to know their Bibles! Having grown up not reading the Bible, I feel a need to play "catch-up" in learning the Word of God. For that reason, for the last few years, I've committed myself to reading through the entire Bible in the calendar year.

I say this not to heap praise on myself, or to suggest I've become an expert in Scripture (in the course of my ministry, I am often made painfully aware of my lack of expertise), but to encourage you to do the same. Reading through the Bible, I mean ALL the Bible - even the geneaologies and law codes - is a daunting task that takes more than a little perseverance. But, God will bless you if you do it.

I thought I'd list seven lessons I've learned from reading the whole Bible in a year. Here they are:

1. There are more sinners than saints in the Bible.

Adam and Eve were sinners. The patriarchs were sinners. The judges were sinners. The kings of Israel were sinners. The disciples were sinners. Evidently, God wants to impress upon us something about his grace, not man's goodness!

2. God is concerned about life here on earth.

Are Christians "so heavenly minded that they're no earthly good"? Not if they read their Bibles. The Lord cares about how we treat others, our relationships, our attitude and care for the weak and outcast, our stewardship of the created things he puts under our care, just to mention a few things in this regard. God didn't save us by taking us out of the world, but he saved us by coming into our world.

3. God deals with both individuals and groups of people.

Individualistic approaches to faith (ala Billy Graham and American evangelicalism), and conceptions of salvation focused exclusively on God's people as a body (ala N.T. Wright), both appear un-balanced in light of the Scripture's equal concern for the person and the church. The Bible speaks to both "me", and "we".

4. God's time is not our time.

Thousands of years passed from God's first promise of a Savior (Genesis 3:15) to the coming of Christ. The writings of the Bible itself span centuries. God works on his timetable, not ours! Patience breeds trust and fosters hope.

5. God is sovereign.

Even where the text doesn't mention God (e.g., the book of Esther), he is there causing all things to fall out exactly according to his eternal plan (Ephesians 1:11). Wow!

6. The Bible is full of hope.

Despite the sometimes dark and disturbing depictions of the corruption of humanity, and the sin even of God's people, there is throughout the Scripture a note of hope and expectation. God is good, and he will fulfill his promises!

7. The Bible is about Jesus.

This is not always obvious from certain OT passages. Sometimes it's hard to see how Christ is there. But, Jesus himself said the Scripture was about him (Luke 24:44). When you read through the Bible keeping this verse in mind, he does begin to emerge from the shadows, so to speak. And that's what Bible reading is all about - growing in the knowledge of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Peter 1:1).

Organizing our "stuff"

Yesterday I tackled a small project that had been hanging over my head for some time - cleaning out our garage. While I was looking for places to put things, I remembered something a great uncle had told me several years ago. That is, much a man's life is spent organizing all his stuff. A simple, common sense observation but one that has proven true again and again in my own experience. When he told me this, I had just returned from living two years in Japan and was getting ready to go to seminary. As a young, single man with no permanent home I hadn't accumulated many things. In fact, I was able to pack virtually all my worldly possessions into the back of a Chevy Blazer, which I did as I took off from Montana and drove across the country to seminary in Philadelphia. Three years, and a wife, and one child later, the stuff had increased exponentially. When we moved, we needed a small U-Haul truck. A year and a half later, plus one more child, it took the biggest truck U-Haul offers to move all of our things to Oklahoma.

Since then, much time and mental energy has been spent figuring out how to fit all our stuff into our 3-bedroom home. It's not that we have alot of things. On the contrary, we probably have fewer possessions than a typical family of our size. But here in Oklahama, they don't build basements for houses (although here we are in the heart of tornado country!!). So, unless we rent some kind of storage facility, we have to jam every possible nook and cranny with stuff. Thankfully, I've inherited some good genes in this regard - my father has been gifted with the ability to pack alot in a small place. I think if he tried he could move a entire department store with just a minivan.

We are loaded with things (loaded down?); they're mainly not expensive, and very few are luxury items. For us, taking on a spartan lifestyle is neither the practical nor wise thing to do. It seems we need most of it to maintain a "normal" lifestyle. My uncle was right - much of a man's life is spent in packing, moving, storing, organizing, unpacking, paring down, and generally overseeing all his stuff.

"One's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions" (Luke 12:15). Jesus is of course warning us from seeking our lives in our stuff. But maybe there is a promise here, as well?

Another try at blogging

I've been inspired by Doug Serven's (RUF minister at OU) blog to try my hand again at blogging. Don't be surprised if this posting is followed by a flurry of others for a week or two, and then all of a sudden it stops. That is very likely to be the outcome. But, at least it's worth a try.

Since I haven't written anything on my blog for quite some time (though, Eric Pyle has been super faithful in posting the e-mail bulletins. Thanks, Eric!), it seems unlikely anybody will actually read this. For that reason, I'll keep this short.

Here we go....I'll start with something Maggie said today that was just hilarious. This morning we had the Men's prayer breakfast at the church. On my way out, Maggie said something to Robyn that prompted her to bring God into the conversation. Maggie, just hearing the word "God", said matter of factly, "No, God isn't here. He's at the church eating breakfast." Pretty funny. Maggie comes up with a lot of "doozies".

Grace e-mail bulletin - 12/09/05

Grace e-mail bulletin - 12/05/05 - Prayer request