December 7, 2024 – 17 Days Until My Head Explodes, Or Devotions to Prepare Us For Christ’s Coming

17 Days Until My Head Explodes, Or Devotions to Prepare Us For Christ’s Coming

December 7, 2024 – 17 Days Until My Head Explodes, Or Devotions to Prepare Us For Christ’s Coming

“Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” So Abram went, as the LORD had told him” Genesis 12:1-4

Well, Cranky Reverend is lost here….another Christmas ornament that makes you scratch your head. CR has received a lot of different Christmas ornaments in his life, but if someone gave CR a toilet plunger as a Christmas favor, CR’s head would explode. Oh, I have some thoughts about what I might tell the gift giver to do with their plunger, but those thoughts are not so “Christmasy”.

Abram receives a “Gift” from the Lord: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” Like the golden plunger, many of us might not consider G-d’s command a gift – having to leave our home to travel to who knows where. But without saying a word, good ole Abram moves from his homeland to a land as yet determined without anything more than a promise from the Lord that the Lord will show him his new “home” sometime in the future – and then will promise that his offspring will be as numerous as the sand on the beach. What bothers CR the most is Abram’s silence. He says nothing. If CR just asks his daughter to put a dish in the dishwasher CR gets a load of sass. But not Abram. He just cleans his dish and puts it in the proverbial dish washer and moves on.

Are you feeling as if life has been asking too much of you lately? Any change in our lives, a job change, a change of churches, or a change in social status can leave its mark on the psyche.

Though Abram says nothing as a complaint or a concern to G-d, we have one avenue that is open to us at any time, anywhere: Prayer. Prayer is our active conversation with G-d that helps us purge the soul, mind and spirit of negative feelings and fears.

CR wants to remind you though that any conversation should always involve a two-way street: speaking and listening. So in our prayers we need to set aside time to listen for that still small voice of G-d to lead us to and through our greatest challenges and rewards.

Pastor Dave