Blurb on the Blog Front

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     Things have been hectic in my family’s life these past couple weeks. We took off for our holiday Thanksgiving jaunt up north to visit family and with a five-year-old—well, it makes travel interesting. I never realized how often one person could ask: are we there, yet? Yeah. It starts off as: are we there yet? But, about an hour ½ on the interstate, that snarky pause slides in warranting the comma. Three hours into the drive and I was starting to turn into the Chris Farley meme “FOR THE LOVE OF…” I love my kid, though. He usually tuckers out around the 6 ½ hour mark, which gives me and my wife about thirty minutes to get our minds right before we arrive at our destination.  

      Speaking of traveling, we are pushing toward Christmas when we celebrate our Savior’s birth, which we all know had a bit of travel involved in it. It’s funny, my wife and I are doing this Precepts Ministries study on the Book of Luke, which kicked off the week before December 1st. The first week we are reading Luke chapter one and there’s all the traveling in there by Mary and such. It’s got me to wondering when Jesus was twelve, we know they headed to Jerusalem for the Feast because they left Him there. —Ha-ha. “Honey, we have lost God…” Can you imagine that conversation? —
But, I wonder what Jesus was like on the road as a kid? Did He wait until the last minute to let anyone know He had to go to the bathroom? Yelling from the back of the wagon that He had to go right then, while Joseph tried to maneuver the donkey off to the side of the road? Did they threaten to hand Him a clay jar? He was 100% human and 100% God. So, I guess anything is possible.

     I hope you can appreciate the humor of this blog post and are not offended by thinking I am treating this subject with levity. The holidays are hard for a lot of people even when it is supposed to be a time of peace, goodwill, and joy. My hope is for us to consider the humanness of God while He was here and understand that He endured all that we endure. I wonder if He ever got depressed while on earth. I mean, think about it, He was God, He had been since before anything was created, before time even, and He was on earth where nothing was as He desired it to be. Mocked. Ridiculed. Beaten. How much did that hurt Him? His heart?

     Further, consider His creation physically spit in His face and condemned Him? His friends were betraying Him and denying they even knew who He was? The people that were supposed to be teaching and guiding those He loved were talking trash behind His back about Him, were plotting on Him and were just waiting to hurt Him. We all have the same Bible. What did He do or say to warrant any of that? How many people walked by Him smirking, “Messiah…” or heard Him teach and then mocked Him for being an uneducated carpenter? How many times did He read from the Scripture in the temple and have those that led the synagogues ridicule Him because He was a nobody from Nazareth? How many of the Pharisees looked at Him and scoffed as He started His ministry and said, “You know nothing, I have been doing this for thirty years!”

     It makes you think. He suffered a lot! And for us! So, I am sure that He had some funny moments as a kid. I am sure that Mary and Joseph would have had some tales to tell. But, as we move closer to Christmas, as these holiday days bring up and out all that they tend to do both good and bad, remember this: God loves you. He is there for you. He sees you exactly where you are. He knows what you have suffered, and He wants you to keep on pushing through. Even when you don’t know how to push through whatever you have going on, rely on Him because in His strength we can endure anything. Even when things feel bleak, and hope seems lost, remember that He understands, and His nail-scarred hand is stretched out to lift you back up and help you through it!

Until Next Time
God Bless    



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