It was Christmas Eve morning, I don’t know, about 12 years ago, I guess. I got up way ahead of everybody else, and for some reason had to go to the grocery store. And for some other reason I can’t remember, it wasn’t our regular grocery store.
When I walked in, I noticed that the supermarket had a case of 24 Christmas gel candles marked down to a buck apiece. On a whim, I bought an entire case of them and hauled them home.
I was inspired.
(By the way, completely irrelevant side note, but that’s just one more reason to do your Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve. Black Friday’s got nuthin’ on the bargains you can find the day before Christmas. More here.)
I got back home and everybody was still settled in to their long winter’s nap. So I went to work. I sat down at the computer, grabbed a sheet of labels, and printed 24 that read, “Thanks for the light you bring to our lives every day. Merry Christmas, The Wood Family.”
Boy, was I inspired. Click here to see what happened
Many years ago the cartoon character Cathy expressed the anxiety many people feel this time of year. She says to her boss: “My left brain is making lists of people I haven’t sent cards to yet. My right brain is at the craft store, thinking up creative gifts I could make before Christmas. My nerves are at the mall, worrying whether I should have gotten the other necktie for my Dad. My stomach is still at last night’s party begging for more Christmas cookies. My heart is stuck in traffic somewhere between my mother’s house, my boyfriend’s house, and the adorable man I saw at the post office.”
Her boss asks, “What is it you want, Cathy?” Cathy replies: “May what’s left of me sneak home early and take a nap?”
For many people, Christmas has become something other than a celebration. It’s more like a mission. The holiday, instead of being a holy-day, has become a holocaust. The celebration has become a sale, “Silent Night” has become replaced with “Walmart Fight.”
And have you noticed how guilty you always seem to feel at Christmas?
You spent too much money, or didn’t spend enough.
You didn’t get everything your kids asked for, or the present wasn’t the right size.
You didn’t give enough to the church or the Salvation Army.
You “put Christ back into Christmas” and were “too spiritual,” or you had too much Santa Claus and reindeer.
Do you ever wish you could just somehow go back and start over? Football coaches have a good term for this: they call it going back to the fundamentals. Let’s give that a try this year. Let’s make Christmas a celebration again… 100% guilt-free! Click to see a great idea for connecting with people
Update: Over the three-day giveaway period we distributed more than 3,300 books! Not quite to the goal, but I’m grateful and excited nonetheless. The book is still available for $2.99 by clicking here.
Dear Friends,
I am very excited to announce the publication of The Twelve Pathways to Christmas, available exclusively through Amazon.com as a Kindle book download. And I’d like to give a copy to you and 5,000 of your closest friends absolutely free.
For the next three days, Friday, December 7 through Sunday, December 9, interested readers may download this title from Amazon absolutely free.
The Twelve Pathways to Christmas describes how the lives of twelve different ordinary people are forever changed when they embark on their own unique pathway to the true meaning of Christmas. Through stories that are part autobiographical, some reflections of others I have known, and some made up to make a point, you will find your own unique pathways to the meaning of Christmas in the brief encounters you have with these characters.
This book will help you discover in a fresh way why God invaded history in the person of a helpless baby in Bethlehem. Just as the first Christmas was experienced by real, excited, hurting, stressed-out, frightened, faith-filled people, so is yours. But those life circumstances – good or bad – can be pathways to breathtaking joy as you discover how greatly loved and desired you are.
The Twelve Pathways to Christmas is the first of a three-part series called the Twelve Joys of Christmas. And what greater joy can there be than to discover that your life is all part of a larger plan to give you a future and a hope? [click to continue…]
Remember what it was like as a kid to go to sleep on Christmas Eve?
Stockings hung with care, note and snack left near the tree…
Listening with both ears for any sound that resembled, well, anything…
Sneaking a peek out the window to see if you could see, you-know-who…
Trying to go to sleep cause you-know-who can’t you-know-what until you’re fast asleep.
[Cue the choir…]
Then came the morning! Wow! Where to start? All that stuff!
And then… [click to continue…]
Davidson High School, Mobile, Alabama. Circa 1974. My freshman year. I’m standing in the cafeteria line, waiting to decide whether I was going with the hamburger or whatever today’s chef’s choice was. It was there I spotted her, headed toward the faculty dining room. This was worth losing my spot in line for.
She was our school guidance counselor, and also an experienced English teacher. She was wise about things I was ignorant of.
She also happened to be my great aunt.
“Aunt Helen!” said I. “I wanted to ask your advice about something.”
“What’s that,” she replied.
“Well, see, I’m writing a book – a novel – and I wanted to get some advice from you about how to get it published.”
(I should pause here to interpret what “novel” meant. I probably had about five chapters, about five notebook pages hand-written each, about a tough-guy high school kid who winds up dying for the girl he loves, who happened to have the same name as the girl I was fixated on in the ninth grade. Anyway…)
Her advice was sage – way wiser than my 14 years. She didn’t write off my dreams and tell me that 14-year-olds don’t get published as novelists. She didn’t boggle my mind about query letters, agents or publishing houses either. She offered me words of encouraging truth. [click to continue…]
Q – Please give me one ‘nugget’ of wisdom from your own experience of authentic Christian leadership.
A – Okay, here goes. This sounds like I’m stupidly stating the obvious, but it’s amazing how easy it is for people with leadership positions or aspirations to forget it:
Leaders go first.
They’re the first to serve.
First to see the future.
First to take action.
First to offer their lives and experience as an example. [click to continue…]
This just in, in case you missed it. Christmas is less than a month away.
True confession: Yesterday I snarled in my journal, “I’ll just be glad when it’s over.”
But today, in honor of the late Zig Ziglar, who passed away yesterday, I’m “doing a checkup from the neck up.”
Every year, we have the same choice when it comes to the enchantment and the challenges of the holidays. Do we hunker down, sit tight, and hope for the best? Or do we seek to flourish? To make the most of our relationships, our worship, and even our painful experiences?
Survive or Thrive? It’s up to you. It’s up to me.
When it comes to being a thriver, here are five suggestions, for how you can come out of the bunker and actually have a season of delight:
[click to continue…]
Old friend called yesterday. It had been a while.
“I’m calling to ask you to pray,” she began. “I’ve just had a bombshell dropped in my lap.”
Like you would do, I’m sure, my mind started racing at the possibilities. Family? Finances? Health? It could be anything.
I won’t tell you what hers was, but it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that she was handed some bad news she didn’t see coming.
Kabloom!
What matters more is that she was really making some progress in some areas of her life, and this jeopardizes all that.
Kabloom again!
And what matters to you is that next time it could be you.
Have you ever noticed that when you start moving in a positive direction, life has a way of testing you out of center field with alarming or disarming stuff? And it comes dressed in any number of ugly outfits. [click to continue…]
Sort-of-random thoughts from going over the river and through those woods for Thanksgiving…
When the weather report is rain-free and the only wind that is blowing is in your face as you’re roaming through the pasture on a hayless hay ride, that’s a sign you’re having a good week.
I wonder what would happen if there was a new global holiday and the whole world got to swing as high as they could on a swing that is big enough to hold lots of different people. Maybe people would be less on your case and more at your side. It works for little kids – why not big ones?
[click to continue…]
Leading people is like pulling a wagon.
It can be complicated and frustrating to over-analyze or steer from the rear. [click to continue…]
It was Christmas Eve morning, I don’t know, about 12 years ago, I guess. I got up way ahead of everybody else, and for some reason had to go to the grocery store. And for some other reason I can’t remember, it wasn’t our regular grocery store.
