Sitting on the curb, waiting for others to arrive for Bible Study, I looked at my Honda and realized, “This is a picture begging to be taken.”
I used Gimp to enhance this image that I shot with my cell phone (SCH-i760 — a great pda phone with a trashy camera).
Click on the image for an image suitable to use as desktop wallpaper or background.
The bike is a 2007 Honda 750 Shadow.
I just got a present from Fox Sports, Pittsburgh.
I called them back before Christmas to complain that the Pens game wasn’t in HD. As I waited to talk to someone, I realized that what I was doing wasn’t very Christmasy. And I figured that whoever I would talk to at the station probably hears gripe like this from fans all the time.
So instead of complaining, when she answered the phone, I said, “Thanks — thanks for putting the Pens games on. Merry Christmas.”
She said “WOW — no one ever did that before!”
Three weeks later she called me. “Is this the guy who called to say thanks before Christmas? I got your number from caller-id and jotted it down that day. Today I found it on a post-it note in the clutter on my desk and I would like to have your mailing address.”
Today, UPS dropped off a box with a gift bag containing…
And guess what? I think almost every game I’ve watched since them on FSN has been in HD. That’s so cool.
If this was a story in a sermon, what would the point of the story be?
In a sermon from Matthew 10, Skye Jethani warns us against looking at the Bethlehem manger and thinking only about this innocent, helpless, sweet baby, tender and mild, laying down his sweet head. He is no such thing. Jesus said in that text that he did not come to bring peace but a sword.
He did not come to give us the warm fuzzies, but to demand our allegiance. He came to die on the cross to pay for our sins. He came to draw you to himself so you could be forgiven. He demands that we give him first place in our lives and worship nothing else — be it family or ourselves.
One of the greatest thinkers of the past century, C. S. Lewis, said it well in his book, Mere Christianity.
Christ says: Give me all. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work. I want you. I’ve not come to torment your natural self but to kill it. No half measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there. I want to have the whole tree down. I don’t want to drill the tooth or crown it or stop it but have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires that you think are innocent as well as the ones you think are wicked, the whole outfit. And I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself. My own will shall become yours.
The all-grown-up Jesus wants your all. You can’t negotiate with him. You can’t bargain with him. He doesn’t offer a full-serving for some, and lunch-sized portions for the rest.
He has come to dethrone everything that we might illegitimatly place at the center of our lives. This message speaks of this all-grown-up Jesus in greater detail.
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