I am about to tell you about one of the most impactful worship experiences of my life. What do you think it was? Can you imagine the scene?

The wordiest Psalm in the Book of Psalms (and the longest chapter in the Bible) is a song about the Word.

Running out of chores, I tackled my “blessing drawer.” I’m not sure where, or from whom, I got the idea but when I got a note or a letter that was affirming I tossed it in the bottom drawer of my desk. Over the years it filled up, that’s not bragging, just saying a lot of years went by, and a week ago with the quarantine at full tilt, it was time to open it. I dumped them into an empty moving box and settled in. One by One One by one I read them, often pausing to ponder or cry like when I hit one from our deceased son, AJ.

I don’t recall the dreams, I don’t think they were “nightmares,” but when I awoke I was assaulted with, well, “Daymares.” Daymares of reality.

Do you feel like you're in the wilderness? Have you completely lost your bearings? Are you in the ocean depths—overwhelmed and under pressure? Are you floating in an open sky—feeling disconnected from everyone and everything?

For the past 5 years, Barbara and I have made it our gift to each other to go to a beach a few days after Christmas. So, it’s a sunny and seventy-five degree New Year’s Day 2021. We’re mostly shaded by our umbrella. Barb’s caught up in a murder mystery and I’m watching the pelicans fish. I’m also reading a book, it so happens, on fishing. It’s about fishing for folks like Jesus called his disciples to do.

“Wait a minute...that’s what I weigh? Is that right?” “That’s what the scale says, sweetie. Don’t feel bad, that’s everybody this year.” I knew 2020 had been a year of stress eating. My daily dose of stress relief during quarantine was anything covered in cheese dust (popcorn, Cheetos, Pringles, chips, goldfish, etc.). And yet I was still slack-jawed in the doctor’s office, staring at that number. I just wasn’t prepared to see exactly how much I had gained. That was a week ago, right before Christmas. And now...to plan.

Agape and Eros are two of the three key Greek words for love, (the third being Philia), and is the title of a book by Anders Nygren that used to be on my shelf in my dorm room in West Philadelphia - the city of brotherly love. My last year at seminary I dove into the passage from John 21 that many consider the greatest dialogue in scripture. That is the 7 exchanges between Peter and Jesus, vs 15-22.

This year my son had a Lego Star Wars Advent calendar. Yes, such a thing exists. Each day he opened a little cardboard flap to take out the pieces of a tiny tie fighter or Darth Vader in a Christmas sweater. He loved it: every day a new discovery, something to look forward to. I need that, too.

Christmas shopping is when you go to a shopping center and become a moving target for hundreds of half-crazed and half-blind drivers – drivers who know no fear and would challenge a Sherman tank for a parking place. It’s where you go to cash in on all the non-bargains Madison Avenue has prepared for you to purchase. It’s tiring and draining on me, Christmas shopping.