Michael Kelley's Blog, page 243

A Glimpse Into the Mind of My Son

Be sure and watch to the end.

(HT:Z)

My Plan for Bible Reading in the New Year

Over the years, I've tried several Bible reading plans, meeting more success with some than with others. Some take you through the whole Bible in a year chronologically. Others choose a passage from the Old Testament, New Testament, and the Psalms every day. In fact, here is a brief list of some you might check out:

You Version – The most versatile online program with multiple versions, plans, social networking tools, and an app for most mobile formats.

Discipleship Journal – These are the plans that we have used at our church in the past.

Bible Plan - Several different options listed on one page. You can go online to read or have the daily reading emailed to you.

For me, I'm going to try something different. Last year, I used a chronological Bible to read the whole thing through in one year. While I found it really beneficial and encouraging, there was one thing that bothered me. I was in my daily reading finding myself in an entirely different part of Scripture than what was being preached at church on Sundays and then discussed in our community group on Wednesday evenings. While variety is good, I found myself thinking about how much I would enjoy having all areas of life be centered on a few key verses each week.

So this year, I'm going to do something new and try to integrate my personal devotion time with the community of faith where our family worships. I think this makes sense for a few reasons:

- It is anchored by the belief that there is something vitally unique and important about the preaching of the Word in the context of God's people. This will hopefully list up that time of preaching in my mind and heart to the place it should be.

- It will allow me to meditate more fully on a single text each week and ask the Holy Spirit to deeply affect me with those truths.

- It will focus my mind and my heart in a single direction for a sustained period of time.

- It will aid my Scripture memory, allowing me to choose a single key verse from the weekly passage to continue to practice each day.

If any of the above reasons resonate with you, then maybe you'll want to join me. Obviously, this approach will work more cleanly if you're in a church that practices systematic expositional preaching because you'll know what's coming week after week. So if you're interested, here's what I would suggest as a starting point:

- Contact your pastor or church office to see if you can get an outline of the upcoming texts.

- Buy a journal so that each day you can reflect deeply on the single passage that you are reading over and over again.

- Buy a commentary on the book of the Bible you will be in for the beginning of the year so that, once you have read the text several times, you can dig in further and study it in greater depth.

Here's to 2012 – another year of studying, meditating on, and internalizing the Word of God, and putting into practice the belief that the community of faith is vitally important to the people of God.

Fridays Are For One Question

You guessed it – the one question today is about New Year's resolutions. I'm actually a big fan of resolutions (I like "goals" better). You can read here about that, but for today, let's keep it simple.

All of us have a list a mile long of bad goals we've made at New Year's. Crazy things.

- I'm not going to eat chocolate this year.

- I'm going to climb Everest this year.

- I'm going to remodel my own kitchen this year.

But let's not talk "bad" – let's talk "worst":

"What is the worst New Year's resolution you've ever made?

Death to the Penny

I don't know how I feel about killing the penny. They seem pretty innocent. But this video makes a compelling argument:

(HT:22 Words)

Throwing Away the Snowman

Today is, for me, one of the most difficult days of the year mainly because I love Christmas. I love everything about it. I've been listening to Christmas music since November 1 every day, all day. Our house has steadily done an advent calendar for the month of December. We even have a Santa Claus toilet seat cover in the upstairs bathroom. But today is the day when it's officially over, commemorated by the taking down of everything. The tree, the ornaments, the garland, the wreaths – it all goes away today for another year. And doing so never ceases to put me in a bit of a funk. But it's especially bad today.

Today I have to throw away the snowman.

For 5 years, we've had a snowman standing sentinel in our front yard. For 5 years, his lights have delighted our children and marked our home on cold, dark December nights. He's made one more with us across town and survived being shoved in the shed and garage 5 times over. But two weeks ago, his head stopped working. The lights are going out. So it's time to throw him away and move on.

Not such a big deal, right? Not for us – we throw away stuff all the time. But the snowman feels different.

I bought the snowman 5 years ago, 2 months after our little boy was diagnosed with leukemia. We bought him in the midst of being in and out of the hospital after we knew that we wouldn't be traveling to see family at Christmas. We bought him because we thought it might be a small way to bring joy to a little boy who was in almost constant pain. And we put him right outside our big front windows so that Joshua, when he was too weak to walk up the stairs, might sit under a blanket and see him all lit up.

And he stayed lit up that year, every single night. We would bundle up and go for a walk around the neighborhood and my son would smile when we came home. He would point at the snowman and laugh.

Then the next year, when the treatments were still ongoing but had subsided somewhat, he was excited to get him out again. And we put him up, and there he stood for another year.

As I lay in bed last night thinking about everything that had to be done today to clean up after Christmas, my eyes got a little watery when I thought about the snowman. The snowman that had seen so much. The snowman who had brought our family joy in the worst of days. I thought about how much life has changed over these five years, and how even this year, with two more kids added to the mix and a cancer free little boy, they were still smiling as they picked out the place where he would go in the front yard.

There's no big resolution at the end of this post; no big revelation that the snowman has brought me. Just a nostalgic feeling of thankfulness for small, common graces like the laughter of a child that has been brought about these 5 years by some pipe cleaners and wire hammered into the ground. And thankfulness for the ability to tell the story again to our kids of why we, for the first time 5 years ago, went to the trouble of decorating the outside of our house for Christmas.

A Very Calvin and Hobbes Christmas

Enjoy.

 

Fridays Are For One Question

Let's forget about It's a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street for today, because there are a ton of underrated Christmas movies and specials out there. I'll throw out 2:

Die Hard

Prep and Landing

Both holiday masterpieces. That's the question for you today, too:

"What's the most underrated Christmas movie or special out there?"

The Encouraging Part of "Grieving the Holy Spirit"

First of all, let me say that there's nothing encouraging about "grieving the Holy Spirit" as an act in and of itself. We are commanded in Ephesians to not grieve the Holy Spirit through refusing to walk in obedience to the Spirit.

So while there obviously isn't any encouragement in sinning, there is something encouraging about the language intentionally used by Paul in this passage. To get to that encouragement, think about this question:

Why are we told not to "grieve the Holy Spirit, rather than "anger" the Spirit or something like that?

Here is where we find the encouragement, because "grief" by its very nature is a much more personal emotion than anger.

If someone cuts you off in traffic, you don't grieve. You get mad. But if one of your children makes a destructive choice, you might indeed be angry, but there is another depth to that anger. There is grief because of what was lost as a result of that choice. Because of your great love for your child, you grieve what might have been but for these choices. You grieve the sense of brokenness in your relationship. It's anger, sure – but it's anger motivated by a very deep love and concern.

That's the part of grieving the Holy Spirit that's encouraging.

The language here reveals the depth of love God has for us. We don't just make the Spirit mad when we're disobedient; we grieve Him because of similar reasons an earthly parent might be grieved.

Here again we are reminded of the tremendous love God has demonstrated for us. He had brought us into His family, refusing to hold us at an arm's distance. We can rest assured, then, because of the grieving of the Holy Spirit, that God has convincingly and overwhelmingly committed Himself to us in Christ.

Thank God the Spirit grieves and doesn't just get mad.

Surprise Santa Musical in a Mall

Merry Christmas.

"You can keep your holly and your Christmas tree; you're never too old to sit on Santa's knee."

(HT:22 Words)

Vader, Did You Know?

A truly moving holiday tribute today.