Knowing and Doing

Many years of Christmas, the anticipation is on Christmas day as a child running to the tree in the morning with great excitement and joy to see what presents I got.  My heart was beating fast.  I could hardly sleep the night before.  It was the greatest time of the year.  The tree was at the center of our home and it symbolizes what is at the center of our season in some cases. The Psalmist writes:  “Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.” (Psalm 95:6-7) Today as I open up the Word of God and read, I am reminded of this simple truth.  It’s not about centering our life around a season or a tree, we are invited to “come and worship.”  In the first chapter of John, when we read about Jesus and His disciples…the invitation was to COME.  When that babe was lying in the manger, the shepherds were invited to COME.  We are to...

“Let’s face it; God has a big ego problem.  Why do we always have to worship Him?” – Bill Maher It seems as if mankind always had a sense of worship, but to many different things.  Let’s blow this up, shall we?  Worship is giving something value – adoration and submission to.  I can go to Best Buy and drool over media and surround sound and IPad’s and I can go to the hardware store and lick my chops at power drills and saws and hammers and nails – oh my! - and when I go to work I can give great value to immersing myself in the job that I do and give it my all.  I can do the same with family, with church, and friends. Christmas was an interruption!  It came at a dark time in a dark place.  Evil leaders/kings were in control of the land, there was an unbelievable amount of poverty because of high government taxation and something amazing was about to happen – Christmas.  The temple system in Israel was spiraling out of control – it became a corrup...