Friday... The lights are really significant.

Friday... The lights are really significant. They really are.

I lived in El Paso, Texas for a bit and I loved the Luminaries there at Christmas. The Luminaries are a Mexican tradition where they place a lighted candle in sand in a sack to symbolize lighting the way to the manger. At the church where I was the Youth Pastor, we put out hundreds of Luminaries on Christmas Eve. The whole town was lit up with Luminaries. It was so beautiful. We this year have Luminaries on our walkway leading up to a nativity outside our front door. They are really significant to us.

The lights of Christmas as so beautiful. We on the street of our new community have started the tradition of lights on and around our houses. And the Christmas lights are really significant. Our outsides are dark during the year but are lit up at Christmas.

Look at what 1 Peter 2:9b (NLT) says, "you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light." Oh I know that the lights that people put out don't have a spiritual meaning to them but the tradition is really significant.

Verses 9 & 10 (MSG) says, "But you are the ones chosen by God... God's instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference he made for you - from nothing to something, from rejection to acceptance."

The NIV says, "But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God, once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy."

Yes, the lights of Christmas are very significant. They show how he called us out of darkness into his wonderful light, and that we are to tell others of the night-and-day difference he made in us.

Yes, the lights really are significant. Yes, yes! #todaysbeginning

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Friday... Yes, we need them. We really do

Psalm 8:3-4 (NLT), "When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers - the moon and the stars you set in place - what are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them?" Friday... Yes, we need them. We really do. No, not the fact that I can go out my front door and look out at night at the marvels of the sky. I can do that and it is amazing and it takes my breath away each time I see it. Yes, that is a fact but the reality of who did that and the wisdom and the faith that I have to believe that and to marvel that the one who did that cares about me makes such a difference in how I live my life. Yes, God really does. That is so wonderful for us to believe. And that is why faith and wisdom are so important. Now whatever belief you have at how that marvel happened must also be believed through faith. And the sad thing to me is that more and more people have been taught that there is no God and therefore he did not have a h...

Monday... Three ifs and two thens. They go together!

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Todays Beginning

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