So I'm with my mom and dad in the back of our '62 Ford Falcon stationwagon driving Route 66.  We're on our annual roadtrip from California back to my parents' home county in Tennessee.  And, yes, I'm old enough to remember driving Route 66 just before the completion of Interstate 40.  Town names like Dagget, Ludlow, Amboy, Winslow - yeah, I've stood on a corner in Winslow, AZ! - and Tucumcari have meaning to me!

Say you're my dad.  It's hot - it oughta be!  You're in the desert of western Arizona and it's July!   You can't afford a car with air conditioning yet!  You see a sign informing you that the next gas won't be for another, say, 200 miles.  Look at your gas gage; should you pull over, or do you keep pushing through?  At $0.25 a gallon, it won't break the bank, but you want to make Gallup, NM by 5:00 P.M.  Okay, it's cutting it a little close on the fuel, but you decide to keep rolling.

But wait, about fifty miles into it you see a sign for "Rattlesnake Zeke's Snake Farm and Petting Zoo" or "Big Chief's Genuine Indian Curios".  You can get off the highway in thirty miles the sign tells you.  After that, it's another twenty miles to Zeke's and Big Chief's on a "convenient" side road. 

Is there a gas station there?  Doesn't say.  But, hey, you've been driving awhile and you and your wife could use a break.  Your little boy (me!) would get a kick out of it for sure and certain .  You can probably visit these fine establishments and still just make it to the next fuel stop, even if Zeke and Big Chief don't have any gas.  What do you do? 

I think this is a pretty good analogy for how we and many in the Christian sub-culture approach not just the holiday season, but time in general.  We've all got twenty-four hours in a day and seven days in a week, no more, no less.  How do we manage it? 

How often do you and I look forward to just getting through this season?  One more party to attend - oh yeah, and I said I'd bring an entree'!   That list of presents I've got to buy, but what about that mall traffic? Darn,  I haven't gotten started on my Christmas cards yet!

Any of that sound familiar? 

Look, folks, time is sacred, and just as He uses ordinary stuff like wine and bread, and - oh yeah - plain-Jane folks like you and me to get wonderful and holy things accomplished, likewise, He wants to use our time, too!  I mean think about it, the second Person in the godhead, the direct agent in the creation of all that is, Jesus, the Son of God is born into a peasant family in the Roman province of Judea - what the average Roman soldier probably thought of as a hardship tour!  His human lineage was from the royal house of King David himself, but, obviously, the family had fallen on considerably harder times since the good ol' days.  No palaces, no servants, no royal robes - the point is, He didn't get over!  God Himself becomes one of us!!!

I know, you've heard this before, but I wonder if we've lost a good deal of our capacity to truly enter in and celebrate this fact due to our inability or unwillingness to correctly manage - and sanctify - our time.

So here's my prescription:  Just as we had to be careful about how we planned out our trip on old Route 66 when I was a boy, so we've got to be careful and intentional in our use of time.  If we would look forward to and gladly celebrate the memory of  His first coming, we must learn to say yes to some things, no to others, as well as learn to hear the word no!

Are the expectations of our family and friends, our culture's (or our own) truly of God?  It's not to say that going to Zeke's is wrong per se, but if doing that causes me to run out of gas or to get so close to it that getting to my ultimate destination (i.e. Gallup, NM) becomes overly stressful, then I'd say that isn't a good thing.  So what about one more party?  What about all those gifts?  What about all those cards?

"But , Dave, it's not Christmas without ________________!"  

Really?

Is __________ about what God thinks, or is it about what you, or your family, or your sub-culture thinks?  If you and I are going to re-claim the Christ in Christmas, it has to do a great deal more with allowing Him back into our schedules - with controlling those things we can in our schedules -  than it does with meeting all kinds of expectations.   What about going to church and celebrating that Advent service with God's people?  What about gathering with some family and truly good friends - ones who don't weigh you down with distracting expectations - to pray, eat a meal, and remember with gratitude our Saviour's wonderful gift?  Or what about taking that special CD with the Christmas songs on it you so love - the one that, when you're in the company of others, you have to restrain the tears of joy and gratitude welling up inside you -  why not pause, set aside just a little time to be alone with God, play those songs, and weep with joy, hands lifted in the air to the One who gave Himself and keeps on giving Himself for you?

Warning!  You may step on some toes!  For all of your good intentions, folks at work, or in your family may think you're being rude or just plain weird.  Oh well!  Don't go out of your way to offend people, but if  having a quiet evening at  home or at church, truly enjoying God's gift and giving back praise and worship to Him offends, too bad!   Besides, deep down, I'll bet many of them wish they could do the same thing.  Maybe you'll set a trend!  What'd be wrong with that?

So slow down!  Take the time to enjoy Him this Christmas.   It's OK.  Really!

Okay, it's been several months since my last (Read "only"!) post.  Then, I was concerned with the increasing division(s) within our country.  Since that time, I believe things have only worsened.  The cultural divide is expressed in a myriad of facets within our culture, the Constitution and the law - what I dealt with in the last post - education, religion, to name just a few. 

Because the Secular-Progressive (aka Leftist or Liberal) worldview is predominantly atheistic, it is devoid of any notion of objective, transcendant right and wrong.  And even if there is such a thing, we simply are unable to ascertain what it is.  They will tolerate, therefore, a myriad of whacked-out, foolish positions, even if they in their heart-of-hearts find some of these views silly or distasteful,  because the only absolute to them is that there are no absolutes (which is in itself self-contradictory).  To allow themselves to believe in absolutes is to admit that they may just be responsible to Something (or Someone) greater than themselves, and they can under no circumstances have that!

The Secular-Progressives (SPs) ultimately believe that man is perfectable, that Utopia is possible, if only people were educated (with the "correct" doctrine of course!) and had the right individuals in leadership.  I have to counter that the burden of proof lies with them:  in 4,000-odd years (?) of recorded human history, please tell me, SPs, where the data are to support your ultimate contention that man is perfectable or is basically good?!!? 

This has profound effects on our ability to wage this Global War on Terror.  Take a look at Europe.  They are good deal further down the SP Road than we are, and they are in very real danger of being overrun by Islam and Sharia Law.  Because they are post-Christian and have largely abandoned the values and ideals of Western Civilization, they have nothing substantial, nothing that can unite them that's worth fighting for.  In short, they have no backbone.

You SPs can gather in your conclaves and suck down your lattes, believing that the real threat to you and the world is the existence of "unenlightened", reactionary views like mine that hold to the original intent behind the founding documents of this country.  You can believe that all you need do is revise (albeit un-Constitutionally) the structures of our laws and institutions in order to achieve the "greater good" of your ultimately Utopian worldview.  But you can't escape reality!  The world just doesn't work like that.

Unfortunately, my fear is that you'll wake up to reality when it's too late. 

The threat from Islamo-fascism is very real.  The likes of Ahmedjinezad, al-Sadr, or a bin Laden don't care whether you're a dove or a hawk like me.  Never doubt it, their goal is to take over the world!  You may hate the very idea of this war being characterized as a religious war.  So what?  Whether you like it or not, that's how they view it.  These people aren't crazy; they're simply behaving consistently with the dictates of their founder. Unlike you, they adhere to a belief they regard as transcendant.  And, like it or not, it gives them backbone and motivation to fight.  You SPs believe in - what? - yourselves?  Mankind?   And here it is again, Utopia?!!?  If that's what you believe in (or some facsimile thereof), then, like Europe, you have nothing that's real, and therefore nothing that's worth fighting for.  In short, you have no motivation, no backbone.

The thing is, many of us do still believe in the values that formed our country in the first place and that they're worth fighting for.  I fear that your frequent and often un-Constitutional assaults on these values are sapping our strength to wage this war effectively.

SOOOOO. . .

Let me make this seemingly radical proposal, taking what I said in the last post a step further:  If you all don't like the idea of the founding principles, values, etc. that folks like me adhere to, then why don't you do the decent thing and leave instead of trying to illegitimately and illegally hijack the country?  Is it too crazy of an idea that we might very well be heading for a Constitutional crisis that could have us revisiting secession?

Yeah, that seems whacked, paranoid, and scary, but this world is a scary place, and there's no amount of denial and wishful thinking that will change that fact.  You can't continue to berate our founding principles without there being some profound and potentially harmful consequences for us all.

Think about it!