First Sunday In Advent

Today is the First Sunday in Advent and I have been meditating on the meaning of that word. Mathew, Mark, and Luke describe the birth of Jesus as a human boy. John tells us about the ADVENT of God coming to live with us.

I have been enchanted by the power of words since I learned how to read. When I learned in English class how to diagram a sentence and name its parts, nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, I was enamored by the various uses of words. Though in some ways I was like the boy when asked by the teacher, “What is a synonym?” he replied, “It’s a word you use in place of another when you can’t spell the first one.”

The English translation of the Gospel according to John says, “the WORD became flesh.” This is so much more than “W-O-R-D” it is an expression of power. While it is an accurate translation it does not quite bring to us all of the power of the original Greek text. What is translated as “Word” in English is “Logos” in Greek and carries a lot more information.

Logos is normally used to denote the command of a king to his people. It carries the weight of authority and it must be obeyed. Of all the Greek words John could have used Logos caries the very essence of active power and energy. It was the creative power of the first chapter of Genesis.

¹In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, ²the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. ³Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.⁴And God saw that the light was good;

The Logos of God was present in the act of creation as by the power of the spoken word creation happened. It is no accident that the Gospel according to John begins the same way as Genesis “In the Beginning.” John intended for that very idea to be expressed. According to John the Logos of God went forth and created EVERYTHING.

Compare John with the genealogies in Matthew and Luke. They are so simple that we are almost bored to death by the begets. Joseph the son of Heli, son of Matthat, son of Levi, son of Melchi and so on and so on until we get lost. In the Gospel according to John the genealogy is very simple, Jesus son of God. What could be clearer than that?

Now we listen closely to John and hear “The logos became flesh and lived among us.” He was with God, he was of God and he was God. How do we grasp that idea? The Logos placed himself in the midst of our human condition and we were never the same again.

The LOGOS was God, here is an identity of unity as one with the creator of all things. This is an expression of an idea of the uniqueness of the eternal. As Christians we get a view here of the idea of the unity of one God doing different things. The Word created and we refer to those actions as God the Father or creator. The Word is also becoming flesh and we refer to God as the Christ. The Word as the light of all people is moving among us as our guide and we refer to God as the Holy Spirit.

Happy Thanksgiving

Bird Everywhere

I thought shades of Alfred Hitchcock  yesterday afternoon.

As I was getting ready to cook supper I heard a great commotion just out side. Up until then I have not seen a Red Winged Blackbird in Louisville but there in my back yard were hundreds of them. The noise got louder and I went out the front door and the trees were filled with thousands of them and the sky was black with birds flying in to rest in the trees. I forgot all about fixing supper this was awesome. Within thirty minutes they were flying away and slap my head my camera was still on my desk.

When I lived in northern Indiana I use to watch the Red Winged Blackbirds every day so yesterday brought back many memories.

Busy Week

It has been a busy week for the Mayor of Bellemeade Kentucky!

Normally this is a quiet little city with not much for the mayor to do but conduct the monthly commission meeting and sign checks. Well last week was different very different.

We discovered that the University of Louisville, which has its Shelby campus right next door, is planning to have its campus re-zoned so that they can build an office park. We knew that they were going to build office and research building on the west side but this is a campus wide re-zoning. Understand that for the last 50 years it has been a quiet campus with lots of green space. Many Bellemeade neighbors enjoyed walking around the campus. I can see the campus from my front door. This change is uncomfortable to say the least.

We have had all kinds of meetings with then ans among ourselves. Their re-zoning request did not go through the usual channels of the zoning board but through the Metro planning commission. At the neighborhood they said that close to the Bellemeade side of the campus the building would only be three stories high and campus wide only five stories high. Their actual zoning request asked for a max hight of 150 feet and that equals fifteen stories.

I have more meetings to attend.

Scary Spud Facts

I am reading a Diabetes Care food book and discovered a frightening bit of information about the wonderful Potato and what we humans do to it an to ourselves in the process. When we fry a potato the greater the surface area we expose to fat or oils the more we change the potato.

We are dealing with one 3 oz potato prepared in 5 ways.

Raw or baked       0 grams of fat      65 calories

Roasted              5 grams of fat       155 calories

Fries large cut    12 grams of fat    220 calories

Fries small cut     15 grams of fat    265 calories

Chips 30 grams of fat 450 calories

Enough said!

Four Steps of Prayer

There are a variety of prayer formulas that are helpful for people who want to learn to pray. One is the four steps of prayer that I learned a long time ago and it works well for almost any prayer concern.

1. Praise God - Recognize in your mind and heart who you are praying to.

2. Thank God - Have an attitude of gratitude even in your most dire need.

3. Ask God - Request what  you need and even what you desire.

4. Listen for God - A quiet time of meditation listening for God before you say amen and close the prayer it vital. Some people who say that God never answers their prayer never take the time to listen and they miss the answers they are looking for.

May your have a rich prayer life in Praise, Thanksgiving, Asking and Listening.

Happy OR Not

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All of our emotions are a gift of God. Sometimes you’re going to feel angry. Other times you will feel sad. There will be times when you feel lonely, or any of the wide array of natural human emotions which are nowhere near being happy. You’re a human being; you’re supposed to feel those things when life takes a wrong turn. In fact, the desire to be happy all the time, to avoid feeling those “unpleasant” or “unwanted” emotions, is what leads many people to use drugs to change how they feel. As a healthy human being, you know that it is okay to not feel happy sometimes. You do not need to change how you feel at that moment your feelings will change as your circumstances change. In fact when you feel unhappy, accept how you feel, make your peace with it, and know that this too shall pass. Your unhappy state of mind is neither your identity nor your permanent state of being. This is simply how you feel in this moment and brighter feelings will come eventually. Use your gift of the natural medicine of humor to ease your way through rough moments of life. You’ll be amazed when you go back to review your journal to see that it all starts with a simple smile of knowing that the sun will return to your life.