1 Samuel 16:7  For the Lord sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.

Curb appeal. It refers to giving attention to how others perceive your home. From lawn and landscaping to paint color and the style of your front door, curb appeal serves to set the mood and creates an expectation for what you might see and feel when you step inside.

Imagine a beautiful nativity scene adorns the front year of a home. You walk inside but find no hint of Christ. Christmas carols play, but no "O Come All Ye Faithful." There's an elf on the shelf, but no angel on the tree. "Twas the Night Before Christmas is set out, but no Bible is in sight. It's not at all what you expected.

That sounds like me, focused too much on appearance and not enough on what's inside. God's Law serves as a curb - its boundaries reveal our sin. But thank be to God for the Gospel - the Good News that we are forgiven through Christ. That is the greatest appeal of all.

-- Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

 

1 Peter 4:8,10  Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace.

Welcome home, you belong here. That's what the welcome home hug or handshake or pat on the back conveys. When you are away, we miss you. When you come home, we treasure our time together. The Christmas lights, the array of treats, the stories told, the laughter shared and the presents under the tree serve as reminders of what anchors us to home. The sights, the tastes, the smells, the sounds of home.

What are the living reminders that our home is in Christ? The baptism font where the Holy Spirit plants faith in our hearts through water and the Word. The bread and wine of the Eucharist, where we receive the body and blood of Christ for the forgiveness of our sins. Joining voices to sing "Silent Night' and "Joy to the World." Knowing that praises and prayers are being lifted across the world.

Nothing, however, compares to the welcome home we will receive when God calls us to himself. Christ has come, and he is coming again.

-- 

Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,


 

Matthew 6:21  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

"There's no place like home. There's no place like home." Can't you just picture Dorothy tapping the heels of her ruby slippers together, yearning for home? Why did she want to leave the wonders of Oz? The answer lies in the sense of belonging, something for which we all yearn.

Home is where we can be ourselves and still be loved. Where we can hurt and be forgiven and be hurt and forgive. Where we can cry and pout and laugh and dance. Where we know we are loved unconditionally. Home is where we feel a sense of belonging, foibles and all.

Our homes aren't perfect, because we aren't perfect. Christ came to live the perfect life we cannot and to take the punishment we deserve. As believers, we now belong to the family of Christ and yearn for our eternal home in heaven. After all, Christ came to call us home.

Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,


 

Ephesians 2:4-5  "But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved.

You've heard the question, "What's in a name?" Today I ask, "What's in a home?" Is it just the basics - the rooms, the furniture, the appliances, the food in the fridge? Or is it all that and more? Let's look beyond the basics.

Our desire is to place God at the center of our home. Yet, how do we - and others - know he is present? God the Father has bestowed upon us his mercy, grace and forgiveness through Christ. In response, we show mercy, grace and forgiveness within our home and to those who consider us their home.

Even as we prepare to come face-to-face with God's gift of grace, expectations of the "perfect Christmas" create pressure. When patience snaps and frustrations flare, may grace, mercy and forgiveness be in your home this Christmas.

-- Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

 

Psalm 90:1  Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.

When asking someone to define home, you might ask, "Is it a person, place or thing?" The answer could be "yes" because home can be any of these or all three. After all, home is an essence unique to everyone.

Emily Dickinson wrote, "Where thou art - that - is home." She was conveying that the very presence of one you love creates a  sense of home. Psalm 90 is a prayer of Moses who, even as he wandered the desert for 40 years, considered God his refuge, his home.

Is God your refuge? Through him, are you a refuge for others? This season is a hectic continuum of people, places and things. Perhaps it's time to slow the pace and focus on God, the Father who loves us so much he sent his Son. Then the other people, places and things will all fall into place.

Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

 

Numbers 21:4-9

The Israelites are in the middle of their years wandering in the desert, looking for the Promised Land, and they're getting impatient. They complain about the lack of good food and water, and they wish they'd never left Egypt in the first place. God, hearing their complaints, sends poisonous snakes among them, and many of the Israelites get bitten and die.

Ah, the joys of the Old Testament. Complain about how God's treating you? Here are some poisonous snakes! So the people come back to Moses and they say:

“We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take the snakes away from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. The Lord said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.

There are a lot of foreshadowing elements in this story. Jesus references it in John 3 when He says that He, too, must be lifted up. In the same way that the elevation of the snake on a pole is the avenue for the Israelites' salvation, Jesus' hanging on a cross is the way in which eternal salvation comes to the world.

A particularly fascinating thing about this story is that God chooses the serpent to be the image lifted up on the pole - the very thing that is killing the people. Again, He is foreshadowing the final act of His plan of salvation. Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin on the cross so that we might become the righteousness of God. The very thing that is killing us - sin - is laid on Jesus and lifted up on the cross. The bringer of death - the serpents and the cross - becomes the way of life.

Today, know that Jesus took your sin unto Himself and gave you His righteousness, so that you might live, and live forever.

-- Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

 

Matthew 13:45-46

On an episode of the TV show The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon discovers that Penny has gotten him a Christmas present. Angered, he reminds Penny that the "foundation of gift giving is reciprocity" and that she hasn't given him a purchase for her "a gift of commensurate value and representing the same perceived level of friendship" as that represented by the gift she's given him.

His solution is to purchase three gift baskets (of various sizes) of bath products. His plan is to see what her gift to him is, excuse himself from the room, give her the appropriate gift basket, and return the other two baskets to the store. What happens, though, is that Penny has gotten Sheldon a napkin that Leonard Nimoy has used and autographed. Sheldon notes that he now not only has Nimoy's signature, he has his DNA.

After excusing himself, Sheldon returns with all three gift baskets, barely able to carry the weight. "I know, I know," he wails. "It's not enough!"

And that's the problem, isn't it? We don;t know how to react when we get really good gifts. When the gift is that good, no response is good enough. Certainly a plain "thank you" won't cut it. There is no bath product cornucopia that can balance the scales when Leonard Nimoy's DNA is on the other side, and there doesn't seem to be an adequate response when Jesus' death for our sins holds that place.

Many of us spend our lives trying to reciprocate for Jesus' gift to adequately say thank you. But if we turn a big enough gift into an obligation, we are crushed by it.

Let's acknowledge from the beginning, then, that this is a gift that tips the scale forever. Let's treat the gift like a child would, with excitement and joy, and go play, remembering that even our most heartfelt gratitude is not commensurate with His life-giving gift - liberating us from the impossible burden of repayment.

-- Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,