Being in
Africa for
Christmas is hard and amazing; we miss our family and each of you desperately,
but would never trade what God is doing in us and a family and the opportunity
to serve and learn from some forgotten children.

My buddy wrote this, we, you and I
are the Church - be "Light" today and have a very Merry
Christmas!

This
week my heart and mind turns to the familiarity of the Christmas Story. Often times our familiarity with this season
breeds a kind of unfamiliarity and the significance of the arrival of Jesus as
our Liberating King is lost on us.

My hope and prayer for us all is that our
eyes would be opened to see anew and afresh, to see what we have not yet seen
before, that you would remember and recall, and ponder all these things in your
heart.

And as you make your way through the next several days,remember this:
CHRISTMAS WAS MEANT TO CHANGE THE
WORLD!

Matthew
2:1-2
says, "Jesus was born in Bethlehem,
in the province
of Judea,
at the time when King Herod reigned. Not
long after Jesus was born, magi, wise men from the east, understood that the One
who would save his people from sin had been born, so they set off to find the
baby Savior.

Making their way from the
East to Jerusalem,
these wise men asked, "Where is this newborn, who is the king of the Jews? When we were far away in the East we saw HIS
STAR, and we have followed its glisten and gleam all this way to worship
Him."

I
love how this translation refers to the star that these wise men followed, HIS
STAR. And when I think about HIS STAR I cannot help but think of the
Church.

In
Philippians
2:15
Paul encourages us to shine like STARS in the sky. And in Matthew
5:14-16
Jesus speaks to our identity as the LIGHT of the world - a city on a hill that
cannot be hidden.

I
wonder and I ask of you, "Will the world see HIS
STAR today?"