A friend emailed me this devotion.
How am I going with the things that are really important, what am I building, and how am I building?
This is good.

A carpenter was ready to retire. He told his employer of his plans to leave the house building industry and live a more leisurely life with his wife and his extended family. He would miss the regular income but he had decided to retire, they would manage.The boss was sorry to see such a good worker leave and asked if he could build just one more house as a personal favour.The carpenter said yes, but it soon became obvious that his heart wasn’t in his work. He resorted to shoddy workmanship and even used inferior materials. It seemed an unfortunate way to bow out of his career.When the house was finished the builder came to inspect the house, the boss handed the front door key to the old carpenter. “This is your house,” he said, “my gift to you.”What a shock! What a shame! If he had only known he was building his own house, he would have done it all so differently. Now he had to live in the home he had built none too well.So it is with us. We build our lives in a distracted way, reacting rather than acting, willing to put up less than the best. At important points we do not always give the job our very best effort.Then with a shock we look at the situation we have created and find that we are living in the house that we have built. If we had realised, we could have done it differently.Think of yourself as the carpenter. Think about your house. Each day you hammer a nail, place a board, or erect a wall. Build wisely. It is the only life you will ever build. Even if you live it for only one day more, that day deserves to be lived graciously and with dignity.Your life today is the result of your attitudes and choices in the past.Your life tomorrow will be the result of your attitudes and the choices you make today.

I love Christmas.
From the cranberry sauce over ham, to buying my wife and kids presents, I like it all!

Family is incredibly important to me, and this year we are looking forward to a Christmas time with a pool. I am teaching my son how to swim, and if enthusiasm is anything to go by, watch out Thorpie! He has the big feet, but has not yet developed all the muscles needed to stay afloat. This is a reminder of Christmas for me, hot days, warm salty skin, dives into a pool.
Waking up to presents under the tree, to give and to receive.

I think Jesus loves how we celebrate Christmas, because I think Jesus was always there for a party. We see and read him joking, drinking and laughing with His friends.
Sure not everything we see done in the name of Christmas is good, but if we spent as much time and energy on sharing Christ’s love and the good things about Christmas, as we sometimes find ourselves spending on denouncing the excesses of it all, there would be a lot more Christians around the place!

We had a wonderful day today at Church, or at least that is my impression.

Jacob invited some friends from the Congo to come along, and they did a three part gospel harmony, both before church, and for the kids mid way through the service. We could not understand their words, but we could understand their hearts. Beautiful!

We had Anne Marie leading, its great to have a lady up front, and she often brings poetry and a different slant to worship, it was nice.

I spoke my final message on Elijah. There is so much to say about this depressed, fearful, courageous, strong, weak, powerful, frightened, prayerful, doubtful man. Surely James was right when he said, “Elijah was a man just like us”. Used powerfully, yet weak doubtful and coomplaining in one moment, calling down fire from heaven the next! I contrasted the legacy Ahab left, and the one Elijah gave to Elisha. I could sure do with that cloak/mantle myself!!!

Followed the message up with two short videos, one on being a dad, the next on being a mum, “your children will rise up and call you blessed”. Always difficult, especially when there are singles, seniors there, to make the application to us all. But whether we have kids or not, we influence others lives.
We all went to down to a park after church and had a good old church picnic, and Melinda organised some mini olympic type games. I came third in the frisbee throwing competition.

Off to NorthCity tonight to see my SIL do some dancing. Should be fun, might see if I can score a free coffee that they hand out to visitors, might even pretend I am a seeker!!!!!!!!

In another stunningly exciting off field development, the Freo boys have appointed Robert Shaw as the new football manager at the club.
Big bad Robert was the one who was SCATHING in his assessment of the teams on field toughness when Essenscum rolled us about 6 months ago.
The Sunday Slimes ran a story last week saying that the Weagles had made a blue picking up Harris instead of Shaw. Lets hope that the bastion of good journalism gets it right for once.

Apparently Shaw instilled some toughness to Essenscum when he was there. Lets hope he can produce the goods in our mob.

The Colonel, aka Cameron Schwab is credited with saying the following, ““Robert has experienced the highs and lows of AFL football, from Premiership success at the Essendon Football Club through to the challenge of coaching the ailing Fitzroy Football Club,” said Schwab.“For a man who has had over 30 years experience at this level he has amazing passion and positivity for the sport and offers outstanding knowledge and insight. “He will be of great support and value to our coaching, administration and playing staff,” remarked Schwab. (http://www.fremantlefc.com.au)

More good news on the Freo front with Robert ‘the driller” Haddrill ready to go for next season.
His stability, mobility and durability were sorely missed last year in the backline.

Along with Parker, Grover and the suprise packet of Scotty Thornton, ours must surely be one of the quickest and most dynamic defence units running around. Throw in the evervescent Roger Hayden, and expect the new rule changes to favour us. I am especially thinking of the one about kick outs being able to be executed without waiting for the umpire. Last year we were first in the league for goals kicked from opposition points, so expect that trend to continue.

“without Christ you have a holiday. With Christ, you have a Holy Day”

We are really looking forward to Christmas Day in our Church. It is always a great way to start the Christmas day. I know a lot of Churches dont have a Christmas Day service, and thats cool. I wonder what they will do this year with Christmas being on a Sunday?
Anyways, for me, I love it, its always fun. If your looking for somewhere to kick the day off right, your welcome at Bedford Baptist Church

Phil Baker has a link to a great article by Rob Bell. The article is basically a quote of one of the passages from Rob’s book, Velvet Elvis.

Here is another quote from my reading.
“I realize this is not groundbreaking news, but when we get desperate and realize we cannot keep living this way, then we have to change. As I let all this come spewing forth the first time in my therapist’s office, he interrupted me. I was making lists of all the people I was working to keep happy. He said it was clear that there were significant numbers of people I was working to please and that my issue was a simple one.
I was anticipating something quite profound as I got out my pen.
He said this: “Sin.”
And then he said, in what has become a pivotal moment in my journey, “Your job is the relentless pursuit of who God has made you to be. And anything else you do is sin and you need to repent of it.”
The relentless pursuit of who God made me to be.
I started identifying how much of my life was about making sure the right people were pleased with me. And as this became more and more clear, I realized how less and less pleased I was with myself. I’d become so heavily oriented around the expectations of others that I was becoming more and more like them and less and less the person God made me to be”

It reminds me of something the apostle said, “we are here to please God, not please people”.
and Hebrews 13.6 inspires me along similar lines.