Brace Yourself!

As a follower of Christ, I’m preparing myself for the Christmas Season, but not in the way you might think.

I’m bracing myself against the cascade of guilt and shame flowing from the so-called evangelical community every December.

There will be the usual degrading offering of “you’re spending too much money on this or that,” with a self-righteous sprinkling of “we buy a cheap tree,” one-upped by “we don’t buy a tree at all,” but trumped by the “we only talk and think about Jesus on Christmas” crowd.

Modern-day Pharisees throughout the church will boast of their “just right” limit on individual gifts, as they look for a verse to spew at anyone spending even a dollar more than their “sanctified” amount.

So, I’m supposed to feel guilty about decorating our home to celebrate the Lord’s birth and buying presents for the people I love?

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I’m spending a lot of time in airports this week and all of the talking heads on the 24/7 “news” channels are droning on about the newest scare-a flu pandemic. It seems that we all have just a few days to live and that the sky, once again chicken-little, is falling.

When I see a few fellow travelers hurrying along to the next gate wearing a surgical mask, I can’t help but wonder if I should get one. I mean, “just in case.”

It takes about three minutes online to google “surgical masks” and discover that the answer to that question for most of us is, “No.” The experts generally agree that wearing a surgical mask is a bad idea:

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