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Happy New Year 2024 · 30 December 2023

Happy New Year! Welcome to the year 2024! (In a day or two, if you are reading this post on or before the day it is released.)

Whether or not you are a reveler and spend New Year’s Eve reveling, it is a nice time to reflect on the past year and to think about getting ready for the next year. Of course, if you do too much reveling, you might want to hold off on the reflecting until your head is screwed on straight. (Well done, if that is not the kind of reveling you do.) Then again, regardless of the type of reveling that you do (or do not do), you still might want to hold off on the reflecting until the light of day when things are clear and fresh. When it is a brand new year.

(By the way. Whether you think that New Year’s Day is a holiday or not, the government does, and so we get the day off. Which is a nice way to recover from reveling long into the night or even morning. And it is a perfect day to reflect on the year just past and the year yet to come. The interesting thought about a holiday though comes when you consider Independence Day in America. The reveling occurs on the Fourth of July, and the holiday comes on that same day. The Fourth. It would make more sense to have the holiday on the fifth after the reveling on the fourth. And no. I am not arguing for a two-day national holiday. After all, most of the celebrations happen at night anyway. Okay. Many people celebrate all day too. Which also makes sense for having a day off the next day. Okay, maybe I am arguing for a two-day Independence Day holiday.)

At any rate.

The most interesting thing about a new year is that it is new. I know. Not very provocative or insightful. But it does mean something. At least it can. A new year can mean a new start. A new lease on life. A new perspective. A new list of things you want to accomplish.

(Yes. I did it. I mentioned a list. But a list of things you want to accomplish is not a list of resolutions. Which people do not do anymore anyway. Do they?)

I know. Sometimes that new list is daunting. Especially if it seems like the new list will be a new list of things that you think will inevitably not get accomplished. Which is why you might not create the list in the first place. (Like pesky New Year’s resolutions.) Bah humbug. Just do not make one. Do not make that list.

On the other hand, there is power in a list. Even if you do not get everything done. Even if you do not get one thing done. You still ought to make the list. After all, if you can put a check mark by that item when you accomplish it, you feel great. Or at least you feel like you actually did something. Even if that something was to wake up on time for work tomorrow.

Which brings us back to the beginning.

I wonder if we ought to celebrate Independence Day on Independence Day Eve instead of on Independence Day. You know. Light the fireworks and stuff the night before and have the barbeques and parties the day of. It would be like New Year’s Eve celebrations followed by a nice day of looking at the new year in front of us. Yeah, I know. People would still find it difficult to wake up the morning after.

Anyway.

I hope that you have (or had, as the case might be) a great New Year’s Eve celebration. I hope that you have a wonderful year in 2024. And by all means, make that list of things you want to accomplish this year. You might surprise yourself and finish something. (Even if it was just getting up on time for work tomorrow.) Which would make it a great year.

Happy New Year! Have a marvelous 2024!

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Merry Christmas 2023 · 23 December 2023

Christmas time is a time to be with family and friends. It is a time to gather round the Christmas tree. It is a time to be thankful. It is a time to remember the first Christmas.

It has been over 2000 years since the first Christmas. Nobody thought of it as Christmas then. And besides a specific child’s parents, only a handful of shepherds recognized the day as special. But the shepherds were told by an angel and a heavenly host that something wonderful had happened. And so they left their sheep to go see the baby, who on his eighth day would be named Jesus.

It is interesting that the shepherds left their sheep. They must have realized that those sheep would be safe while they went and visited the King of kings and Lord of lords. Or they were just so excited that could not help but just drop everything and go.

I would like to be like that. I would like to hear God speak, and just drop everything and do whatever it is that he says. Then again, I suppose that I have been trying to listen and do what I am supposed to do. After all, here I am still posting my weekly blog so that my few faithful readers (both real and imaginary) can read whatever musings I put forth. I suppose that is something. After all, if God did not call me to write, He at least gave me the gift of writing. (Even if some might call it a curse.)

I suppose that I kinda did that when I became a teacher, too. There was a divine nature to my choosing that path. You see, I had other plans, but they fell through. In fact, I could have stayed safe and sound in my comfy job as an engineer, but I had to venture out. Like I said, my other plans fell through, but I followed through on a different plan. I became a teacher, because I loved teaching my Sunday school kids about God and Jesus. How hard could it be teaching high school kids about engineering and programming? Harder, for sure. (But that is a completely different story.)

It might seem a long way from thinking about the first Christmas to thinking about my teaching career, but it is not that much of a stretch. After all, I left my flock like the shepherds left theirs on that Christmas night. But I knew I would not be back. I trusted that God would take care of them. And I trusted that God would take care of me.

He has. God has led me to the right job. He led me to the right person to have a family with. He led me to this point in my teaching and writing career. All because I decided to follow Jesus one Sunday when I was a kid sitting in the back row of the kid service in a big church in Colorado. I never looked back. Oh sure, I have had setbacks. We all do. But deciding to follow Jesus was the best and only decision that we need to make in our lives. The rest is doing our best to honor that commitment. That commitment to follow Him. Wherever He leads.

Unlike those shepherds at the first Christmas, we might not need to drop everything to follow Jesus. Be we might. And we should be prepared to do so. After all, Jesus dropped everything to be with us. And He experienced the worst thing that anybody could experience so that we do not need to. No. Not death on the cross. That might be the worst thing for a human to experience. Jesus experienced something much worse. Jesus experienced something that I hope none of us ever experiences. He experienced God turning away from Him. He experienced being forsaken by God so that we would never need to experience that. And then, God raised Jesus from the grave, took Him from the power of sin and death, so that we too might experience what being with God is truly like.

It might seem funny or strange to think about Easter at Christmas time. But without the worst moment in history (Jesus’ crucifixion) followed by the best moment in history (Jesus’ resurrection), Christmas would not be a thing. I love Christmas, but only because I know it is the beginning of the greatest love story ever told. Well, I suppose in reality, it is not the beginning, just the beginning of the climax of the story.

The children’s song says, “Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so.” I believed the song then and I believe it now. And now, I believe the Bible because history and archeology and science and culture and so much more tell me that the Bible is God’s message of love to us and for us.

It is Christmas time. Time for family and friends. Time for loving and giving. Time for remembering the first Christmas. I hope that you take time to remember the first Christmas. And I hope that it becomes as special for you as it is for me.

Merry Christmas everybody. Happy birthday, Jesus.

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Rock Star Teachers · 16 December 2023

I never knew I was a rock star. (Apologies to those who really are rock stars.)

Okay. I am not a rock start. Not by any stretch of the imagination. But I found out that apparently some students think that some of their teachers are rock stars. It was a humbling experience. (Especially, since none of the students I talked to thought I was a rock star.)

(I must apologize to actual rock stars. Especially those on that commercial where they say they are tired of people using the term “rock star” for those who are doing well at something. I do not even know what the ad was for, but it was clever seeing a bunch of real rock stars telling people to quit using “rock star” to tell people they are doing a great job. After all, the ad tells us, there are real rock stars, and apparently they do not like being compared to the rest of us normal folks.)

At any rate.

I found out that some of our students think that at least some of their teachers are rock stars when I was leaving our staff Christmas party. There they were. Six starry-eyed teens clamoring to see who was at the party. They were ostensibly over at one of the student’s houses getting ready to go back to school for a basketball game. As we talked, it became apparent that they were really there trying to get a glimpse of their rock star teachers. (Sorry again.)

Which seemed odd. After all, these same students see their teachers nearly every day at school. Why all the clamor?

Apparently, students think that teachers only exist at school. Apparently, teachers disappear from school each evening and then reappear each morning. Apparently, seeing them outside of school is such a rarity that they get all starry-eyed, and wonder what they might be doing letting ordinary people see them out in the wild. In the real world.

I suppose I can see that to a certain extent. After all, there are teachers who do not want to teach in a school district where they live. They do not want the awkward interactions of seeing their students at the store. Or just out and about. Worse yet, they do not want the even more awkward interactions of seeing students’ parents out and about. Or worst of all, they do not want the awkward interactions of seeing students and their parents in the real world. The thing is, I never thought of those interactions from the student point of view.

The six starry-eyed teens that I chatted with outside the Christmas party were quite enlightening. They said that they seldom saw any of the teachers outside the building. Ever. Even those who live in the district. Of course, the one who lived across the street (ostensibly) said that she sees her neighbor teacher, but that is about it. The others said that it was such a rarity seeing their teachers outside of the building. Apparently, it is like catching a glimpse of Big Foot in the forest. Or like seeing a rock star anywhere.

It was fun chatting with said teens. They kept trying to catch glimpses of this or that teacher. Oh! Oh! It’s (insert name here)! They were so excited when somebody walked by the front window. Especially, when they thought one of them was going to come out the door.

Well, I never imagined that any students thought of any of their teachers that way, but it is nice to know that students see teachers and all the staff at our school in such a positive light. It is especially nice to know that at least some of them think that at least some of us are rock stars. (Again, my apologies to those who are actual rock stars.)