Spirit of Giving

Christmas time is just around the corner (feels weird to say that as I write before Halloween), and I want to take a second and remind you about the opportunities and needs that are presented us during this season.

Backpacks for Appalachia – These are due really soon. We have become a pickup site for the GBC this year. Several of your churches participate, and the pickup info is on Nov 5^th at after noon at Northside. So, if you have your backpacks, you can bring them to Northside between 8-4 on Tuesday and Wednesday, or Thurs before lunch. Everything has to be boxed and ready by Thursday at noon. This is a needed and worthwhile ministry. If you need info, or want to participate individually, here is the website http://missiongeorgia.org/backpacks-for-appalachia/.

Lottie Moon – Of course, most of you know about the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. It is our biggest offering of the year. This offering goes strictly to missionaries on the field and the supplies they need to carry out their ministries. This offering makes up nearly 60% of the IMB’s budget for the year. We have missionaries from the Mell Association serving overseas, and this helps keep them there. Info on the LMCO is located here - http://www.imb.org/main/lottie-moon/default.asp. As you may know the IMB has made large-scale cutbacks this year because of funding shortfalls, and we must help! Goal again for this year is $175,000,000 (for you and me that get confused with 0’s, that’s $175 million), let’s help them reach it. Five billion people need it.

Santa’s Helpers – This is an opportunity to give and to volunteer at the same time. Through this ministry we give 1200 underprivileged children in Tift County. This year they have experienced a cut in funding. Since Jog for Jake did not go this year, Santa’s Helpers lost $15,000 of their $20,000 budget. This means that instead of helping 500 families, they will only be able to help 300, as well as reducing the number of toys. We took up over $3400 to help make up the shortfall. You as individuals and as churches can really help meet this need. And of course, they are always in need of volunteers to help pack (Dec 7-11) and distribution (Dec 17^th). This year’s distribution will be at the county fairgrounds.

End of Year Gifts – Many non-profits in our area benefit from end-of-year donations. After you talk with the Lord (and your financial advisor, if you wish) consider giving to one of the location organizations such as Christian Women’s Job Corps, Ruth’s Cottage/Patticake House, Pregnancy Care Center, Lifehouse Ministries, Called to Care, Brother Charlie’s, or you could also give a gift to the association (we don’t turn money away).

Of course there are others, as we are commanded to look after the orphans and widows, to visit the sick and imprisoned, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and give cups of cold water in Jesus name. We are to be the hands and feet of Jesus all the time, but let this time of year, when Jesus came to earth as the greatest gift and most humble servant ever.

Let me be the first to say it J, Merry Christmas!

Amazing Again

As the Christmas celebration of Christ's birth has come to a close (although I love Christmas music all year round), just wanted to make a note for those of you who do read this little blog (not that there are very many of you).  Two things amazed me again about the incarnation of Christ.

First, is that the infinite God became a finite man.  Wow.  I know that Philippians 2:6-8 tells that he, being equal to God...was made in the likeness of men...and was found in the human form; that was amazing to me again. The Holy One of Israel, the Ancient of Days, the Everlasting, Sovereign God of the Universe was capsuled into a baby.  It's sort of like asking the question: can God make a rock too big for him to lift?  Can God take something that is inherently infinite (himself), and make it not infinite, even for a season? Somehow he did! Wow!

Second, is the love for the world of sinners that would compel God to do the miracle of making the infinite finite.  Part of the glory of God is that he loves sinners; and for him to come and walk in our world with us is amazing to me.  Another piece of that is that we can see how powerful that love is to deal with the blinding, blazing, consuming, terrifying holiness that is inherently God's, and still bring about this marvel of the Word taking on flesh. God loves us in spite of our failings, in spite of our inadequacies, in spite of our rebellions, in spite of our flaws. He should consume us in his wrath against the sin in us, but to his glory he loves. He loves not only in the birth, but in the death and resurrection which secures eternity for us. In excelsis deo, right. He loves us. Wow!

Hope you had an amazing Christmas too!

Thoughts on Santa

It is truly heartwarming to know that millions of people around the world believe in Santa. Sure, most are under four feet tall, but still it’s amazing that so many believe in the big guy in the red suit. Consider the following:

Around the globe, today, live approximately two billion children (persons under 18). Santa doesn’t visit all of them, of course. Subtracting the number of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, or Buddhist children reduces Santa’s Christmas Eve workload to 15 percent of the total, or 378 million children (according to the Population Reference Bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, and presuming that there is at least one good child in each home, Santa must visit about 108 million homes.

Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. That means that at each household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, and get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh, and get on to the next house. For the purposes of our calculations, we will assume that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false). We’re talking about a trip of 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. To cover that ground in 31 hours, Santa’s sleigh moves at 650 miles per second--3,000 times the speed of sound. By comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.

The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh must carry over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. In air, even granting that the "flying" reindeer could pull 10 times the normal amount, the job can’t be done with a mere eight or nine of them—Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).

Six hundred thousand tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance—this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip. Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 miles per second in .001 seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 g’s. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.

Adults have no problem believing in Santa. By comparison, the story of the little baby in the manger is relatively easy to believe. The life of Jesus Christ is a fact, recorded not only by biblical writers but by secular historians as well. Some historians declare that there is more evidence for the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ than there is evidence that Julius Caesar ever lived at all. Even in the face of the written testimony of eyewitnesses, many people refuse to believe in Jesus. They consider him nothing more than a myth. But for those willing to believe with childlike faith, Jesus promises an inheritance of the kingdom of God (Mark 10:14). SOURCE: Edited from Still More Hot Illustrations for Youth Talks by Wayne Rice. Contributed by Jeff Strite, Church of Christ at Logansport, IN