Craig D. Lounsbrough

The Christmas story is penmanship of the most brilliant sort, where God crafted a beginning that would never be subject to an ending.

Perfect majesty that deliberately chose to be born into abject poverty, walk a road of perpetual poverty, and be unjustly executed in the raw nakedness of poverty is utterly ludicrous unless I realize that this is the single and sole way that God can reach me in the suffocating poverty that I myself have created.

What we__e searching for will determine where we arrive, or if we arrive. And right in the middle of such risky choices, Christmas is God perfectly solving the problem by showing us what to search for and then bringing it to us.

More often than not, rejecting rescue is in reality rejecting our need to be rescued. And it may very well be that is why so many reject Christmas.

I am not the sum total of my accomplishments, for no matter how much I exhaust myself acquiring those accomplishments, the sum total of them will always be far too trifling to ever reflect my true value. My value rests in the fact that I am an accomplishment of God so incalculably valuable that He gave up Himself rather than give me up.

God chose to deliberately venture into and intentionally occupy depths far below and infinitely beyond that which any human has ever descended, and then to raise Himself back up to glory from those horridly dark places. And I pray that we never miss the fact that Christmas is God__ invitation for us to join Him in the rising.

When surrounded by the ashes of all that I once cherished, despite my best efforts I can find no room to be thankful. But standing there amidst endless ash I must remember that although the ashes surround me, God surrounds the ashes. And once that realization settles upon me, I am what I thought I could never be ... I am thankful for ashes.

If I worship the fact that I don__ worship anything, amongst other things what I__ worshipping is denial.

Christmas embodies everything that I need. However, everything that I need is often made up of a lot of stuff I don__ want.

Truth even in the most whispered tones will always roar.

To dream only of what is __ossible_ is to be fooled into believing that one is dreaming in the first place.

Is safety the __ream_ that will kill all of my other __reams?_ For the truth is, no __eal_ dream is safe.

I incessantly look for water in wells dug by men, and I have drunk enough sand to prove it.

Why is it when I pursue the praises of men I find myself with everything that I__e looked for but nothing that I need? That__ because I have an extraordinary habit of looking for the wrong thing in the wrong place.

Things that are truly great need nothing from me, and to somehow think that they do speaks to my utter lack of greatness.

If I simply look at the map that I__e so tediously created, it will explain why I__ laying at the bottom of this cliff looking up.

Maybe consequences are dear friends in stealthy disguise.

Without an imagination we would be irreparably shackled to what is, and never be released to what could be.