Spooky times -

As soon as the weather turns, we start thinking of the holidays that are just around the corner. Before you know it we will be setting up Christmas trees and getting ready for all the specials of the Christmas season. Last year the question was whether or not we can say Merry Christmas or just Happy Holidays. It is spooky that the culture in which we live in as a predominantly Christian nation even questions whether or not it is correct to point out the real reason for the season. Before Christmas and all it has in store for us is the Thanksgiving holiday, a day set aside to give thanks. It is spooky that most people tend to see that day only as time off from work, time with the family, time around the table with a big holiday meal. We forget the reason for thanking God, in that he owns the cattle on a 1000 hills, in fact he owns the dirt that makes up those hills and every other one as well. In fact God owns it all, the only thing we can call our own is our own free will. Free will means we are able to choose to forget what is the real reason for the Christmas season. Free will means we are able to choose to forget to give thanks where thanks belong. Free will means we can choose to do things our way and not His. For the time being at least. Seems as if the real reasons for these holidays is being lost on us today.

With the way we deal with Thanksgiving and Christmas being so spooky, is there any place for holiday that used to be the spooky one, Halloween, besides on the shelves of the local department stores? The origin of that holiday was totally lost as it initially was the night before All Saints day, a time to celebrate the "great crowd of witnesses", the saints who went before us in the faith. Some how, some way, the focus moved from the faithfulness of these people to the idea of death, ghosts, goblins and other spooky things.

What makes it really spooky is that we are developing a Halloween mindset when it comes to just about anything. We are forgetting the real reasons we have been blessed as a nation, and choose to have those things lost to us today. No wonder things are so spooky. We are as a nation shaking in our boots over the recent issues of finances, prices, loss of jobs and technology. We have chosen to allow

a culture of death to permeate our society. Life is cheap, people are mistreated, all because God is forgotten, and people follow their own paths. There is no path to God, only a way to God, and that one way to the Father is through the Son. We need not forget that Christ is not only with us, but for us as well, as long as we don't chose to push him out of our county and our country .

Three young men with funny names were about to be tossed into the fiery furnace, because they would not follow the culturally accepted ways of doing things. They chose not to bow before the idols of their time. They chose God over universalism or any of the other spooky "isms' of their time. Their free will allowed them to chose God instead. And as they were being tossed to certain death in the midst of the flames, they said "O king, we need not defend ourselves in this matter. If we are thrown in the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know that we will not serve your gods or worship any images you set up."

It may be spooky today, it may be scary, but we need to stand our ground, and be grounded in the one who can save us from all this.

Our help does not come from Tallahassee, or Washington, our help comes from the Lord. Let us use our own free will and choose God.

God bless you all,

Rich