My favourite Christmas greeting: L'Chaim

Last night our house church lit the last of the advent candles. The first candle represents Hope. The second, Peace. The third, Love. The fourth, Joy. Last night we lit the central candle, the big gold one; the one that represented Jesus.
We had a few visitors so I didn’t get a chair. I sat on the floor and looked at the assembled group: To my right is a Jewish believer whose family survived the Holocaust and she fled Europe during the last years of the war. She and her husband brought a visitor who is a medical doctor originally from India who worked in Muslim countries in the Middle East. Despite the potential consequences, she organized carol sings and prayer meetings during Christmas!
My daughter and her daughter sat on the floor in front of the tree. Our friends shared stories from their memories, reports from missionaries who experience Christmas differently "over there." And we sang carols – the sublime and the ridiculous.
But we shared communion. The incarnation is the Eternal becoming flesh. It was that flesh that was broken. So, with the candles of hope, peace, love, joy and Jesus burning, we shared the bread and "Kosher" grape juice (supplied by the Jewish woman). We held the cups of wine and I felt the urge to say "L'Chaim" – "to life".
One of our group asked if this was appropriate during communion. We discussed that for a minute. We decided it was OK; Jesus came to give us life, so let’s celebrate the life he gave, even amidst the (in fact, via) the death he suffered.
L'Chaim !!

why bother?

I am part of a writers' forum; we post our writings to be critiqued and critique each other's work. A good exercise, and a nice place to post writings. But it seems almost incestuous. Writers, reading writers and commenting on writers. Nobody else reads the words.

Yesterday, I received a rejection letter in the mail from another publisher. We writers quickly loose count of those letters. We receive lots of them and each one hurts. I am not supposed to write the editor and say, "eat shit and die!" but am supposed to take the rejection philosophically. I'll keep trying, but it raises the question, why?

The only people, apparently, who read my words are those who also like to write. some of that group are published, some are wannabes.

But, i continue to write. Why?

beats me.

The Kingdom is like a hedonist

I know we’ve all heard this before, but I was reminded about it again this morning…
Jesus told a story: The kingdom of God is like a man who found a treasure in a field. He buried the treasure in the field, sold all he had and, in great joy bought the field.
In Jesus’ terms, and in his words, the "gospel" simply meant "the Kingdom of God." The kingdom, or the gospel is supposed to be something that produces two things: Joy, and the abandon to "sell all" to get it.
Twenty years ago a Christian writer took a lot of heat from the piety police over the sub-title of his book; "Meditations of a Christian Hedonist". His point, following Christ should produce pleasure – or in more biblical language, Joy.
Why are there so many up-tight, stressed-out, ticked-off, sour-faced, messed-up Christians? Maybe we’ve got it wrong. Maybe I’ve got it wrong; I must confess to not being very joyful and full of abandon.
Just a thought.