With all of the time that the Occupy protesters have spent, well, occupying, I wonder how many have spent the time reading the IRS statistics about tax payers. Most of the protest signs I read tell me that no one cares to look for the truth.  Specifically about these 1% that have so much money that it is just unfair to everyone else.

The IRS numbers above don’t lie.

• The average ALL taxpayers pay is 12.24%
• The average the top 1% pays is 23.27%
• The top 1% pay 38% of all of our taxes
• The BOTTOM 50% of income earners pay just 2.59% of their income to taxes

Now, with this being said. Yes, there are corrupt awful people in big business positions. On the other side there are are murdering gang member low-lifes with no jobs. In between, and the vast majority of this country, are hard working Americans who understand that working and living in American is a privilege. If we can all start with that understanding we would get a lot further in our discussions. Heck, maybe we could even remind our government that they work for us and that they are overspending and mismanaging our government. That too, wouldn’t be a bad place to begin.

Your Current Salary: $110,000 a year

Despite making $110,000, you will spend $160,000 this year

Current Household Debt: $700,000 (On Aug. 2, 2011 you will max out your credit card)

Good news! (kind of) The bank just raised your credit card limit to:
$835,000

To correct your budget problem you just agreed you would cut your spending by $500,000 over the next 10 years or by $50,000 each year.

Are you happy with your household budget?

Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.

1Peter 4:10

“Be blessed, be loved, be lifted high.  Be treasured here, be glorified. I owe my life to you my Lord, Here I Am.”~Recording Artists, Watermark “Knees to the Earth”

I’ve listened to this song a thousand times.  Maybe two thousand times but I’ve lost track.  On the way to Baltimore for my new job this song played again over my iPhone.  I love worship music.  I think I always have.  It gives me an opportunity to come before the Lord with praise and reflection.

The first three lines of this chorus do just that, finishing with the acknowledgement “I owe my life to you.”  “It is a very big acknowledgement,” I used to think to myself.  After listening to this song again, I suddenly wondered if my focus had been on the wrong words.  It occurred to me that in this new place in my life, an acknowledgement isn’t enough.  It’s a start but it is not where the story ends.

So you may be asking what this new chapter in my life is titled.  Let it be known that I am 32 years old, I’m starting a new job and refocusing my career.  I am the humble and humbled father of two boys and a beautiful baby girl I have yet to meet outside the walls of her Mommy’s tummy.  I am a thankful husband who is constantly reminded of God’s grace through the actions of my wife.

Therefore, let this chapter in my life be known as “Here I am.”

I am finished with mere acknowledgements with little action.  I’ve been pretty good at that over the past several years.  Instead of acknowledgements it is really time to search out those opportunities to be a true servant for the sake of what Christ has given us; a second chance.  I hope this doesn’t come across as some ‘I am holier than thou’ speech because it is quite the opposite.  I’m well aware of my deficiency in life and my lack of service to other is just the beginning.  My faults run many in number.  In fact, I think that is one of the toughest part about becoming a follower of Christ.  It’s the realization that you have tried so long to do it yourself and your still spinning your wheels, you’re still unhappy, you still can’t make sense of this life. At least that is what it was about for me.

I’m tired of pretending I can do a better job than God can.  I have been over it for a long time now.  There are plenty of people who don’t get the whole Jesus message and I get that.  I really do.  I may not agree but I get it.  For now, that is okay with me because I know that relationships don’t happen overnight, they’re not forced and they are by choice.  In the meantime, I pray that my friends and my family find the clarity and peace that God has laid out for them.  This, they are not able to create themselves, although like me, they will continue to try as I have tried so many times.  That’s a conversation for a different day.

For now, I’m ready.  Here I am.

Instead, I have decided to use this time as a moment in life of spiritual reflection and guidance.  It has allowed me to stop for a moment and figure out answers to questions like, What direction am I headed?

Growing up, I was a competitive swimmer.  In a 25 yard pool, I could have told you how many strokes it would take me to reach the other side of the pool.  I had the timing down.  I’ll never forget the first time I swam my first race in a lake.  The lake had no walls, only buoys to mark our way.  Every two minutes of swimming I would have to lift my head and many times to my amazement I would find myself sharply veering off course.

This visual illustrates almost exactly how I feel about the past five years.  I have only been focused on the direction within the confined walls of my company.  I don’t believed I veered off course but the truth is, I haven’t bothered to lift my head to find out if I am moving in the right direction outside of those walls.

Some of my peace has been coming through our home church of Real Life.  Recently, I went to a concert at the church to see Jason Gray,  a top 10 Christian singer with a great testimony.  Something he said there was absolutely profound and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.  Here is the ‘Cliff Notes’ version.

There was only one person that we know of who had the audacity to ask God what his name was and that person was Moses. God gave us his name which we know as Yahweh or Jehovah or I am Who I Am, depending on the translation you read (Exodus 4:14).  When the old testament was written, what it really read was (again, translated) YHWH.  Our best guess is that it was to mean ‘Yahweh’ which means breath of life or breath.  This definition is not only poetic, it’s perfect.  If God’s name means breath of life or breath, can you fathom the implications? For instance:

The Tetragrammaton in Paleo-Hebrew (10th century BC to 135 AD), old Aramaic (10th century BC to 4th century AD) and square Hebrew (3rd century BC to present) scripts.

• When a baby is born, its very first action is speaking the name of God.
• When someone is about to pass on, their last breath is used to call on God.
  
• Without God (breath) there is no life
• When you are having a conversation with a friend who is an Atheist and he looks at you and says “There is no God,” The only thing you can hear is Yahweh, Yahweh.  Breathe in, Breathe out. Breathe in, Breathe out.

As I have been able to soak this all in I keep thinking about the timing of this message in my own life.  Within 24 hours after finding out about my job, I had applied to 3o jobs and 48 hours later I had doubled it.  I wasn’t sleeping and even managed to lose about 10 pounds (which was really needed anyway).  As proactive as this all was, I had already forgotten that this was my moment to sit and listen to God’s plans for me.  It’s time for me to pray for clarity for His plans for me and not just another job.  After all, who am I to pray for just another job when He may have bigger plans for me?  At times this situation has been a struggle and disconcerting but I need to realign myself to focus on something else.  Instead of my own thoughts I want to hear what He wants for me next.  I want to listen and hear:

Yahweh   (breath in)

Yahweh   (breath out)

because it is God that sustains us and comforts us.  It is through His son Jesus that he receives us with open arms.

Glory be to God.  God is good, all of the time.

At the beginning of the ceremony the master of ceremonies sang the national anthem.  When I thought he was done, he kept going.  He sang another verse! I was thinking “what is this? Is this some sort of Florida tradition?” Since we have only been here for 11 months I assumed that maybe it was a local thing.

I came back home and it still bothered me. The sounds at the event wasn’t great so I couldn’t hear all of the words.  I first looked up Francis Scott Key, the writer of our national anthem and learned that he didn’t write just one verse.  Sadly, I have never learned this or if I did learn it years ago, clearly I had forgotten it.  The fourth verse of this amazing and historic poem was what the master of ceremonies had sung.  The whole poem reads:

O! say can you see by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
‘Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Original Manuscript of Francis Scott Key

For the people who believe that we are a Godless nation or that today’s radical Christians are trying to interject their faiths into the foundations of our country I have this to say.  We as Christians don’t want the truth of our history taken away.  The truth is that we were founded as a Christian country.  The last verse of this poem is just one more piece of that puzzle.  Unfortunately we have become less and less of a Christian nation as many unbelievers of Christianity are part of this country. However, you can’t take away what is already done.  You can’t take away the foundations of our country.  Let’s not be confused.  Our founding fathers weren’t promoting a religion or else they would have never allowed for freedom of religion in our constitution.  They understood that we all have a choice and they gave us the freedom to make that choice.  They also understood the importance of telling people what guides and anchors their decisions.  In their case, and I pray this for so many more Americans, God guided their decisions in building America.

This photo of our 3 year old, Evan, was taken about a week ago.  It is one of many photos that displays on the rotating wallpaper on my computer.  Every time this photo comes up, I stop to look at it.

My sister Michelle was in town visiting and she wanted to go to a restaurant in Celebration, Florida.  So my wife and I happily brought our two boys and my sister to the Columbia Restaurant.  We enjoyed a brilliant Cuban-styled lunch and then decided to take a walk around the area.  We stopped at a grassy area where there were rocking chairs and Evan did what most boys his age do best.  He ran from one end to the other for no reason.  He was laughing hysterically as he was running.  We chased him for a while but even when we stopped chasing him he was still running around, laughing out loud and to put it plainly he didn’t have a care in the world.  He wasn’t worried about who might look at him.  He wasn’t concerned with what time it was, what we were doing next or even that it was a bath night (which he sometimes dreads).

As an individual I am amazed.  I look at this photo in wonder.  I am sure that when I was young I had moments like this but that was a long, long time ago.  If you are like me you know what I am talking about.  I am always thinking about something.  I’m thinking about what I need to do next, who I need to call, I’m planning. I’m thinking about the five things I just did.  I’m worrying about this and I’m worrying about that. I hate worrying, yet, I still do it.

I know that I am an adult and certainly need to be grounded in my responsibilities.  However, I also know that I must find that place where Evan was when I took this photo.  I need to laugh out loud, stare at the sky and run as fast as I can.  Life is way too good to worry.

Yet another lesson learned from a 3 year old.

²⁵“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? ²⁶Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

²⁸“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. ²⁹Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. ³⁰If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? ³¹So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³²For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Matthew 6:25

This year there has been a disturbing theme that has really caught me off guard.   It seems that this year, people really got into Christmas early. Whether it was shopping earlier, hanging up the decorations or the stores outdoing themselves yet again, things were moving in a hurry.  Because of this, people also began speaking about Christmas earlier.  I’ve had many conversations this year about Santa versus Jesus.  It wasn’t until the third conversation that it REALLY hit me.  I even remember pointing my finger at the person I was talking to.   “You are willing to defend Santa more than Jesus!” I said with eyes wide open like someone had just slapped my on my back.

Before you roll your eyes and move on to the next post consider how most of these conversations go.

PERSON: Are your kids excited about seeing Santa this year?

MATT: Well, we really don’t do the whole Santa thing.

PERSON: You mean you aren’t telling your kids about Santa?

MATT: Well, our children are young (3 and 9 months) but I’m not going to lie to them about a tale that overshadows the real reason we have Christmas.

PERSON: But it’s just for fun, how can you do that to your kids?

MATT: You mean, how can I decide to NOT lie to my kids.  Well, I am just a horrible father.

See, I have yet to hear anyone use the “J” word in these conversations (Jesus). For some reason, it makes people uncomfortable when I say to them “I really want my kids to know that during Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus who is our Lord and Savior.  It is the message of Emmanuel (God With Us) and the beginning of the greatest life that the people on earth have ever known.  It is because of Him that we are saved and for this we celebrate this miraculous event.”

If you are uncomfortable with this message or think that there is more to Christmas then this, then maybe this particular Christian holiday is not for you. Maybe you should sit this one out.

Instead of ‘sitting it out,’ what we see instead is people making their own holiday.  Maybe these people should instead celebrate Seinfeld’s Festivus.

So if anyone asks me again, how I can deprive my kids of believing in Santa, from now on my answer is this.  I tell my kid’s about Jesus and not about Santa because I love them and I want them to know where they can turn to, to learn the truth.  After all, they will have enough lies and confusion handed to them throughout their lives.  I do this because it is my job as a father to train them in the way they should go.  (Proverbs 22:6)  It is my job and privilege to honor these celebrations such as Christmas and Easter for the amazing pieces of history that they are.  I do this because I want them to know about the Grace that God has given us through his son, Jesus the Christ.

Merry Christmas kids.

From the Prophet Isaiah, Chapter 7 Verse 14

“Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son,and will call him Immanual.”

When you turn the pages of the bible from the Old Testament to the New Testament, chances are, you are not concerned with how long turning those pages will take you. However, 400 years separate these two books. At least from a literary standpoint, God was silent for 400 years.  Readers have no knowledge of any great prophets or of God’s interaction with man during this time. Certainly, through His word God felt we didn’t need to know about this quiet period of time.

Our Savior, Jesus Christ, came quiet. He came on a silent night.  He could have come with Heaven’s trumpets sounding and thunder rumbling but he didn’t.   Instead he broke the many years of silence through the cry of a baby.

Let’s face it. It wasn’t an easy time for Joseph and Mary. In those days people would have to report to their birthplace to pay their taxes and that is just what Joseph and Mary were doing. Mary, probably just about nine months into her pregnancy, was taking a long trip, she was uncomfortable and Joseph was worried. The two of them would not successfully find refuge at an inn so instead they settled in what scholars say was actually a cave. A damp and dirty shelter in which Emmanuel “God with Us” would come to save us for the sins we have never been able to turn from.

Out of the long silence came the cry of a baby who came to us so that we may again be with our Father. He came to us! Praise God! God was with us on earth. He never gave up or forsook us because he loves us so much. He came down to our sinful, lustful world in a dirty cave and was born into an imperfect family.   He lived a perfect life, performed miracles and died for my sins and yours. It is the beginning of the most incredible event in our human history.

This Christmas I would ask you to consider something. Forget about your Christmas tree, the shopping you haven’t finished, the presents you want to receive.  Forget it all. Instead, consider today where you stand with God. Talk with Him. He loves us. He wants us to return to him and there is no other way to our father but through His son, Jesus Christ. (John 14:6)

And here is your harsh truth. You have a decision to make. You are either with him or against him. It’s that simple. It is not enough to do good deeds or to try to  be a good person. Don’t fool yourself by saying “I’ve never killed anyone, I pay my taxes, I’ll go to heaven because of those things.” God is giving us the chance to be with Him but he is still letting you decide.

I hope you all have a very blessed and Merry Christmas.

Enjoy this song about this very subject title “Winter Snow.” My favorite lines are:

You could have come like a winter storm
With all of the strength of a hurricane
You could have come like a forest fire
With the power of heaven in your flame
But you came like a winter snow