Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

Who I Am and Who I'm Not - "The Self That I Long to Believe In"

“You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.” - Henry David Thoreau “Who am I?”

The question seems a bit overused these days. In our culture, I tend to think it’s less about thoughtfully unearthing who we are. Rather, I think it’s more about creating something that’s culturally acceptable and that adheres to whatever trend is currently trending in the culture. It’s the creation of a self suitable to the world rather than discovering who we are as both in and above the world. And so we might ask, how do we not know? How could we wake up every day and go to bed every night with this person that we are and still not know who we are? How is it that we walk through the myriad array of dynamics and demands of life and living, and somehow not see ourselves in the act of dealing with those things? How have we lived with ourselves yet missed ourselves in the living?

Well, one answer is that we don’t want to see. We don’t want to see because we fear that if we actually look at who we are, we might not like who or what we see. It may confirm our deepest fears about who we are. It may convince us that we really don’t have the capacity to achieve the dreams that we want to achieve. It may corroborate all of the negative things that people have said about us, when we’ve spent our lives fighting against believing that that’s who we are. We may choose ‘ignorance’ as opposed to ‘knowing’ so that we can continue wearing the weathered façade that we’ve found comforting, in whatever way it might comfort us.

Or second, maybe we’ve spent our energies not coming to understand who we are, but vesting those precious energies in becoming whoever it is that everyone says we should become. There are demanding social pressures to adhere to. Heavy-handed societal expectations that press us for compliance. There are those who are committed to whatever politically-correct agenda they’re committed to who are easily aroused and readily enflamed to rage should we refuse alignment with their agendas. There are the voguish trends that demand adherence lest we be labeled as outdated or just plain ignorant. There are the expectations of parents that rest heavy upon us, and the voices of well-meaning mentors that too often called us to some vision of who they thought we were. Therefore, we don’t have time to see ourselves because we’re spending our time trying to become another ‘self.’

Or third, it’s possible that we might have determined that it’s not ‘who’ we are, but who circumstances made us to be. Abuse as a child. Bullying at the hands of thoughtless people bent on propping up their own fragile insecurities at our expense. Jobs lost in acquisitions that sacrificed employees on the cold altar of budget and profit. Marriages that collapsed at the hands of spouses who decided that the trade-off for personal agendas as held against the life of a marriage and a family was legitimate. Enemies that we mistook for friends who slowly circled around behind us and stabbed us in one of the many ways that people stab others. For us, these answered the question, “Who am I?”

Or fourth, we don’t feel that there’s any identity to discover. That somehow we are the embodiment of a bunch of ‘nothing’ that will only add up to nothing. That because there’s nothing there, the need for some sort of pursuit becomes unnecessary and embarrassingly ridiculous. We are what we already know, despite how little that might be. Somehow we ended up at the shallow end of the gene pool, or we showed up late when things were being handed out. We got to rummage through the left-overs or we were looked over. There was no motivation to develop anything along the way, or the opportunities to do so simply never came our way. Therefore, we don’t know who we are because we’re pretty much nothing and we already know that.

Or finally, could it be something entirely different? Could it be that we are vast beyond comprehension? That we’ve mistaken this journey of ‘who am I’ for a destination that gives us a clear and solid answer, verses seeing it as a journey where the answer is always fleshing itself out with ever-great clarity as we go along? That we are someone who is perpetually in the process of becoming more of whoever that someone is? That we are not meant to be something that’s stagnant in time and space, but we are something that is always evolving in a manner that we are constantly advancing into time and growing in space? And to understand that is to begin to build a sense of self that will effectively begin to disassemble our negative sense of self. “Who are you?” Get this stuff out of the way, quit falling into these identity stealing behaviors, look beyond all of that and you’ll begin to see the authentic self.

Closing

Today’s podcast is drawn from the book, “The Self That I Long to Believe In – The Challenge of Building Self-Esteem.” Get your copy today at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.

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Love - A World Without It

LifeTalk

Love – A World Without It

“Love is the essence of our humanity expressing itself in actions of sacrifice so profound that we risk not surviving those expressions.”

Complacency is a tragic hallmark of our lives. We’ve certainly got bunches of it. In fact, as the old saying goes, we’ve got it “in spades.” Complacency is conceived in the bosom of familiarity, where something becomes so commonplace that we errantly render it as ‘common.’ We’ve yet to beat this tendency that we have to assume that the more we have of something, the less it’s inherent value. And so we end up taking great things, important things, even critical things for granted. And it’s at that point that we begin to lose the very things that we can’t live without because we become complacent.

Diluting of Love

One of the things that we become complacent about is love. We blithely toss around the idea of love in a manner that paints it as something of a magical storyline. It seems that far too often we’ve relegated it to the penmanship of misty-eyed novelists or the musings of our own minds, and in doing so we seem to have created some horribly diluted understanding of love. We’ve penned that anemic kind of live into a million cards, and we’ve inserted that self-same prose into tens of thousands of chapters that lay nestled between the covers of a thousand novels. We’ve got songs, and movies, and plays, and poetry, and t-shirts, and a thousand different sayings that expound on this diluted and pathetic kind of love that we’ve manufactured. Yet, we’d be wise to ask, “Is this love?” “Really?” I don’t think so.

Losing Love to Understand Love

If we want to appreciate something in earnest, it seems that we must first lose it. There’s something at the basest core of our humanity that doesn’t wake up until that part of our humanity is violently shaken. And often that violent ‘shaking’ is to lose the very thing that we need to be awakened to. Therefore, maybe the best way to understand love is to understand what life would be like without it.

And so, what would we lose if love didn’t exist? If it was suddenly gone?

Loss of Community

Take away love and we have no reason to consider our fellowman nor join him in the partnership of life and living. The sense of community that’s forged strong by empathy, fired by sympathy, and cinched tight by respect would be obliterated. The strength of community as sustained by things like conscience, and ethics, and morals, and compassion, would collapse and completely implode. Without love our communities would disintegrate, civil society would be obliterated, and the world (which is built on community) would collapse. Without love we would lose community.

Well, what else would we lose if love didn’t exist?

Loss of Self

Take away love and our own individual existence would fall into abject irrelevance. The desire to sustain ourselves would devolve to a singularly primitive savagery that would be completely dependent upon the degree of savagery that we possess to sustain our lives. We’d have no passion for living. No sense of worth or value. No sense of purpose or meaning. Hatred ‘of’ self and ‘for’ self born of the absence of love would cause us to turn on ourselves and likely destroy ourselves out of some sense that we don’t have enough value to maintain our existence in the first place. In essence, to become loveless is to undermine our own existence and any rationale for that existence.

What else would we lose if love didn’t exist?

Loss of Meaning

Take away love, and nothing would capture our imagination. We would find nothing compelling. We would never marvel at anything. We’d never be held in the mesmerizing embrace of wonder. We would never be lifted to heights of ecstasy, nor would we know the depths to which one could fall. Passion, desires, dreams, vision, purpose, and hope are all borne of love and entirely sustained by it. And when those things are gone (because love is gone) we become little more than mindless carbon-based life forms driven by a drive to exist that is no deeper than the drive to exist. Take away love and we take away meaning. And try to imagine a meaningless existence?

What else would we lose if love didn’t exist?

Loss of Existence

Finally, have we postulated that without love existence would never have existed in the first place? While we have done a bang-up job of banging up life, it’s always love that puts it all back together again. And when genuine love puts things back together, it always puts them back together better than they were before we messed them up. And so, I would be so bold as to say that if it weren’t for love, existence would have never existed in the first place. And without love, it would be impossible to maintain that existence.

Getting Back to Love

Love is far more than something that has arisen from the penmanship of misty-eyed novelists or the musings of our own minds. Love is far more than the sugary-sweet caricatures of love that we’ve woven into everything from t-shirts to holidays. Imagine life without love if you dare, and if you do you will begin to touch the periphery of this incredible thing that we call ‘love.’ You will be reminded (in a very powerful way) what love really is and what love really does. And so ask yourself, what would the world be like without love? And then ask, how do I bring that kind of love back into my life?

Closing

Portions of today’s podcast were drawn from the book, “An Intimate Collision – Encounters with Life and Jesus.” Get your copy today at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.

Thanks for joining us on LifeTalk today. You will find LifeTalk on most podcast platforms as well as YouTube. I would also encourage you to check out our daily posts on all of our Social Media sites.

Personal Testimony - It’s Just Too Much

How many times have you felt that there’s just no use?  There’s just no sense in going on.  You know, we’ve made way too many mistakes.  Or the hole that we’ve dug, or the hole that misfortune dug is just too deep.  And it really doesn’t matter who dug it anyway because, either way, we’re not getting out it.  We failed out of college, or we didn’t go to begin with.  Or our marriage went away.  Or our addiction won’t go away.  Or our career goals always stall no matter how much we’ve invested in what we’re doing.  The medical issues just keep happening.  We can’t hold onto a friend to save our lives, or our family just can’t get along long enough to actually look like a family.  The bills never stop.  It’s always bad news.  Our self-esteem is shot, our dreams are dead, the kids won’t call us, and we’re dreading tomorrow because it’s going to be the exact same thing all over again.  How many times have you felt that there’s just no use?

And when we’re at that point, life doesn’t really matter all that much anymore.  It’s just something that we tolerate until we’re tired of tolerating.  It’s not about living.  It’s about surviving.  And at some point, after we’ve done it long enough, surviving ‘becomes’ our life.  It ‘becomes’ who we are.  It ‘becomes’ all that we do.  And then, over time, it ‘becomes’ all that we think we can do, or should do.  How many times have you felt that there’s just no use?

And you know, we try all kinds of stuff to fix this.  We immerse ourselves in some self-help philosophy, or we’re on a mad hunt for the right podcast, or we’ve ordered the latest breakthrough book, or we’re hanging on the words of some person of prominence.  We try change our diet, or change our attitude, or change our social circle, only to realize that all of that really never changes anything.

So, we’re in a hole.  We blew college, our marriage is long gone, the addiction keeps showing up, our career is stalled, the doctors can’t figure out our issues, friends come and go, the family bickering doesn’t stop and neither do the bills, our self-esteem is shot, our dreams are dead, and the kids won’t call.  Yeah.  How many times have we felt that there’s just no use.  I have.  And I’m guessing you have too.

For me, when I’ve been at those places, the only thing bigger than everything that’s laid me flat is God.  Some would say that God has failed them just as much as everything else has.  And in my own life I’ve discovered that when I feel that way, it’s really a whole lot more about the fact that I failed God.  Because God doesn’t fail us.  He might not show up in the way that we want Him to.  He might not engage all of this stuff in the way that we think is best.  We might think Him to be too slow in the way that He works.  Or we might not believe in Him at all.  But what I can tell you is that with God, you never have to feel that there’s ‘no use’ because He’s got a ladder for every hole that you’re in, and a solution for every problem that you have.

So get your Bible out and read it.  If you don’t have one, buy one or download a Bible app.  Go to church.  Call a pastor.  Pray.  Listen to Christian music.  See what happens.  Believe me, God’s got a lot of ladders, and He’s got an endless supply of solutions.

Personal Testimony - Hope

People ask me, “Is there any hope?”  And there have been times (more than one), where I’ve found myself asking the same question.  “Is there any hope?”

And I often ask myself, “What kind of world do we live in?  How dark has it all become?  How bad must it be that we somehow find ourselves driven to some point, or some place in our lives that’s so desperate that we actually find ourselves asking that kind of question?”  And I’ll tell you what, if you’re asking that question it’s because you’re in a really dark place.  And I know how dark they are because I’ve been there…and so have you.

Think about it for a minute.  Without hope, what have we got?  What have we got?  If we can’t apply some feeling of hope to our future, or a marriage that’s hanging by a thread, or a disease that could go really wrong really fast, or a child who’s gone rogue, or a career that teetering on the edge of some abyss, or an addiction that’s eaten up someone’s life or someone’s family…if there’s no hope that you can apply to any of that stuff…what have you got?

You know exactly what it’s like when life collapses.  We both know what that’s like.  When your dream just dies, and they can die for a lot of reasons that are just brutal.  When your marriage vanishes, and you didn’t even see it coming.  When you’ve run into so many walls just trying to get to ‘some next place’ in life, (any next place) that all you end up spending your life doing is waiting for the next wall to show up because you’re certain that it’s going to.  When you begin to realize that the damage is just too much, and as you realize that it begins to dawn on you that it’s humanly impossible to ever climb out from under all of it.  If there’s no hope that you can apply to any of that…what have you got?

If there’s no hope, what’s the sense in all of this?  Why go on?  Why try?  Why invest?  Why keep moving forward?  If there’s no hope, nothing matters.  If there’s no hope then this existence, living out whatever this is that we’re living out, all of this is meaningless.  It just doesn’t matter.  You’ve felt that.  I’ve felt it.  The world feels it. 

Hope is indispensable.  And I mean…indispensable.  And if we’ve lost it, as we all have at some time, or some place, we’ve gotta find it because going on without it is simply impossible.  It just doesn’t work.  I know that, and if you’ve lived long enough, and if you’ve faced the darkness long enough, you know that too.  Hope is indispensable.

But where do you find hope anyway?  I mean real hope.  I’m not talking about someone persons promises (because those break), or some passing fad (because those have no depth), or some vogue philosophy (because those are typically failed ideas that have been dressed up in new clothes), or political platforms (because those typically serve the platform rather than the people), I’m not talking about any of that because life is littered with that stuff.  We’re drowning in it.  I’m not talking about the latest book, or some trending podcast, or some ‘woke’ idea.  And as far as I can tell, all of that stuff promises hope, but delivers nothing.  If it did, we wouldn’t be here.

This is my experience.  I’ve had times where everything seemed hopeless.  Everything was dark…I mean really dark.  Bleak.  When all of the resources and all of the promises that this world made me, failed me…miserably. 

And when the world fails you, where do you go?  Well, you go where I went.  I went to God.  Now, that statement won’t sit well with some people, but if hope is indispensable and the world can’t give it to you, where else do you go?  What other option do you have?  But more than that, what other option would you really want anyway?  I want an option that works, that’s sustainable regardless of what life throws at me.  An option that delivers hope for my future, hope for my marriage, hope for a disease, hope for a child who’s gone rogue, or a career that teetering on the edge of some abyss, or an addiction that’s eaten up my life.  And there’s only one place where you find that kind of hope.  And that’s in a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Get a Bible and check it out.  Go to church.  Call a pastor.  Give it a shot.  If you do, you’ll find exactly what you need in the exact way that you need it, because that’s how the God of hope operates.

Believing In a New Start - The Self That I Long to Believe In

The Self That I Long to Believe In

Believing in a New Start

Some of us don’t believe in new starts. We may feel that we’re not worthy of a new start. Or, we may feel that we just don’t have what it takes to pull off a new start.

But, what would we actually do with a new start, if it were possible? Not something that looks new because we’ve cleaned it up in order to make it look new, when it’s not.  Not some radical make-over of something that’s radically old so that it looks new, but it’s not. Not some tedious restoration that’s going to temporarily erase the footprints of time and grant something old a few more years of life until it eventually shows it real age again.

Because that stuff’s born of the belief that we’re not worthy of something really new, and that we’re just not smart enough to actually create something that’s different than whatever it is that we’ve got, and whoever it is that we are.

New. How do we make something new? Well, here five brief ideas on what you need to do in order begin making things new:

First, A New Future is Built From the Raw Materials of the Past

 We build for tomorrow on the foundation of the past because, for good or ill, the past is what we’ve got. The past holds the raw material from which futures are built. The memories, experiences, wounds, trauma, gains, losses, betrayals, and the various lessons of the past that we draw from those things are the natural fodder that feeds a future seeking sustenance to foster its growth.

Think about this. The more the damage, the more the material that we have to work with. We grow in pain. We learn in struggle. We’re stretched when it’s hard. Wounds, trauma, disappointment, loss, regret, betrayal, failure…yeah, all of that stuff is painful. But all of that stuff is also filled with some of the greatest growth opportunities that you’re ever going to get. A new future is built from the raw material of the past.

Second, A New Future Demands Risk

When our self-confidence has been beaten to a pulp, every risk looks big. There is no little risk. Risk is risk, and it’s formidable regardless of how big or small it might be. Risk is hazardous because it can turn on us. It can go sideways in a heartbeat. And if it does, it can instantly affirm all of the negative stuff about us that we don’t want affirmed. It’s dangerous.

But we have to think about the risk in ‘not’ going forward. We have to consider the risk of staying where we are and remaining who we are. We have to ponder the price that we will pay for being apathetic verses pressing against our apathy and taking a shot at something better. We will actually affirm out low self-esteem by not acting, because that’s what will happen! Look, we may not have the confidence that the future will be good, but neither do we have the certainty that it will be bad. Not to risk is the greatest risk of all. Therefore, we must weigh the risk in acting against the greater risk of not acting. A new future demands risk.

Third, A New Future Will Demand Something New

If we want a truly new ‘new’ future, something about it’s got to be new. ‘New’ implies something that does not possess any of the elements that we already possess. Something must be added that has not been added before because we’ve been too afraid to add it. Some place that we have never been before must be some place that we’re now willing to consider going, despite how afraid we might be of going there. Some direction that we’ve either adamantly avoided, or never thought to consider needs to be considered and mapped out even though such a thought is incredibly frightening. Some decision that we may have avoided out of the fear that it may rock our world may need to be made and be granted permission to rock our world a bit knowing that sometimes it’s the rocking that brings the changing. A new future will demand something new.

Fourth, a New Future Means Grieving What We’re Leaving

When we leave something behind it will naturally leave a hole of some sort.  Whether that hole is large or small, disorienting or desired, painful or painless, it is the now vacant space that was once occupied by whatever it is that we’re leaving (or whatever left us). Having these holes creates a measure of discomfort because we’re not used to a hole being where something else used to be, and maybe should be.

On top of that, we’re naturally prone to try to fill empty spaces for the simple fact that they’re empty. And we do that because we assume that there’s something wrong with us because they shouldn’t be empty. ‘Empty’ doesn’t mean that something’s wrong with you. It means that something’s coming to you, and now you have space for it. It’s a commentary on the opportunity that stands in front of, not some deficit that resides within us. A New Future Means Grieving What We’re Leaving

Fifth and Finally, a New Future is Not Building a Museum

You know, we want to keep a few mementos. We want to hold onto a few things. We want to grab a handful of assorted trinkets and knick-knacks to have something to ground us in the certainty and familiarity of days gone-by, even though we wish that the pain associated with those day would go ‘bye.’

However, too often keeping a few mementos turns into keeping a whole lot of mementos. Eventually, we’re starting to create a memento museum. Before long, we’ve managing a memento museum. And soon thereafter, we’re living in it. We not supposed to live in the past because the past wasn’t designed for that purpose. Yes, it’s familiar and it doesn’t present us with the unknown of the future. But as we noted previously, the past is the rich raw material from which we craft a future, not the raw material that we use to preserve the past. However, we want to sort and catalog and categorize and organize and stow and store all that stuff.  And before we know it, the museum is managing us because our self-esteem constantly yells that we have no ability to manage a new future, so we settle for managing a past. The things that we’re preserving in the museums of our yesterday are the precious raw materials that stand ready to construct our tomorrow. Let them do what they’re supposed to do. A new future is not building a museum.

Closing

Today’s podcast is drawn from the book, “The Self That I Long to Believe In – The Challenge of Building Self-Esteem.” Get your copy today at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.

Thanks for joining us on LifeTalk today. You will find LifeTalk on most podcast platforms as well as YouTube. I would also encourage you to check out our daily posts on all of our Social Media sites.

Taking It to Our Knees - What Prayer Is and Is not

LifeTalk

Reshaping Our Understanding of Prayer

Hi, I’m Craig Lounsbrough. Welcome to LifeTalk. Thanks for joining us today.

You know, I think that we would like prayer to be a real thing. Whether you believe in it or not, I believe that most of us would like it to be true. We all have those difficult and devastating points in life when we would love to have something that would connect us to something bigger than we are. Something to get us out of the mess that we can’t get ourselves out of. Regardless of what you happen to believe, I believe that most of us would like prayer to be true.

And so, out of that hope, maybe we need to take a minute and revisit prayer. Whether you tend to believe in it or not, maybe we need to ask what it really is. Maybe we need to consider abandoning all lesser ideals and see if we can embrace prayer as the potent and indispensable power that handily moves everything that would dare to step in its path. And if prayer is actually that powerful, how do we get ourselves there?

To achieve this, we might begin by asking what prayer is, and in doing that highlighting what it’s not. And so, what is this thing that we have been privileged to do?

How have we diminished prayer by adding our own contrivances to it, or attempting to tame it so that it walks in-step with our anemic agendas? In what ways have we gutted by losing it manmade traditions, or secularizing it to make it more palatable to the masses, or attempting to formularize it thinking that there’s some sort of code to break or keywords to use?

How have we cheapened it by seeing it as some sort of ready-made laundry list, or something demanded of us by people who don’t demand it of themselves, or how has prayer been cheapened by the cheap promises that so many have made of it? What is prayer, and what is it not?

Whatever we’ve done to prayer, I think that we need a basic reminder or reorientation. We need to untangle whatever we’ve done to prayer. We need to rid it of all of our contrivances. We need to quit trying to tame so that it walks in-step with our anemic agendas. We need to rid it of our manmade traditions. We’ve got to stop trying to secularize it to make it more palatable to the masses.

We’ve got to quit trying to formularize it thinking that there’s some sort of code to break or keywords to use. We’ve got to refuse to see it as some ready-made laundry list, or demand imposed on us by others, some a cheap promise made by self-appeasing men. We’ve got to stop that stuff and get back to what prayer actually is

Now, you will find a more detailed dialogue presented my book “Taking It to Our Knees – Rigorous Prayers for Life’s Greatest Challenges.” But for today, in order to set the stage for this renovation, I would have you consider these eleven points. If you apply these eleven truths, they can recalibrate and literally transform your prayer life, regardless of what you believe about prayer:

• Prayer is courageously living out our faith in the real world. It is not some ascetic exercise carried out in some mystical nether world.
• Prayer is a natural connection to a marvelous God, not an academic pursuit.
• Prayer is the rawness of the soul connecting with the goodness of God, not an obligatory tip of the hat.
• Prayer is discovering what we were built for, instead of questioning if we should have been built at all.
• Prayer is the activity which before all other activities, movements, people’s and nations will bend if we just bend our knees. It is not some anemic exercise helplessly held within the four walls within which it was prayed.
• Prayer is not a lifestyle that we learn. Rather, it is the life that we were born to live.
• Prayer is not a formula that we concoct, but an intimacy that we develop.
• Prayer is not the last resort. Rather, it is the first step that will never leave us facing a last resort.
• Prayer is not the thing that we squeeze into our day, but the thing that squeezes everything that would kill us out of our day.
• Prayer is not a discipline, but a manifestation of our love for our God that results in a discipline.
• Prayer is the choice to invade the impossible, not live out our lives hampered by the probable.

I would suggest that you take a few moments to ponder these points. I would let them begin the process of reshaping your understanding of prayer so that prayer becomes everything that God created it to be and nothing that it is not.

Today’s podcast is drawn from the book, “Taking It to Our Knees – Rigorous Prayers for Life’s Greatest Challenges.” Get your copy today at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.

Thanks for joining us on LifeTalk today. You will find LifeTalk on most podcast platforms as well as YouTube. I would also encourage you to check out our daily posts on all of our Social Media sites.

"In the Footsteps of the Few" - Steps to Start Living

In the Footsteps of the Few

The Power of a Principled Life

By Craig D. Lounsbrough

Are you where you want to be in life? Are you even close? Where have your dreams gone and has your hope gone with them? Have you found yourself someplace so far removed from whatever vision it was that you had for your life that you're convinced that there's no way back (if you even remember where 'back' might be)?

This is the story of so many. So very many. And this story ends up becoming the tale of so many lives for the whole of their lives.

"In the Footsteps of the Few" helps us understand how to live a bold life. A courageous life. A solid life. A life of dreams reclaimed and hope revived. This book takes a fresh and principled look at life and how to live it in a manner that's robust and incredibly enriching.

Get your copy of "In the Footsteps of the Few" at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Take a moment and review a selection of Sample Chapters at https://craiglpc.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/In-the-Footsteps-of-the-Few-Sample-Copy.pdf.

You can also enjoy this podcast on our YouTube page at Craig Lounsbrough.

"Taking It to Our Knees" - What Prayer is Not

Eight Things That Prayer is Not

We can ask what prayer is. That’s a great question. But it might be better if we ask what prayer is not. If our prayers aren’t working right, or if we’re not feeling any kind of energy, or if there’s nothing that we’re connecting with, or our prayer life has become some flat, boring routine, it might be that we’re engaging in something that prayer is not. Are we praying, or are we doing something else that we thought was prayer?

This podcast discusses eight things that prayer is not. Understanding these and honing our prayer lives to remove these diminishing tendencies will add a fresh dynamic and greater depth to our prayer lives.

You will find "Taking It to Our Knees - Rigorous Prayers for Life's Greatest Challenges" on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.

Also look for our daily inspirational quotations on Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.

Self-Esteem: Opportunities in the Pain

Today we’re going to talk about self-esteem. To one degree or another, at one time or another, each of us deal with feelings of low self-esteem. We questions ourselves. We have doubts about ourselves. And so, I want to give you some thoughts that will help you build and maintain a strong self-esteem.

Let’s start with this thought. It reads this way:

“Oddly enough, we might want to consider the fact that the things that have run rough-shod over our self-esteem are the very raw materials from which great futures are constructed. The more the damage, the more the material and therefore the greater the opportunities. The future cannot help but be shaped, built and ultimately fed by the past.  The worst the past, the greater the feeding.” 

We have this tendency to focus on the negative. On what went wrong. What didn’t work. What backfired. What came back to bite us. We have this really interesting tendency to become consumed with all the bad stuff. The bad stuff is what comes to define us, it defines our situation, and it defines every outcome of whatever it was that went wrong.

And because the bad becomes so predominant, the bad becomes ‘all bad.’ By that I mean we can’t find the ‘good’ in the ‘bad,’ even though some element of good is always there. The lessons that we can learn. The perspectives that we would have never had had we not tried and fallen short. The opportunity to learn things like patience, and endurance, and flexibility, and how to manage disappointment, and how deeply the human heart can feel when things go bad. The opportunities in the carnage are massive, and often those kinds of opportunities can’t be found any place else.

But our pain convinces that the opportunities aren’t there, or if they are, it’s basically impossible to ferret them out. We just need to focus on getting rid of the pain (because it’s painful) versus spending valuable time trying to find the good in something that seem entirely bad.

Now, think about this.

Bad things have happened to all of us. Nobody’s excluded. Nobody’s exempt. There are no exceptions. And at some point, bad things going to happen again. You can count on it. And it’s not just ‘bad’ stuff that happens to us. Sometimes it’s ‘devastating’ stuff. Stuff that knocks us down in ways that we never really get back up again. We’re all walking wounded. The real issue is the depth or degree our woundedness and what we’re going to do with it.

Think about this:

“We’re going to get knocked down because of a thousand unjust things that should never have happened. But are we determined enough to get back up so that a handful of good things might happen?”

Regardless of what has slammed itself into your life, there is something good within it. And there is enough good within you to ferret it out. These situations that you’ve experienced and the wounds that you’re carrying around because of those situations contain within them some of the greatest assets that you have available to you. And you have enough within you to mine those assets out of the carnage.

As someone once said, “It’s not what happens to us…it’s what we do with what happens to us.”

What happens to you is opportunity, even though that opportunity is often wrapped in pain, and sometimes a lot of pain. But if we dig the opportunity out of the pain (which we have the capability of doing) in time the pain will be offset by the opportunities that lay within it. Therefore, rather than these difficulties and struggles destroying our self-esteems, they are the very assets that can build them. The very things that have crushed your confidence, hold within them the things that can build your confidence.

As we’ve said:

“Oddly enough, we might want to consider the fact that the things that have run rough-shod over our self-esteem are the very raw materials from which great futures are constructed.  The more the damage, the more the material and therefore the greater the opportunities.  The future cannot help but be shaped, built and ultimately fed by the past.  The worst the past, the greater the feeding.”

I would suggest that you take some time and think about that.

“The Self That I Long to Believe In” is a timely, thoughtful, and straight-forward look at both building and strengthening your self-esteem. You will find “The Self That I Long to Believe In” on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.

Thanks for joining us on LifeTalk today. You will find LifeTalk on most podcast platforms as well as YouTube. I would also encourage you to check out our daily posts on all of our Social Media sites.

The Five Big Lies - Effectively Building Your Self-Esteem

Think About It

You are what you choose to be.  Life is not a dictated script.  It’s far from being something to which you have to surrender.  Yes, there are things that we did not ask for that we have to deal with.  Regardless, whatever our flaws there is always room to do something about them.  Always.  Some option always exists.  There are always possibilities.  Life affords us choices and chances.  The human spirit is tenacious, and powerful, and wonderfully creative.  Don’t underestimate your capabilities and your resources.  Realize that the resources that you possess outclass and outweigh any flaw, perceived or real.  Choose to view yourself differently and more accurately.  Choose to choose you for despite your low self-esteem, you won’t be disappointed.   

“The Self That I Long to Believe In” is a bold, timely, and inspirational book that will help you to effectively build your self-esteem. Get your copy at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. 

Thanks for joining us on LifeTalk today. I hope that you take the time to enjoy all of the many programs on our podcast. You’ll find us on most podcast platforms as well as YouTube. See you next time.

Like a River - "In the Footsteps of the Few"

"Despite the challenges, the river never reverses its course.  Rather, it decides to cut fresh banks, fashion serene inlets, feed swirling eddies, sweep away fallen timber, lavish the floodplains with rich nutrients, and declare by actions such as these that the cowardice of reversal would never have created rivers this magnificent."

- Craig D. Lounsbrough

Enjoy a video of this thoughtful and challenging podcast on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@craiglounsbrough.

Discover "In the Footsteps of the Few" on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.

The Unrecognized Potency of Prayer

Let’s start here. Think about this thought:

“Too often we have stripped our single greatest asset of its power and hobbled it to the degree that it has come to be viewed only as a pathetic last resort. Yet despite our incessant meddling, this asset nonetheless remains a first resort so potent that it never needs a last one. And that asset is prayer.”

Prayer. You know, through our own lack of understanding and discipline, we’ve granted prayer the characteristics associated with some antiquated religious monk living in some secluded monastery off in the woods. For us, prayer sits on the far fringes of life as some traditional nicety that we toy with when we’re not wrestling with bigger things. It might serve a purpose in life’s special moments, or in the midst of life’s most dire emergencies, but even then we’re not all that confident that it actually brings anything to either. To varying degrees we’ve rendered prayer as culturally outdated, logistically outmoded, a backburner endeavor, and far too simplistic to grapple with the monumental realities that are part of living in the 21st century.

But I would challenge all of that by saying this:

“I am convinced beyond words to convey that prayer is infinitely more than the mindless ranting of some poor, delusional soul talking to some imaginary friend in some imaginary place. Oh, to the contrary. Prayer is the manifest pleading of a soul worn raw that, by the simple act of prayer, unleashes untold forces that we can’t imagine that surge in a descent so massive and so inconceivably powerful that the ground of everything before them shakes. And in this descent lives are changed beyond recognition, nations are transformed beyond comprehension, and history is brought to its knees in the face of a God who says, “be healed.” That, my friend, is nothing of a delusional soul or imaginary friend or any other such nonsense.”

That is what prayer is. But let’s build on that. Consider this:

“How do I tell you what prayer is? It is everything that I need every time I kneel in the practice of it. It shakes the infinite alive and sets its armies afoot in defense of me. It will never run aground or find itself drowning in the waters of the adversity that I bring to it. Nothing it faces is insurmountable, for to think that such an adversary exists is to run a fool’s errand. It will shield me in its advance, it will beckon me to anticipate the miracles that it is about to wield, and in the midst of it all it calms me as it whispers, 'Be still and know that I am God.' And because of these reasons and a million more, I find prayer the single greatest place that I could ever imagine being.”

That’s what prayer is. And if that’s not what prayer is in your life, or if that’s not what your experience of prayer is, then you’ve missed one of the powerful things that we have the privilege of engaging in. We’ve settled for this slumlord existence of spiritual impoverishment when we can be spiritually rich in ways that give light, and energy, and meaning, and purpose to life.

Enjoy LifeTalk's wide array of inspirational and timely programs on most podcast platforms. You can also enjoy his daily quotations on Facebook, Pinterest, X, Instagram, and LinkedIn. __________________________________________________________________________________

You will discover all of Craig's books on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.

A World That’s Lost

Everybody seems lost these days.  People don’t like to admit that, or they refuse to admit that…but everybody seems lost these days.  I suppose that the greatest kind of ‘lost’ is to be ‘lost,’ but to deny that you’re ‘lost,’ even though you are.  That’s about the worst kind of lost that I can think of, and we certainly see a whole lot of that kind of ‘lost’ today.  Everybody seems lost these days.

Let’s face it, we live in a world that’s lost.  In one way or another (or to one degree or another), the world’s always been lost.  There’s a pattern to our humanity that should cause us to wise up a bit, and that pattern is that (as a species) we’re pretty consistently lost.  It just seems that we’re a bit more lost these days.

Of course we’re lost.  We’re lost because the woods that we’re in are bigger than the resources that we have to get out them.  And those woods become increasingly bigger the more that we convince ourselves that we can get out of them by ourselves.  Where we are is too big for any map or any compass that we can create.  And while we tend to bristle at the idea, God holds the map and has the compass.  A sure map and a steady compass.  And while we’re likely to continue to refute that reality, or work to ignore it in light of our incessant stubbornness, He’s got the map and the compass.  And all we have to do (all we have to do) is ask Him for it.  And I wonder (I wonder) exactly how lost we’re going to have to become before we finally ask Him.

The New Year - Wisdom to Start the Year

New Years 2025

Wisdom to Start the Year

How do we live differently this year? I mean, with intentionality. With some sense of purpose and meaning that’s way beyond just living out our lives in order to meet some set of obligations that we’ve confused with real living? How we live with some deep sense of satisfaction and personal enrichment? How do we do it all differently?

Well, at the beginning of this New Year I want to share some simple, foundational thoughts with you. Some thoughts that we don’t think about because our lives don’t create any space for us to think about them. Or we’re afraid to think about them because they might challenge us to something better and we might not be able to achieve that. Or whatever it might be. And we end up the poorer for it.

So here’s some thoughts for you. And if you walk away from this podcast with only one of these on your mind as you head out into the coming New Year, this time will have all been worth it.

Let’s start with this:

“We are created for more than we’ve given ourselves permission to be.”

That’s you. Whatever lays ahead of you today, tomorrow, next month, or in the coming year, you bring to those things more than you’ve given yourself permission to bring to them. You are more than the challenges that lay in front of you. You have unchecked resources, untapped abilities, yet undiscovered capabilities that are waiting on you. This New Year, give yourself permission to be your fullest self.

Consider this:

“It is the doubt of success that insures the fulfillment of that doubt.”

Doubt is the cancer of great things. Our doubt takes the ‘achievable’ and pushes it so far out of our reach that we come to see the possible as the impossible. We become deluded that our greatest dreams, our fondest hopes, the things that thrill us will do nothing more tease us. We can play with the idea of them, but the reality of them is doomed to stay a reality because we doubt our ability to achieve them. Begin getting rid of your doubt.

Here's another thought:

“You were not made to tend to the grave of your mistakes because God removed the coffin and backfilled the hole.”

You are not defined by your mistakes, no matter how many of them you might have made along the way. No matter how bad they were. No matter how painful the repercussions of whatever they were. You are not defined by your mistakes. Mistakes are a sign that you tried. You might have tried in a way that didn’t work, or in a way that you shouldn’t have tried. But you tried. The key is to try differently. Try in a better way. A more thoughtful way. Try again, and when you do your tenacity, your commitment, your fortitude…that stuff doesn’t define you either, but it does reveal the qualities that you have within you.

And finally, remember this:

“Dead-ends are never the ‘end of the road.’ They are only the end of ‘this’ road.”

You may be facing the end of this year and the beginning of the next one feeling like your life has been a bunch of dead-end roads. Some roads do end. Some end harshly and abruptly. Some end unfairly and brutally. But a dead-end is never an end. Never let yourself believe that an end is an end. Somewhere there’s a ‘next’ road. A new path. It might be wide and easy, or it might be thin and tough. But it’s there.

This New Year, find those roads. Walk them. Don’t run from them, or sit by them, or let your doubt cause you to turn away. Believe in yourself. Don’t let your mistakes tell you that you’re not worth it. This coming year might be easy. It might be hard. It might be somewhere in-between. But I’m committed to walking those roads. And I hope that you are too.

As we walk those roads, tune into LifeTalk on most podcast platforms as well as YouTube.

Here’s wishing you a truly great New Year.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Tune into LifeTalk on most podcast platforms.

You can also enjoy our daily quotations on Facebook, Pinterest, X, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Visit LifeTalk's website at https://lounsbroughslifetalkpodcast.wordpress.com/?.

”New Year Reawakened and Reclaimed:” New - It Does Not Mean Better

New

It Does Not Mean Better

What is “better?”  I mean, the definition of “better.”  When we change something, we tend to label the change as “better,” whether it’s better or not.  If we adjust something, or alter something, or eliminate it altogether, we define the changes that we make as “better.”  We initiate new programs, or we reconstruct old ones, and in doing so we say that we are making things “better.”  We craft new policies, or we tear down old businesses, or we adopt new beliefs, or we upgrade this, or we downgrade that, and we label all those actions as “better.”

But “better” based on what?  What’s the criteria that determines if something is, in fact, “better?”  Is it based on the current cultural climate?  Or, is it based on the trends that tend to be trending?  Or, is it based on the desire to make a name for ourselves, or get ahead, or beat the opposition, or bring down a boss, or lift up a cause, or promote a philosophy, or demote anything that irritates us?  Is it based on our desire to make a win-fall, or get ourselves out of a freefall, or just create a free-for-all?  What do we base the idea of “better” on?

Labeling something as “better” is often a justification for something that’s anything but “better”.  It’s that label that we attach to our actions, hoping that people will pay a whole lot more attention to the label, and a whole lot less attention to the actions that we’ve pasted the label on.  Sadly, most things are not better.  They’re certainly ‘something,’ but they’re not “better”.

But what should “better” be based on?  “Better” is when others benefit, even if we don’t.  “Better” is driven by the need of the common man, as the common man is the common cause.  It’s something in the service of a hurting world, and not something that serves to hurt the world.  “Better” is something that we do that leaves the world “better” than what we found it, even if we end up not being “better” in the service of that world.  It’s sacrificial.  It’s recognizing our responsibility to the lives around us, not the agendas within us.  “Better” is when we end the day having gained nothing, but having given everything.  “Better” is where love is given legs to run and greed can’t find its shoes.  The world needs to be “better” in a “better” way.  And that starts with you, and it starts with me, and it starts with rejecting anything that is not truly “better.”  

To Believe in a New Beginning

Have you ever gone so far in a bad direction that you feel there’s no coming back? Is there a point where we’ve screwed up things so badly that there just can’t be a new beginning? Is the carnage that’s a result of our bad decisions, or our poor relationship choices, or our career failures, or our financial mis-management…does the carnage of all that stuff reach a point that a new beginning can never (and will never) find a place to begin?

Because once we give up on the idea of a new beginning, at that point we’ve allowed our mistakes and our failures to define us. They become who we are and who we will always be. We become the ‘bad’ of whatever bad we did. And I’m here to tell you that no one is the sum total of their choices. You will always be bigger than your worst mistake. And because that’s the case, there will always be a place for a new beginning.

Think about this:

“A new start is not about a new day. Rather, it’s about a new attitude. And that can happen any day.”

So what’s your attitude? People get tired of hearing about the idea of attitude. But your attitude shapes your reality. The Bible has a really great verse in Proverbs that says, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” Think about that. What you think about yourself is what you become. That is the power of attitude.

And so, “A new start is not about a new day. Rather, it’s about a new attitude. And that can happen any day.”

So here’s how to change your attitude. Here’s what you need to think about if you believe that you’ve screwed up things so badly that there just can’t be a new beginning for you. Here’s what you need think about:

“It’s not about the ashes, for they tell a tale of what was. It’s about having a vision sufficient to understand that the tale that lies among the ashes stands ready to build the dream that will rise above the ashes.”

The ashes in your life are the things that new beginnings arise from. Ashes are the ingredients of your new beginning. They’re not just what’s left over of whatever it is that you burnt up. The ashes in your life are the essential materials of great beginnings. They’re the fertilizer that nourishes great dreams. That needs to be your attitude.

Let’s look at it another. Think about this:

“To evaluate the probability of a new beginning as held against the overwhelming number of our mistakes, or the suffocating gravity of our pain, or the immensity of our losses is to forget that the most spectacular new beginnings are forged from the raw materials embedded in these very things. Therefore, the greater the things that would destroy us, the greater the new beginning that stands in front of us.”

Think about that. The most spectacular new beginnings are forged from the raw materials embedded in our mistakes, in the suffocating gravity of our pain, and in the immensity of our losses. Your new beginning is sitting in the very places where your worst endings took place. And more than, the worse the ending, the greater the beginning.

Enjoy LifeTalk's wide array of inspirational and timely programs on most podcast platforms. You can also enjoy his daily quotations on Facebook, Pinterest, X, Instagram, and LinkedIn. __________________________________________________________________________________ You will discover all of Craig's books on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.

”New Year Reawakened and Reclaimed:” Crafting the New - Birthing a New Beginning

Crafting the New

Birthing a New Beginning

She was born into an emerging America in 1890.  Through the ninety-five years of life that stood in front of her she would watch an Industrial Revolution unfold, Henry Ford roll out the Model T, and Edison light the world.  She would read the headlines of dough boys marching off to fight a Kaiser in what was originally called the ‘Great War’.  Some twenty-four years later she would watch history repeat itself as millions of GI’s marched off in similar fashion to fight a dictator in something called World War II.  In-between it all, she would face the economic depravity and emotional ravages of a devastating depression within which her husband would abandon the family and summarily vanish.  She was left to support three children on a meager income of scant dollars earned in the hot kitchen of a small diner.

She never drove a car.  She lived out most of her life on pocket change, making what seemed impossible possible.  The furniture in her meager home was old, lending it the enchanting aroma of another era long vanished.  It all was tenderly cared for in a manner that lent her home an indescribable, but wonderfully simple charm.  The few appointments in her small home were tidy, clean, and above all cherished.  She saw herself as marvelously blessed in the midst of manifold need, for Granny understood that ‘need’ was more an issue of attitude than a matter of circumstance.  And I was privileged to be touched by this solitary life until her passing in 1985.

For over ten years, every month Granny would tease ten dollars out of her meager collection of dimes and dollars.  And she would send it off to a young Hispanic girl whose father had abandoned her, and whose mother had placed her in an orphanage and summarily walked away.  All Granny had was a single photo of a tattered little girl standing in front of a weathered hut.  It sat in a slight frame on her tiny buffet.  At the feet of the photo there laid a handful of yellowed letters that Granny had received from this little girl over that most precious decade. 

Some years after Granny had passed, another letter came.  In it were several photos bearing the striking image of a young Hispanic woman in professional attire standing in a small but simple office setting.  On the back of one photo in stuttering script it said, “Thank you for my new life.”  My grandmother didn’t live long enough to see the results of her sacrifices.  However, while real sacrifice is committed to the result, it relishes the effort.  Granny relished the effort and birthed something ‘new’ into the life of a young woman.

 

We Are the ‘New’

Each of us possess ample resources to be the ‘new’ in the life of another.  It is not the execution of some strategy as we might think, or the happenstance of life that births something ‘new’.  It is not about some level of tenacious persistence, or the right choices made at the right time.  These things and many more can bring something ‘new’ to our lives and the lives of those around us.

But it is the raw power of that single human being stepping up and stepping into the life of another that can bring something ‘new’ in ways that nothing else ever can or ever will.  It is the energy of our humanity shared.  It is the hope that is released in the touch of another.  It is the voice of another that calls out when all other voices have long fallen silent.

It is an investment that may cost us much, yet it is an expenditure that will cost us much more if we refuse it.  It is pressing against the giant of greed and intentionally raising the eyes of our hearts past our own circumstances to focus on the circumstances of another.  It is a passion that unleashes everything away from us so that it can be drawn into everyone around us.  And it is this that sets the grand stage upon which to birth something ‘new’ in another that would never have been ‘new’ were it not for such a sacrifice.

 

Be the ‘New’

Might I suggest that this New Year, the ‘new’ in our lives is making the choice to become the ‘new’ in the life of another.  In whatever manner we choose to do that, we all can change a life and in doing so change a world.  Therefore, let us not contemplate ‘New Year’s’ resolutions.  Rather, let us formulate ‘New Life’ commitments.  And let us begin to do that by becoming the ‘new’ in the life of another.

”New Year Reawakened and Reclaimed:” The New Year -Refusing to Be Relegated to the Sidelines

The New Year

Refusing to Be Relegated to the Sidelines

We stand on the escarpment of a New Year.  In many ways, it seems that what lies ahead doesn’t rally us with energizing hope, but rather it seems to rattle us with deep apprehension.  From the vantage point we stand on at the beginning of this New Year, the landscape that lies ahead looks uncertain at best and disastrous at worst.  We see a world reeling from decisions that we don’t understand, actions that appear to border on the irrational, and directions that seem to have forsaken any mooring that the founding principles of our nation might have given them or a sense of mortality might afford them.

We stand on the listing precipice of this New Year with a host of political agendas and secular philosophies promising rosy tomorrows and a year brimming with the brightness of a world throwing off the old and seizing the new.  We hear the words and they tickle our ears, but in many ways we don’t see the landscape ahead reflecting what the words say it should reflect.  While many have taken hold of the words hoping that they pan out, deep inside, many of us aren’t certain that the promises made and the agendas outlined are deep enough, rich enough, transforming enough or solid enough to really accomplish what they say they can accomplish.  The reality is, we’re not all that certain that we want them to accomplish what they say they’ll accomplish anyway.

 

Resting in Hope Because We Can’t Rest in Anything Else

So, we rest in the hope that hope is enough because we don’t believe in the people that are preaching hope.  We hope that hope will be strong enough to drive the political agendas and secular philosophies; bolstering and empowering them sufficiently to do what they grandly visualize in their documented frameworks, but what they can’t do on their own.  Or do we hope that they don’t work because the disastrous outcome of their implementation is only going to make worse the very things that they claim their efforts will make better.   Often, we don’t even believe in ourselves and our ability to bring change, or in any manifestation of whatever this ‘self’ is that we are.  Our hope then rests in hope, not necessarily in the viability of what we hope for and who we hope in.  Somehow, we hope that it will all turn out okay.

But we might ask why do we do that?  Why do we so often opt for something that’s really not going to do what we need done, out of the hope that hope will carry whatever this is when whatever this is can’t carry itself?  Why do we settle like that?  Why do we pin our hopes on something that will likely explode in our faces if we pin anything on it, much less hope?

 

Sidelined Bystanders

I wonder if at its core our issue is a fear that is actually a multiplicity of fears.  Fear that we’re far too small to do anything but hope for the best rather than fight for it.  Maybe it’s an issue of being unable or unwilling to realize that we can actually impact things sufficiently to change things, rather than seeing ourselves as being exiled to some distant sideline of life where we can do nothing more than sheepishly root for a life that’s far too far away to touch.  Change is too often seen as an external thing that happens outside of our efforts, so we relegate ourselves to some periphery role where all we can do is hope with no means to exert any real influence.  I wonder how often we see ourselves as hapless and helpless bystanders in a greater drama that we have no ability to impact, whether that’s the drama unfolding in our nation, or the drama unfolding in our lives.

We look around us at the wild spiraling of a culture relentlessly gyrating in some direction that appears unhealthy at best, and with no direction at worst.  This massive “ship of state” or the various “ships” of our lives seem to be rolling on the churning seas of some wild societal storm with those at the helm announcing that the course is sure and the speed is steady.  Yet, peering out from our obscure place on the deck of these enormous ships, it seems that their courses are entirely unsure and their speeds are anything but steady.  Yet, despite the angst of the journey that we see before us, we feel far too small, far too irrelevant, and far too inconsequential to do anything about it.  And so our best hope is to hang on and hope . . . or so we think.

 

Can You Make a Difference?

Are we simply bystanders living out some periphery role in some larger drama whose stage is far too massive for us to ever ascend?  Are we doomed to haplessly sit by and watch our culture, our businesses, our marriage, our kids, our communities, or whatever it is that we might be watching spiral off into some cold, dark abyss?  Will we engage the coming New Year without really engaging it because somebody else is already engaging it in a way that gives us no room to engage it?

 

Is it Actually Possible that We Might Have Power?

We might ask “what is power?”  Is power derived from a collective of people whose numbers grant them power?  Is it derived from a position of authority that’s derived from some established structure?  Is power something granted to people by something bigger than the people to which it is being granted?  Is power a product of social position, breeding, wealth, education, the ability to be relationally savvy, or culturally astute, or outrageously intellectual, or is it held by people possessing an elevated acumen of some sort?

Or, is it the average person who takes the ‘all and everything’ of what they have and engages their world with what they’ve got?  That’s power!  It’s the average person like you or I who realize that it’s the “little things” that change “big things.”  It’s the small steps that ultimately result in giant leaps.  It’s the average person faithfully living out lives of integrity in the everyday grind of everyday living that changes cultures, redirects nations, and rewrites history.  Indeed, that’s power.

 

Ordinary People Who Do Extraordinary Things

Daryn Kagan wrote, “Bad things do happen in the world, like war, natural disasters, disease. But out of those situations always arise stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.”  It is ordinary people who change the world because they’ve stepped up in situations both large and small, believing that whatever their situation might be they can make a difference either large or small.

It’s not about being ordinary.  It’s about being available.  It’s not about being ordinary.  It’s about refusing to refuse opportunity.  It’s not about being ordinary.  Rather, it’s about recognizing that the great movements and moments in history laid on the back of ordinary people.  It’s not about being ordinary.  It about recognizing the power of the ordinary to be extraordinary simply by being ordinary.  As Marco Rubio wrote, “America is the story of everyday people who did extraordinary things.  A story woven deep into the fabric of our society.”  The same story is woven deep into the fabric of our lives.

 

The New Year – Will We?

As we stand on the escarpment of this brand new “New Year,” we don’t have to relegate ourselves to some periphery role where all we can do is hope with no means to exert any real influence.  We don’t need to be a hapless and helpless bystander in a greater drama that you have no ability to impact.  We can live out intentional lives in our everyday worlds, being ordinary people of integrity engaging the world with integrity, and doing so believing that the smallest changes result in the biggest transformations. 

And so, will we dare to understand that it’s the average person who takes what they have and engages their world with what they’ve got?  Will we rise up sufficiently to grasp the reality that it’s the average person like you or I who realize that it’s the “little things” that change “big things?”  Will we step out on the belief that it’s the small steps that ultimately result in giant leaps?  Will we embrace the fact that it’s the average person faithfully living out a life of integrity in the everyday grind of everyday living that changes cultures, redirects nations, and rewrites history?  If we do, if we faithfully embrace these truths and live them out, we will change our worlds and we will alter this coming year.  May that be your commitment this New Year!

”New Year Reawakened and Reclaimed:” A Clean Slate - The Possibility of a New Start

A Clean Slate

The Possibility of a New Start

With the New Year we long for a fresh start.  We want to wipe the slate clean, removing the smudges and the smears.  We want to get rid of the errors, the poor choices, the misguided decisions and the bruising flops that populated the previous year.  We want to wipe away old habits, clean up destructive behaviors, sponge up toxic relationships, run away from blood-sucking jobs and frantically flee the debt-feeding financial decisions that we made.  The New Year is our time to use a whole bunch of elbow grease to clean up the horrendous messes of the old year, sweep those dirty little choices under the carpet, smooth over places where the carnage of our decisions tore the landscape of our lives apart, and precariously prop up the things that were blown over by the selfish choices we made.  We’re wildly busy about the ‘spit and polish’ of getting everything tight and clean.

 

The Past Relished or Rejected?

We cross the threshold of the New Year without wanting to look back.  It’s not that we want to reject the past, but we much prefer to leave it behind.  We want a clean break, a new beginning, a fresh opportunity that’s in no way inhibited by whatever the past has been.  Indeed, we do cherish the good things that have happened.  However, we seem to celebrate them with a diminished sense; that they weren’t as good as good can potentially be.  We engage the New Year holding out some hopeful hope that it will bring us twelve months of living that will be good in a way that we haven’t quite been able to achieve.  That somehow this year will be what no year has yet been.  So celebration is often less about what we’re leaving behind, and a whole lot more about what we hope will come. 

 

The Seeds of Staleness

The New Year is the old year in redress.  It’s nothing more than the final tick of the second hand of the clock that throws December 31^st over into January 1^st.  It leaves nothing old behind and it takes nothing new with it.  It’s a continuation of whatever was into whatever’s going to be.  There is nothing inherently new about New Year’s.

Yet, because we ascribe a false newness to it, we assume that something has changed, that something has been left behind, that something has transitioned or transformed in the process of one day rolling into another. 

So we celebrate and we ‘party.’  We raise robust toasts to the new opportunities that we’ve fabricated from the broken and desperate shards of the past year.  We pen feel-good resolutions across our minds and across the pages of the calendar of the upcoming year.  We tell ourselves that it’s going to be better, that we’re going to beat old habits and turn careers around.  We shout down the corridors of the New Year, declaring in advance that we’re going to recommit to our marriages; that we’re going to complete college degrees, balance our spending, and watch our language.  We assertively put the New Year on notice, telling it that we’re going to beat addictions, lose weight, change our attitudes, bury hatred, resurrect forgiveness, overcome fears, undercut bad attitudes and change.

 

Wiping Out Staleness

The New Year is an opportunity for reflection.  We’ve set the calendar and flow of the year in such a manner that the New Year is parked at a place that affords us perspective.  In reality, nothing changes.  The truth is, we’ve been handed nothing new.  But we can stop, catch our breaths, rub our eyes clear of the smudges that life smears across them, brush off the dust that’s caked on us from the long roads we walk, and simply look around.  We have a chance to inventory and assess; to deliberately engage the reality of our lives, doggedly evaluate those realities, decisively execute strategies to change, and embrace an enthusiasm about the possibilities that these actions will bring to the New Year.

We can’t wipe the slate clean, but we can rewrite it.  We can’t ignore things but we can change them.  We can pretend that the New Year is something that it’s not, or we can persevere in learning from the past to change the future.

The Frightening Call of Great Things

Great things scare us, as they should.  If something doesn't scare us then it's probably not all that great.  All of us are called to great things.  Those things will likely be different for each of us.  However, in whatever way they are great, they are great.  We are not here to pass through this existence as some distant observer of whatever's going on in this existence.  Our lives are not passive and our role in the lives of others is not passive either.  Whether large or small, we are here to do great things.

However, our fear often keeps us from doing great things.  The task is too large.  We don't have the knowledge or the time.  Our resources are far too inadequate.  The task would be better left to others who could do it better than how it would be left if we did it.  Great things are for those 'other' people.  We might be called to do a few 'good' things, but great things are beyond the scope of who we are.  Nonetheless, we are called to great things, and to avoid them or miss them would be one of the most tragic ways that a person would waste the wonder and potential of their life.

Thirty Days of Hope - Day Thirty

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope.  A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations.  This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities.  And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope.  Real hope.  Hope for a lifetime and more.

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered.  This is a story for our time, and every time.  It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever.  Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book.  Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope.

You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats.  It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year.

Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo.

”Christmas Reawakened and Reclaimed:” The Last Christmas - The Greatest Small Package

Great things are hidden in small things.  That sounds terribly illogical.  Yet, it's only illogical because we don't really understand the nature of great things and that their greatness is marked in part by their ability to inhabit small things.  Greatness is not so much about size or importance as it is about meaning and value.  It's not necessarily the size of the thing, but the power that it possesses.  It's not about how vast something is, but the potential that it has within it.  It's realizing that great things find the best home in small things, for great things are always a compilation of small things anyway.

The God Who inhabits the vastness of this entire existence was born into the body of a single baby.  Greatness in smallness.  His plan to invade the world in order to save the world would not be to unleash all of the forces at His disposal in some strategic sweep.  It was, in fact, the opposite.  And therein lays the brilliance of it all.  In the same way, we are small.  Yet, because we are, we have the space for great things.  Ample space.  This Christmas, we need to celebrate the birth of this baby.  But we likewise need to ask, "What does the greatness of God wish to do in the smallness of us?"

 

Resources for Your Holiday Celebrations

Discover an array of holiday resources designed to enhance your celebrations on our website at www.craiglpc.com.  Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books make lasting gifts.  Discover all of his books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.

Thirty Days of Hope - Day Twenty-Nine

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope.  A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations.  This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities.  And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope.  Real hope.  Hope for a lifetime and more.

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered.  This is a story for our time, and every time.  It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever.  Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book.  Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope.

You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats.  It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year.

Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo.

Thirty Days of Hope - Day Twenty-Eight

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope.  A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations.  This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities.  And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope.  Real hope.  Hope for a lifetime and more.

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered.  This is a story for our time, and every time.  It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever.  Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book.  Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope.

You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats.  It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year.

Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo.

Thought for the Day - Christmas #4

If we fictionalize the story of Christmas as some fanciful tale spun in the backwaters of history and people long removed, in that action we have succumb to the debilitating belief that the only viable idea of rescue is fiction.  And I can think of few things that are sadder than that.”

- Craig D. Lounsbrough

Thirty Days of Hope - Day Twenty-Seven

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope.  A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations.  This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities.  And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope.  Real hope.  Hope for a lifetime and more.

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered.  This is a story for our time, and every time.  It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever.  Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book.  Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope.

You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats.  It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year.

Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo.

Thirty Days of Hope - Day Twenty-Six

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope.  A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations.  This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities.  And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope.  Real hope.  Hope for a lifetime and more.

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered.  This is a story for our time, and every time.  It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever.  Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book.  Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope.

You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats.  It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year.

Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo.

Thirty Days of Hope - Day Twenty-Five

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope.  A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations.  This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities.  And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope.  Real hope.  Hope for a lifetime and more.

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered.  This is a story for our time, and every time.  It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever.  Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book.  Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope.

You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats.  It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year.

Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo.

Christmas - Denying Our Need for Rescue

Rescue.  It is hard to admit that we need to be rescued.  We think ourselves to be smart enough, cunning enough, strategic enough, and enough of whatever it is that we need to be enough of to save ourselves.  We tediously craft an endless array of things to rescue us from the things that we previously crafted to rescue us that ended up stranding us.  We add problem to problem.  Dilemma to dilemma.  Disappointment to disappointment.  The very effort to dig ourselves out of the holes that we’ve dug only serves to dig them that much deeper.  We preach the commitment to the effort as the victory because the victory that we promised never materialized.  Therefore we are left having to save face and salvage the failure by believing that we’re accomplishing something by at least having tried.  We fancy ourselves as rather ingenious, but the outcome of our supposed ingenuity is anything but genius, even though we proclaim it as such.  Our efforts to rescue ourselves only serves to enhance our need to be rescued.   Rescue.  It’s hard to admit that we need it.

”Christmas Reawakened and Reclaimed:” Am I Listening to the Lyrics? - The Music of the World at Christmas

What am I listening to?  What is it that I fill my head up with?  Whatever we listen to is eventually what we will become.  We can pretend that's not the case, and we can lead ourselves to believe that we can manage the stuff that we let into our heads.  But the fact is, what we list to is eventually what we will become.  However, the worst of it is that we don't think about what we put in our heads.  We find some element of something as appealing or soothing or nice in whatever way it's nice, and therefore we grant all of it entrance into our lives without really stepping back and asking what it's saying to us.

What is the world speaking into your head?  What have you given it permission to say and in what way has that changed you?  At Christmas, we might wish to ask what that message is.  In fact, we might want to hold that message up against the message of Christmas and ask ourselves which one we would rather have shape our lives?  The message of Christmas is a message that no message formed by man can challenge.  The message of Christmas is the message that we're all looking for that we will never find in the messages of the world...despite how hard we might look.  The message of Christmas is "the message."  So this Christmas you might ask, "What message am I listening to?"

 

Resources for Your Holiday Celebrations

Discover an array of holiday resources designed to enhance your celebrations on our website at www.craiglpc.com.  Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books make lasting gifts.  Discover all of his books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.

Thirty Days of Hope - Day Twenty-Four

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope.  A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations.  This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities.  And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope.  Real hope.  Hope for a lifetime and more.

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered.  This is a story for our time, and every time.  It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever.  Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book.  Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope.

You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats.  It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year.

Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo.

Thought for the Day - Christmas #3

“For the power of Christmas rests in the fact that we will never completely understand the vastness of it, but that will never stop its ability to completely transform the fullness of us.”

- Craig D. Lounsbrough

Thirty Days of Hope - Day Twenty-Three

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope.  A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations.  This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities.  And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope.  Real hope.  Hope for a lifetime and more.

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered.  This is a story for our time, and every time.  It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever.  Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book.  Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope.

You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats.  It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year.

Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo.

Thirty Days of Hope - Day Twenty-Two

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope.  A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations.  This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities.  And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope.  Real hope.  Hope for a lifetime and more.

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered.  This is a story for our time, and every time.  It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever.  Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book.  Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope.

You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats.  It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year.

Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo.

Thirty Days of Hope - Day Twenty-One

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope.  A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations.  This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities.  And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope.  Real hope.  Hope for a lifetime and more.

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered.  This is a story for our time, and every time.  It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever.  Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book.  Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope.

You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats.  It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year.

Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo.

Thirty Days of Hope - Day Twenty

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope.  A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations.  This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities.  And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope.  Real hope.  Hope for a lifetime and more.

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered.  This is a story for our time, and every time.  It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever.  Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book.  Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope.

You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats.  It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year.

Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo.

Thirty Days of Hope - Day Nineteen

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope.  A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations.  This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities.  And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope.  Real hope.  Hope for a lifetime and more.

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered.  This is a story for our time, and every time.  It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever.  Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book.  Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope.

You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats.  It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year.

Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo.

Thirty Days of Hope - Day Eighteen

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope.  A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations.  This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities.  And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope.  Real hope.  Hope for a lifetime and more.

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered.  This is a story for our time, and every time.  It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever.  Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book.  Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope.

You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats.  It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year.

Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo.

Thought for the Day - Christmas #2

“Christmas is a vivid and brilliantly revealing lens.  And if we dare to look at ourselves through this rich and telling lens, we are able to clearly see the majesty within ourselves that we’ve so foolishly forsaken.  But rather than leaving us saddened and forlorn by what we’ve abandoned, this lens also possesses ample power to give us back what we threw away.”

- Craig D. Lounsbrough

”Christmas Reawakened and Reclaimed:” Christmas In a Box

Christmas In a Box

As the snow began to quietly début winter’s arrival, I made my yearly descent to the basement.  Rummaging through the backwaters of the musty root cellar, I spied the dusty stack of aged boxes with the word “Christmas” hastily scrawled across their cardboard sides.  Inside of them lay the wonder of Christmas embodied in carefully crafted decorations and precious mementos of all sizes and sorts and types.  Staring at the boxes, I suddenly found myself entirely engulfed by the horrifying fact that we spend much of our lives boxing up wonder.

 

The Abuse of Boxes

Indeed, we put things in boxes.  The function of a box is to provide a set of distinct parameters designed to effectively contain whatever needs containing.  A box imposes restrictions.  It sets a limit as to how far something can go.  Things are assigned a defined space where they are on hold, typically because we have no use for them in the active part of our daily existence.  Therefore, they’re stored away until our existence grants them whatever tiny bit of space they are granted for however long our existence grants it.  We put things in boxes.

 

Boxes of Heart, Mind and Soul

But the majority of our boxes are not made of cardboard, or plastic, or metal, or any other such rudimentary substances.  Our boxes are not those things stored in the shadowy corners of our damp basements, or shoved into the tight confines of our suffocating attics, or crammed into the five-by ten of some self-storage on the other side of town.  These do not represent the vast majority of our boxes…at all.

The majority of our boxes won’t be found in basements, or attics, or some self-storage facility.  They are, in fact, within us.  Deep within us.  And we have made them.  We’ve tediously constructed them to protect ourselves from painful histories, or shut down truths that don’t set well with us, or eliminate the people in our lives who we find distasteful.  We build them to shield ourselves from ourselves (in whatever way that we feel we need to do that).  We build them to keep ourselves from the guilt of doing or being what we shouldn’t be doing or being.  We build boxes so that we contain those things that we would otherwise be running from, or we build them to give us a ready excuse not to run ‘to’ the things that maybe we should be running to.  We put things in boxes.

 

Why Boxes?

Some boxes might make sense.  “But why,” I asked, “do we put great things in boxes?”  Powerful things?  Things that can handily rescue us from the tangled messes that we make with such tedious perfection?  Why do we box up that which can heal our deepest wounds, wrestle our worst addictions into submission, grant us a sustainable hope that will stand against the most sustained darkness of a world gone dark?  What in the world would behoove us to box up the very things that can handily reign in all of the destructive things that we’ve cut loose that are constantly cutting us up?  What sort of insanity compels us to box up the very things that we spend the entirety of our lives searching for?

We are a stubborn bunch of people.  But that’s the message of Christmas that’s tough to swallow, and that’s the very thing that prompted the delivery of that message.  That we are stubborn to our own demise.  That we would be ‘the death of us’ unless God was willing to come and give ‘life to us.’  That the enemy is not necessarily something that’s prowling around in the shifting shadows that constantly circle us in some stealthy manner.  Rather, that we are the enemy and that it is from ourselves that we need to be saved.  That is the message embodied in the boxes tucked away in the musty confines of the root cellar with the word “Christmas” errantly scrawled across them.  That is the intent of Christmas.  That God decided to initiate the greatest rescue mission in all of human history at the greatest cost that any mission would ever demand…the death of His own Son.

 

Boxing Up Christmas

Despite the sour rhetoric of our times and the efforts of so many to massage us into complacent ignorance, this is the message that we as a culture have placed, pressed and imprisoned in boxes built by self-serving philosophies, special interest groups gone rogue, and platforms born of greed and power.  This is the message that we find so aversive and chafing.  It is our single salvation, but we box it up anyway.  It is the only light in the darkness that we have foolishly come to call light.  It is the only thing big enough to be able to course the turbulent seas of our times and throw us the lifeline that we refuse as we wait for other promised lifelines that never come.  This is what we box up.  And such an action is ignorance of the greatest sort that will insure a death of the most painful sort.

We must take Christmas out of the cultural boxes into which we have thoughtlessly crammed it.  We must free it of the confines of our stupidity, we must release if from the filthy hands of our greed that shaped each box, and it must be freed of the bane of special interests that attempt to seal these boxes tight.  And once we’ve done all of that, we must burn every box to ash and cinders.

 

Christmas Can’t Be Boxed

Yet, the oddity of it all is that we really can’t keep Christmas in a box anyway.  We might ignorantly presume such power, but it is only an assumption and nothing more.  Despite our most robust efforts to ignore it, deny it, render it a fairy-tale, play it off as the invention of misty-eyed dreamers, and press it far off of the edges of a blind culture, Christmas remains what it is.  It will forever remain the only rescue mission that set out with enough power to actually rescue us.  No matter the propaganda and hype that we grant them, all other missions will fail…miserably.  And I would hate to meet my own death realizing that I was ignorant enough to box up the only thing that could have saved me. 

When Christmas has concluded and the celebrations have stilled, when the songs have fallen silent and the parties have ceased, leave Christmas out of the box that you can’t put it in anyway.  Let it be what nothing else can be.  Let it rescue you, your family, your children, your marriage, your community, and your world.  And I don’t believe that any of us want to put in any box anything that has the power to do that.  

 

Resources for Your Holiday Celebrations

Discover an array of holiday resources designed to enhance your celebrations on our website at www.craiglpc.com.  Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books make lasting gifts.  Discover all of his books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.

Thirty Days of Hope - Day Seventeen

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope.  A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations.  This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities.  And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope.  Real hope.  Hope for a lifetime and more.

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered.  This is a story for our time, and every time.  It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever.  Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book.  Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope.

You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats.  It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year.

Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo.

Thirty Days of Hope - Day Sixteen

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope.  A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations.  This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities.  And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope.  Real hope.  Hope for a lifetime and more.

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered.  This is a story for our time, and every time.  It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever.  Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book.  Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope.

You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats.  It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year.

Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo.

Thirty Days of Hope - Day Fifteen

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope.  A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations.  This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities.  And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope.  Real hope.  Hope for a lifetime and more.

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered.  This is a story for our time, and every time.  It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever.  Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book.  Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope.

You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats.  It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year.

Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo.

Thoughts to Enrich and Enliven Your Holiday Celebrations

The gift of Christmas (the gift of God’s Son) empowers us to do all of what we were designed to do, but will fail to God unless God empowers us to do it. It is the liberation from everything that we were ‘not’ designed to be and not designed to do. It is the opportunity and the power to finally, finally be our authentic selves. And then, how about the durability of Christmas? These things that Christmas does…but how long do they last? “Have we ever consider the boldness of Christmas? For to craft such a daring story and to do so in a manner that it is sufficiently sturdy to stand up under the relentless scrutiny that is certain to be brought to bear against such a story is boldness indeed. And when God pens a story He does so not fearing scrutiny, but inviting as much of it as any one of us can muster up, for God does nothing that is not bold. Such is God and such is Christmas.” What God writes and what God does has no expiration date attached to it. There’s no last page. No period. What He writes and what He does will never find an end in itself. He’s the Creator of eternal stuff, and only eternal stuff. This stuff lasts forever. And then finally, does it really transform, because a lot of things say that they transform, but they don’t. Does Christmas transform right down to the bottom of everything that needs to be transformed? Does it really change everything? Does it really make everything new? And if so, if it really does, why do so many people just walk past it? Think about this: “One of the things that vexes me to the point of near insanity is understanding the message of Christmas and realizing the potency of this message to transform the worst of our lives so that we can become the best of our ourselves, to shift the momentum of entire cultures so that the world is brilliantly enriched by each instead of destroyed by all, and to handily touch the hem of history itself so that history is changed in the touching. And while all of these are ours for the taking, I continue to watch the mindless hoards trudge past these things in order to embrace everything that is not the ‘everything’ of these gifts. And so I pray that God would grant them a heart ready to be captured by the ‘everything’ of Christmas.” Don’t miss Christmas anymore. Don’t. Don’t miss the immensity of what God did, and what God continues to do. Get out of your rigid and confined thinking. Look at what Christmas truly is and what it truly does. Let this Christmas be the beginning of a ‘forever’ transformation in your life. Here’s wishing you and yours all the power of this incredible gift. __________________________________________________________________________________

Enjoy LifeTalk on most podcast platforms. You will also find daily inspirational quotations on all of Craig's Social Media sites. Finally, visit Craig's website at www.craiglpc.com to discover an array of timely and thoughtful resources.

Thirty Days of Hope - Day Fourteen

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope.  A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations.  This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities.  And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope.  Real hope.  Hope for a lifetime and more.

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered.  This is a story for our time, and every time.  It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever.  Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book.  Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope.

You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats.  It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year.

Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo.

Christmas in a Box - Greatness Boxed

We must take Christmas out of the cultural boxes into which we have thoughtlessly crammed it. We must free it of the confines of our stupidity, we must release if from the filthy hands of our greed that shaped each box, and it must be freed of the bane of special interests that attempt to seal these boxes tight. And once we’ve done all of that, we must burn every box to ash and cinders.

Yet, the oddity of it all is that we really can’t keep Christmas in a box anyway. We might ignorantly presume such power, but it is only an assumption and nothing more. Despite our most robust efforts to ignore it, deny it, render it a fairy-tale, play it off as the invention of misty-eyed dreamers, and press it far off of the edges of a blind culture, Christmas remains what it is. It will forever remain the only rescue mission that set out with enough power to actually rescue us. No matter the propaganda and hype that we grant them, all other missions will fail…miserably. And I would hate to meet my own death realizing that I was ignorant enough to box up the only thing that could have saved me.

When Christmas has concluded and the celebrations have stilled, when the songs have fallen silent and the parties have ceased, leave Christmas out of the box that you can’t put it in anyway. Let it be what nothing else can be. Let it rescue you, your family, your children, your marriage, your community, and your world. And I don’t believe that any of us want to put in anything in any box that has the power to do that. ________________________________________________________________________________

Discover all of LifeTalk's programming on most podcast platforms as well as Craig's YouTube channel. Also look for Craig's daily quotes and posts on Facebook, Pinterest, X, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Finally, enjoy Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.

Thirty Days of Hope - Day Thirteen

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope.  A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations.  This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities.  And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope.  Real hope.  Hope for a lifetime and more.

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered.  This is a story for our time, and every time.  It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever.  Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book.  Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope.

You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats.  It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year.

Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo.

”Christmas Reawakened and Reclaimed:” Our Need for Rescue

Christmas - Our Need for Rescue

Rescue.  It is hard to admit that we need to be rescued.  We think ourselves to be smart enough, cunning enough, strategic enough, and enough of whatever it is that we need to be enough of to save ourselves.  We tediously craft an endless array of things to rescue us from the things that we previously crafted to rescue us that ended us stranding us.  We add problem to problem.  Dilemma to dilemma.  Disappointment to disappointment.  The very effort to dig ourselves out of the holes that we’ve dug only serves to dig them that much deeper.  We preach the commitment to the effort as the victory because the victory that we promised never materialized, and therefore we are left having to save face and salvage the failure by believing that we’re accomplishing something.  We fancy ourselves as rather ingenious, but the outcome of our supposed ingenuity is anything but genius, even though we proclaim it as such.  Our efforts to rescue ourselves only serves to enhance our need to be rescued.   Rescue.  It’s hard to admit that we need it.

But we live in adamant denial of all of this.  We put a good face on it all.  We spin it as the fact that things always get worse before they get better.  We encourage patience.  We preach endurance.  In the prolonged absence of any shred of victory, we shift our focus and hail fortitude as giving a battle lost the sense of a battle having had value despite the loss.  We proclaim the glories of the battle sufficient, so that we can soften the fact that there is no victory in which to glory.  We say that the light is on the edge of the horizon, and if we determine to draw on our last bit of energy, raise ourselves up one more time, and press forward, the light will dawn. Yet, night continues to rule the day as much as it rules the night.  Rescue.  It’s hard to admit that we need it.

Christmas is the greatest rescue mission in all of human history.  It is a breathtakingly tangible manifestation of the love of God.  The rescue of us meant the death of His Son.  That is a price that few of us would dare to pay.  But God did.  It was about His Son being born in the backwater of poverty to two teenage parents in a place far off of the map of commerce and influence.  It was largely a birth of obscurity.  A quiet entrance possessing nothing of the trappings of a King whatsoever.  This child was inserted into this world at the most impoverished point that can be imagined, so that He would know the impoverishment within which we walk.  And on the other end of it, the irony of it all was that He was executed at the hands of the very people that He came to rescue.  

Those He sought to save wished Him dead and fulfilled that wish in a manner brutal, heartless, and excruciating beyond imagination.  Rescue.  It’s hard to admit that we need it.  So we killed the Person who came to do it.  And too many of us continue to kill Him today.  Day in and day out, many of us kill the only Person Who can rescue us.

Christmas.  It stands as the greatest rescue mission in all of human history, and it came at a cost that will never, and can never be matched despite how long history might be made.  That is Christmas.  And we have the power to reject the only rescue that will ever really matter and therefore succumb to our own pathetic efforts to rescue ourselves.  Or we have the power to accept it and never, never need rescue ever again.  Rescue.  It’s hard to admit that we need it.  So, this Christmas, will you be rescued or not?

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

• John 3:16

 

Resources for Your Holiday Celebrations

Discover an array of holiday resources designed to enhance your celebrations on our website at www.craiglpc.com.  Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books make lasting gifts.  Discover all of his books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.

Thirty Days of Hope - Day Twelve

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope.  A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations.  This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities.  And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope.  Real hope.  Hope for a lifetime and more.

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered.  This is a story for our time, and every time.  It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever.  Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book.  Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope.

You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats.  It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year.

Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo.

”Christmas Reawakened and Reclaimed:” What Is Christmas?

The Tragedy of Gutting Greatness

Have we forgotten Christmas?  Or more tragically, have we never really known it at all?  Have we embraced some pathetic derivative that is but a thin and emaciated shadow of something that we have found intimidating and demanding because of how grand it is?  And so, do we diminish great stories out of our fear of them?  More frighteningly, do we then come to believe those stories as ‘the story?’

Have we diligently re-crafted and recast some original story, beneficently leaving a few scattered themes that we thought to be profound, yet sufficiently diminishing the story so that it could not demand something of us?  Have we come to understand that the adventure of wonder is welcomed by us when it is safely held within the imaginative bounds of fiction, but that we fear it should it be loosed into our reality?

Have we discovered that we love great things, but we hold them in dread fear at the same time?  And have we come to understand that we fear them because they explicitly highlight in rather blunt fashion all that is not great within us?  Do we stand at great distance from things both marvelous and majestic so that our inadequacies might not be revealed should we step too closely?

Have we considered that great things call us to great things because it is in their nature to do so and that they cannot do otherwise?  And in the call to great things, do we prefer our own weak and tiresome agendas because we can control them and they ask very little if anything from us?  Have we come to understand that the call to great things is also a call to great risk, and that comfort too often has its way with us?

Have we opted for a storyline of our own making as it will neither push the boundaries outside of our boundaries, nor will it demand that we risk handing the pen and pages of our life story over to another author even if that author be far superior to ourselves?  Do we take scripts wrought of magnificent design and flawless penmanship, and do we edit them to suit the smallness of our agendas and confines of our worlds as we have created them?  And in all of these things and so much more, have we forgotten Christmas?

 

How We Forget

In doing all of these things, do we take great things and drag them down the dregs of our darkened minds and scantily clad worlds?  For it may be that we write off the majestic by relegating it to the misguided concoctions of misty-eyed dreamers or fanciful novelists who are far too much in their heads and far too little in reality.  Indeed, we may simply push the majestic aside once we have pounded it dead with our morbid rationalizations, our flagrant justifications and our stale realism.  Indeed, we may push it aside and with it we push aside everything that we’ve longed for but fear to long for.

Or, do we tame the majestic by making it our story?  Is it sometimes too majestic to push aside, for in the pushing we know that it remains irresistibly tantalizing and we must somehow dispense with it so that we don’t turn to run after it?  And so to tame it sufficiently, we meticulously re-write it and ardently editorialize it so that it retains a shallow fragrance of the majestic, but not enough so as to win the allegiance of our hearts or hold captive the depths of our minds.  Do we wish to make great stories our stories so that we can play with them but not be held by them?  Do we cut and paste the prose of the eternal so that we can read them at arm’s length rather than disarming everything that we are so that we can run the length of them?  And in doing these things, have we forgotten Christmas?

 

What Is Christmas?

Christmas is everything that God would do, and nothing that we would imagine Him doing.  It is the great story of a great God who refused to give up on everything that had given up on Him.  It was and it is selflessness and majesty of the greatest sort imaginable, where God inserted Himself into the very created order that ordered Him out.  And He did so knowing that salvation and redemption of even the remotest kind could never be crafted at the hands of men.  That the incessant rebellion of mankind to declare their sovereignty and proclaim themselves to be their own gods was an indisputable death wish because we are infinitely too small to be our own gods, and we are far too inadequate to ever save ourselves from ourselves.

Christmas is God refusing to abandon that which had abandoned Him.  It is selflessness that is unimaginable to the human mind, entirely unparalleled in all of human existence, and dolefully absent in human character.  It is a story that man cannot replicate either in the imagining or crafting of just such a story.  And if we could somehow raise ourselves up sufficiently to craft even a few scant lines of such a story, we have neither the power nor the courage to live it out.  Most profoundly, it is a story that never has and never will demand a response of any kind because it recognizes that the greatest transformations never rest in demands, but in invitations.  Christmas is God’s greatest invitation.

 

What Sets the Story Above All Other Stories

Finally, unless the Christmas story is something greater than a story, it has no inherent value greater than any other story.  Unless it is endued with the power to unapologetically transform those who dare to read it, it is just another tale.  And so to make it infinitely greater than simply a story, God did something no one else can do.  God penned His own death into the script. 

It may well be that the degree of sinfulness in us that would call for such a sacrifice is simply too difficult to look at.  Maybe we fear what such a great sacrifice might demand of us.  It may be that to acknowledge such a sacrifice is to acknowledge our inability to save ourselves.  And it may well be that such an offer is so grand, and it highlights our inadequacies so profoundly that we have re-written the story beyond recognition so that it does not prick our conscience or call us beyond ourselves.  And if we continue to do that, we will continue to write stories that spell our own demise.

We would be wise to cease our tampering, stop our editorializing, and quit vandalizing the story of Christmas, for in the end the one who is robbed is us.  God came, God died, and God rose from the dead.  That’s the story.  I thank Him that eternity is eternally secured, and that every day until then is secured in the same manner.  And I have no interest and certainly no ability to rewrite a story like that.

Wishing you all that is Christmas, and all that God has given you in this grandest of all stories.