Why I Celebrate Christmas

In this so-called post-Christian era, during this time of the year some wonder why celebrate Christmas. There are legitimate concerns, some of which I used to have like: the crass commercialization of the holiday and the fact that Jesus/Yeshua wasn’t born on December 25th.

For me, Christmas is not about accurate dates, festive indoor trees, tinsel, colorful lights or the gifts or lack thereof under them. It’s not about a jolly ole elf, his helpers, the North Pole, Hallmark cards and movies or snow. It’s not about stockings on a mantelpiece, lavish parties or even family gatherings. As one who is known to play certain Christmas songs all year, It’s not about Christmas carols either.

The greatest Christmas gift won’t be found under a tree. The greatest Gift allowed Himself to be nailed to a tree to do for me what I couldn’t do for myself.  God put on an earth suit, came to the planet He created to die a horrific death by the hands of those He created, to redeem all who believe from their sins, reconciling us back to Himself. And in the meantime, He made disciples, loved lavishly, even those considered unlovable, fed the hungry, healed the sick, raised the dead, spread the Good News, provided hope for the poor, oppressed and marginalized, spoke truth to power,  prophesied, fulfilled Old Testament prophecies, performed more miracles than could be written down and vowed to come back.

Now that’s a Man worth celebrating — His birth or advent, sacrificial death and resurrection anytime and December 25th is as good a time as any.  

 “She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins”. Matthew 1:21

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The Empty Chair at Thanksgiving

In some churches when a longstanding church official dies, it is customary to leave the chair he or she normally occupied empty for a time as a tribute and reminder of their significance to the body.

During holidays like Thanksgiving or Christmas, although there’s no physical empty chair when I celebrate with my family, the one my mother occupied is on my mind. My mind, through the years, has surprisingly transformed into a likeness of hers.

Holidays were special to her. Even during the lean times when there weren’t many gifts shared or the dinner table wasn’t as bountiful, it was always a festive affair, seasoned with the special flavor of love only mothers can serve.  

There was a time when I bucked against tradition. Either I wasn’t feeling the holiday spirit or when learning that what transpired at the first so-called Thanksgiving wasn’t the magnanimous love fest it had been portrayed in some corners to be. I wanted no part of it.

It wasn’t until I was older that I realized how my rejection of family traditions deeply hurt mama. Now that’s she’s gone I regret the shunning of days and customs that were important family traditions for her.

She never attempted to emulate the myths about pilgrims and Native Americans. There was no talk about Plymouth Rock. We didn’t wear hats with buckles on them or make stereotypical “Indian” headdresses. Our celebration wasn’t about making geopolitical or cultural statements other than our own family culture.

We ate the customary turkey, mac and cheese, mixed greens, cranberry sauce, stuffing and gravy, rolls and sweet potato pie. More importantly though, we gathered as a family in a warm, comfortable environment and shared what being a member of the Branch family was about. We reminisced about days, years and loved ones no longer with us.

We laughed, joked, poked fun at each other, danced and genuinely enjoyed each other’s company. As the day ended, we said goodbyes to those who visited. We looked forward to the next all too infrequent family gathering that too frequently was a funeral. When it was all said and done, we had another memory to cherish.  

Holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas are really important to me now, partly because they were so important to mama then. This year, more so because her birthday is on Thanksgiving Day. Those celebrations left permanent precious impressions. During this season my memory drifts back to the treasured days in my youth when my mind wasn’t on an empty chair but on the essence of love that was my mother, who occupied the chair of honor every time we gathered. 

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Imitate Paul Who Humbly Imitated Jesus

This is my shortest blog post ever, but it gets straight to the point.

The Apostle Paul wrote in I Corinthians 11:1, “be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.”

His life was a master class in becoming a humble servant, becoming Christ-like, which I humbly submit should be the life’s work of all believers.

This is a quick summation of Paul’s growth in humility.

“I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.”    1 Cor 15:9.

“Although I am less than the least of all the Lord’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ.”  Eph 3:8.

“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.”  I Tim 1:15

As you know, Paul wrote 13 of the 27 books in the New Testament, about 48% of the total. If he was this humble, he set a high mark to imitate as he imitated Jesus/Yeshua, who was a perfect Servant.

Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to Instead, he gave up his divine privileges, he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being when he appeared in human form Philippians 2:6-7 New Living Translation

Scripture further declares: “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Mark 10:45

I humbly pray that this will strengthen us in God’s will in our walk of becoming Christ like.  

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Is that All There Is?

Peggy Lee sang a song many years ago, that considers the various ups and downs of life and questions if that is all there is. The conclusion is, “If that’s all there is my friends Then let’s keep dancing Let’s break out the booze and have a ball If that’s all there is.”

The Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:32  “Let’s eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!” Many who have lived to a ripe old age and experienced the best and worse life has to offer may also wonder is this all there is? King Solomon wrote that life can all be about vanity.

One can seek after a goal or anticipate an event to the point of aching for it but when it has been achieved or arrived at, after perhaps many impatient years of waiting, there may be temporary gratification but ultimately disappointment. Was it worth the wait or all the effort if that’s all it is?

A lightweight example of that is after waiting ten years, after the original Star Trek TV series ended, for another production with my beloved characters aboard the Star Ship Enterprise, I left work early to catch the first showing of the movie Star Trek The Motion Picture. Two hours and 16 thoroughly disappointed minutes later, my lament was after 10 years of anticipating that day was that’s all they came up with?

I submit that the reason there can be so much disappointment in what we’ve been waiting for is that we forge ahead in life making plans that, although may be well-meaning, aren’t ultimately fulfilling. We who can’t foresee the next moment of our lives let alone forecast what may be happening to us or in the world in the next years, months or even days, rely on our limited ability to look into the future anyway.

The expression we make plans and God laughs fits here. He may not actually laugh at our prognostications, but He knows of all the unexpected events that we can’t conceive of.

As finite beings, we can’t accurately contemplate the twists and turns our cluttered paths will take us. Our visions for ourselves may not even be realistic and what we want today may not be what we want tomorrow.  

We were created, by a supremely wise God, who knows the end from the beginning, but unlike our Creator, even our most carefully constructed plans are never guaranteed to occur the way we desire. We weren’t created to rely on our own understanding but His.

To paraphrase 1 Corinthians 8:6, there’s one God and we exist for Him, not the other way around. What we ask or pray for isn’t guaranteed.  That may confound those who are prideful or independent thinkers. I have found that my biggest disappointments were a result of flawed deductive reasoning rather than heeding God’s instructions in His Word.  So, even the independent thinker in me has determined that the expression “what would Jesus do” isn’t a religious slogan but a wise consideration before making serious plans so I won’t have to ask so often is that all there is?

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Bring Back The 1950’s Code of Good Practice for TV and Movies?

Oops, I did it again! Finding a TV program or movie that’s entertaining, well-crafted with a bit of morality is a challenging exercise, usually one of futility. But I persist. Recently, there was a promising report about a limited series based on a bestselling novel that was streaming on a popular platform.

It had ethnic diversity, strong actors and was highly touted. So, I gave it a try. it was a bit complicated from the start but was promising… at the beginning. Then came the cavalcade of foul language, predictable tropes and stereotypes.

Somewhere, in a guide to contemporary filmmaking, it must be written that if you write/produce a film/TV project that includes Black characters they must address each other as the “N” word more than their given names and/or they must be “extra” to the point of buffoonery.

And women must call each other the “B” word and/or become nude or seminude by the second act. It makes a screenwriter like me with more genteel storytelling want to go back in time, to the 1950’s when TV broadcasters had adopted The Code of Practices for Television Broadcasters, which among other things, prohibited profanity, negative portrayals of family life, irreverence for God and religion, and illicit sex. It had a seal and all. It was displayed during closing credits on television programs.

But, wait, in the 50’s, there wasn’t a market for TV/film fare that was ethnically diverse and writers and producers of color were as rare as actors of color on TV were.

Maybe I’ll hold off on building that time machine and just re-watch films like The Hundred-Foot Journey, like I did yesterday. It’s a wonderful love story with great ethnically diverse actors, free of vulgarity, buffoonery, illicit sex, random nude scenes and not an “N” or “B” word to be found.

I don’t expect that we’ll go back to the practices of the 1950’s and I’m not advocating censorship, but we can make alternative entertainment popular. There’s a market for it. According to Dove.org, the average G-rated film produced 8 ½ times more profit than R rated films. The average PG movie produced 5 times more profit than R rated films. Seems like a no-brainer to me. Listening Hollywood executive types?

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Invasion of the Mind Snatchers

In the 1956 movie, Invasion of The Body Snatchers, sinister aliens replaced humans by making duplicates of them. The alien duplicates were designed to take over the town and presumably the world. One movie reviewer described them as “bland automatons, consumer slaves.”

Years ago, I wrote and produced a short film, “Absolutely Beautiful,” where a TV comes to life and tries to coerce a young girl into becoming what it considers desirable. That girl, an independent thinker, told the TV off.

If I would update the film, I’d probably depict a mobile phone doing the coercing.

There has never been a time in history where there were so many electronic devices to bombard us with information, programs and distractions. A popular saying among writers is that writing is 90% procrastinating on the Internet and 10% actually crafting sentences.

An assistant high school principal I know feels students are cell phone addicts and advocates for a 12-step program to free their minds. Whether its streaming sites, social media, TV programs targeted to certain demographics, or podcasts, our minds could be shaped, dare I say groomed, for questionable purposes by some.

We’ve become lazy or passive consumers of information. How many of us will skip an important televised speech in favor of a minutes long summary by opinion profiteers?  During every major election cycle on-the-street interviewees will say they don’t know a candidate’s position on certain issues. Issues that the candidate has stated in debates, news interviews, and has written editorials about.

We don’t have time to do our own research. Give us cliff notes and we’re satisfied. The cliff notes are frequently colored by a biased agenda too often accepted as the truth. Our minds are being snatched away by media types who have agendas that may have been opposite ours until their point of view was strategically hammered into our collective psyche. We can become slaves to their bombastic views.

Modern technology can provide valuable, time-saving tools, but it can also transmit evil around the world in seconds, galvanizing flash mobbers, rioters, racists and terrorists.

If you hadn’t noticed, the world isn’t a safe place anymore, if it ever was. The Bible predicted that “in the last days people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control… treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.” 2 Timothy 3:1-4

All of that can be observed daily on giant media outlets. These outlets are concentrated in a small powerful group. According to Nickie Louise of Tech Startups, “6 media giants control a whopping 90% of what we read, watch, or listen to. Objectivity in journalism is an illusion created…to give the appearance of balanced news. However, journalists who work for (them) answer to their owners and ultimately serve their agendas.”

According to the Web FX Team, “the total value of Media’s Big 6 is $430 Billion. If these six companies were a country, they would be the 26th wealthiest country in the world by GDP between Poland ($467 billion) and Nigeria ($415 billion).”

Our information basically comes from this small cadre of broadcasters. When we don’t carefully choose what we watch, hear, and read, our minds could be slowly invaded and replaced by alien thoughts and ideas.

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Did You Create God?

This era of dishonesty, hypocrisy, alternative facts, disinformation and fake news, with massive divisions in society that could easily destabilize our country and our world, is aptly described in a passage of Scripture: “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” Judges 21:25

If ever there was a time when there was a general consensus about what is true, this ain’t it. There’s no universal standard of truth. It seems that everyone has their version of truth to fit their preconceived notions of life or the values and priorities of their group. We are content to occupy comfortable echo-chambers with people who think like we do.

I think an honest search for truth while regarding others with love, kindness and respect, is difficult in general these days, but perhaps most difficult for those of great wealth or high intelligence.

Jesus said “Indeed, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”  Luke 18:25 It’s understandable that a person of great wealth, especially “self-made” wealthy folk, to think they are the masters of their destinies and world.

I submit that it’s equally difficult for a brilliant person who relies on their intellect and powers of deduction to navigate the rugged terrain of life in our world than relying on God, who created life, the world, and everything in it.

Many, but not all scientists, fall into this category. Francis Collins, one of the world’s most esteemed scientists, wrote in his bestselling book The Language of God, that science and religion are compatible. “The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. He can be worshipped in the cathedral or in the laboratory.”

I wouldn’t call myself brilliant but there was a period in my youth when I relied mainly on my intellectual prowess to the point of creating my own religion. I took a portion of Christianity, a smidgen of Eastern religions and a good helping of New Age philosophy, mixed with my own “common sense” to satisfy my worldly lusts while maintaining a veneer of spirituality.

The Bible says God created mankind in His image. In a sense, I created “god” in my image. Life was good. For a while… sometimes. There was a nagging guilt about forsaking what I knew about the true God as I selfishly sought temporary happiness and pleasure in my shallow worldview.

Data scientist, Ryan Gosha wrote, “Each time you form or develop a strong opinion on something without first acquiring sufficient information on that thing, you essentially create your own god and then worship it.”

According to a Pew Research report “80% of Americans say they believe in God.  But…for many…it’s a “god” they have formed using their own preferences. The “god’ they believe in is not the God of the Bible. There is a danger of falsely believing that says “God is whoever you want Him to be for you.”

In reality, because I knew far less than the real God, my plans and strategies were fatally flawed. Rev., Dr. Tony Evans observed: “If you want to operate by your own rules, then you need to go out and create your own world. But as long as you are in God’s world, where God has set the rules, you must abide by His rules, or you become a rebel against His kingdom government.”

One can rail against the existence of natural laws, like gravity, for instance, but if you leap off a skyscraper, regardless of your belief system, you won’t like it. The fact of the matter is there is truth and the genuine pursuit of it moves one from being a “god” of their own creation into acknowledging the true, Almighty God.  

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Can You Miss What You’ve Never Had?

It’s been said that you can’t miss what you’ve never had. If this is so, why do I have such a deep yearning for the Lord to return? It’s more than desiring a deeper relationship with Him. Maybe I’m tripping, but it feels like a reunion is what I’m seeking. I’ve been saved for more decades than I’d like to admit and accept the biblical passages about Christ coming back (like Matthew 24:44), but the gnawing feeling I have is more personal, like my father was on a long journey and he’s coming to see me.

During Bible reading and study, praise and worship alone and with others, I miss Him. Is it possible that I was with him, in some form, in eternity past, before I burst into this three-dimensional realm through my mother’s womb?

Is there some unconscious, deeper truth to the expression “called back to God,” when someone dies?” Christian funerals are sometimes called “homecoming.”

Could it be that before we were born, we were with God in some form or fashion. In a sense, those who are heaven-bound could literally be returning home.

There is the often-recited verse of Jeremiah 1:5: “I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb. Before you were born, I set you apart and appointed you as my prophet to the nations.”

Many Bible scholars interpret that to mean that God foreknew or predestined the prophet, Jeremiah, not that He literally knew the person (or spirit) of Jeremiah before he was a zygote. I believe God knew the end from the beginning. “Known to God from eternity are all His works. Acts 15:18

God is without a beginning or end. In Psalm 90:2 King David refers to God as El Olam, the everlasting God: “From eternity to eternity, you are God.” God is not restricted by time or space because He created them both for our realm. So, essentially God, who is omnipresent, is everywhere all the time. Does that include being with us, before we entered this natural realm or dimension?

Think the Marvel multiverse is impressive? Dr. Hugh Ross, a Christian astrophysicist, wrote, “The remarkable advances of research reveal a God who lives and operates in the equivalent of at least 11 dimensions of space and time. They show that God can create space-time dimensions at will and is not limited by any of his created dimensions. Therefore, God is transdimensional.”

So, if before He created anything, or anyone, Jeremiah, and by extension, us, we could have been in the mind or imagination of God, who knew the end from the beginning. Isaiah 46:9-10

If that is true, were we not alive, at least a viable force, in some form, inside the mind of God? Wouldn’t that mean that we existed in some form and therefore God knew us? If all of that is true then those who are heaven-bound are in fact, going back to God where we existed even before we had material bodies.

So, perhaps I am missing what I had and will have again.

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There’s a Certain Rhythm to Life

When I was a young boy, my older brother, who was a much better musician and dancer, said I couldn’t dance – that I was too “stiff.”  As I grew older, I became better at flowing with the music and moving in time with it. Life – life affirming life has a certain rhythm. We’d all be better off if we moved in time with it.  

Life affirming rhythms, living in harmony with nature, caring for humanity, enjoying our loved ones and expressing ourselves and blessing others with our skills and God-given talents. The Bible says life is about loving like our loving God does. The golden rule is “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It’s about being good stewards of the planet and our world, constantly trying to make them better for each other.

The Declaration of Independence advocated “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” although, what some call happiness involves greed, selfishness and a pompous air of superiority.

Life is a precious commodity. We’re blessed to live on a planet full of everything we need to survive and thrive. While it moves in concert with the solar system, it’s the only planet with life as we know it. Its motion is orchestrated by the Creator to circle the sun in precise timing like the other planets, but it has a certain rhythm that the others don’t.

It has us, the wild cards of creation. We, too often march to the discordant cadence of a volatile drummer, our will. Of all the life forms, we do our own, often unnatural proclivities, in a universe that’s in natural conformity.

This is painfully evident in the alarming, precipitous rise of gun violence and mass murder all around our country. The frequent, hateful, liquidation of innocent human lives is unnatural and inhumane. Urban and rural areas alike have too often become shooting galleries where you shoot first and ask questions later… or maybe never. It is contrary to sustaining life that we violently terminate it as casually as playing a video game.

Instead of moving in compassion and heart for our fellow man and woman, we rely too heavily on our intellect that is so limited that our best and brightest haven’t been able to unlock the complexities of the human brain after studying it for centuries. We’re out of step with the creative rhythms that created us that is intelligent but is also loving. To do the full, life-sustaining dance of a life-affirming existence, we need to move with a certain, life-affirming rhythm using our intellect and our hearts, compassionately helping stiff dance partners to flow with us.

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Solomon was right. Life Can be Pointless

At some point, we all ask what life is all about. Why am I here? I think of the song lyric “What’s it all about…” Instead of asking Alfie, though, I addressed my concern to God.

In his old age, King Solomon, cynically wrote “I observed every activity done on earth. My conclusion: all of it is pointless—like chasing after the wind.” (Ecclesiastes 1:14 ISV) According to the Bible, King Solomon was wise and wealthy beyond belief. He possessed all the finest things in life, yet he concluded that those possessions weren’t all they cracked up to be, in the scheme of things.

Whenever the Powerball lotto becomes the size of a king’s ransom, news reporters take to the streets asking what folk would buy if they won. The sober minded say things like paying off debts, providing for family…

But those lusting after the ultimate, American Dream list things like a year’s vacation, a mansion, luxury cars, servants… that would make them happy they say. Solomon had all of that yet, became jaded.

When I was a young man, my greatest desires were for a beautiful woman who loved me, moving to Arizona, living in a luxury, high-rise, downtown apartment, becoming a young millionaire, stylish outfits, a new BMW every other year, club hopping to my heart’s content and spending weekends at my beach home. Oh yeah, God was on the list, but kinda far down.

That was my problem. My priorities. Having lived for a while, I know now that in order to be fulfilled, God must be at the top of the list.  Now, some of the things I desired weren’t bad, like marrying a beautiful, intelligent wife, for instance.

In my last blog post, I wrote about how Jesus basically said that if He wasn’t first in your life, you aren’t worthy of Him. https://kenyabranch.wordpress.com/2023/01/03/why-god-deserves-to-be-first-this-year/

When God is your top priority, when you stop pretending to be smarter than the One who created you, you seek the wisdom of that Creator. Being a believer of Christ, for example, is an exercise of sacrifice and obedience that cramped my style as a young man.

So, I who had accepted the Lord at twelve years old and not long after became titillated by the temporary pleasantries of the world, backslid… big time.

Then, one day I became ill. Doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong. I became so ill, I thought I was dying… and that’s when the process of maturity began. What good is a fat bank account when you can’t withdraw health from it?

What different does it make if I was in a sick bed at a beach house, a high-rise apartment or a mansion. It doesn’t matter what’s in your driveway, if you don’t have the strength to get behind the wheel.

That started my decades long struggle to understand why I was here and what really mattered.  As it turned out, I had intersecting health issues. Hypoglycemia and anxiety disorder. My symptoms: dizziness, nervousness, hunger, fatigue, shaking, disorientation, feelings of losing control and the constant fear of losing it.

There was really no cure, per se, but counseling and meds helped me cope. It’s difficult for people to understand how dehumanizing it is for a man to be willing to take a bullet for his wife but be too freaked out internally to drive her to the store.

Those conditions showed me that I wasn’t in control, so I started the trek to becoming what I was created to be. That necessitated making God first in my life. Not behaving like I, or others thought I should, as “there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” (Proverbs 14:12)

Now, I continuously read the Bible, meditate on Bible verses and pray often until I feel the presence of the Lord and seek His superior way of doing things before making major decisions.

I’m not perfect. I still make mistakes… often. But, my desire is to be what I was put on the planet to be and do what I was put here to do — Use my God-given skills in His will to please Him and bless people. It requires sacrifice and obedience. Some of it isn’t really a sacrifice anymore. I’m not comfortable in night clubs or high-rise buildings. I prefer quiet and simple.

So, what did I gain? I get the benefit of having the mind of Christ. (1 Corinthians 2:16). I’m in Him, like He’s in us. (1 John 4:13). I’m even in heavenly places with Him now, not in “the sweet by and by.” (Ephesians 2:6) The Bible teaches that God wants us to have peace, which in Hebrew, is shalom, which has multiple meanings – completeness, wholeness, peace, health, welfare, safety, soundness, tranquility, prosperity, fullness, rest, harmony… (https://www.preceptaustin.org/shalom_-_definition)

So, I’m with Solomon, who wrote (in contemporary language) “everything you were taught can be put into a few words: Respect and obey God! This is what life is all about.”

So, although I still have anxiety and hypoglycemia, I know why I’m here and I find my ultimate fulfillment in following the wisdom of the Lord.

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