God With Us
What motivates your faith? Fear? Desire to be a better person? Tradition? Ritual? I was thinking a lot about that this week as I am preparing for my last sermon of this season of Advent, and given the time of year my thoughts wandered a bit to Christmas-y memories. When I was a kid my faith in Santa Claus was founded on one thing and one thing only. If I wasn't a good boy, he wasn't giving me jack for Christmas. There are songs about this belief. Hymns, to it, if you will. "You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I'm telling you why... Santa Claus is coming to town...." Does anyone else find this creepy, but me? And the song got worse, right? "He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows when you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness' sake..." You know, it doesn't really matter how we try to sugar coat this whole Christmas/Santa Claus thing---in the end it al...