https://youtu.be/-Xo64Q2ucQ8

Joy to the world.

One of my favorite Christmas ideas – we should be full of joy (joyful).

Life isn’t fair. It’s hard. It’s miserable. It’s full of suffering and hardship.

Somehow, some way – we can be joyful.

If we look for joy it can be found.

If you read stories of great suffering throughout history almost all of them (all the accounts I’ve read anyway) included moments of pure joy. It CAN be found, even in the darkest of circumstances.

Maybe it’s not there right now for you. Maybe this Christmas doesn’t feel as joyful as Christmas past. Even so, joy will meet you again – if you look for it.

Merry Christmas.

Jake

Somehow, not only for Christmas,

But all the long year through,

The joy that you give to others

Is the joy that comes back to you;

And the more you spend in blessing

The poor and lonely and sad,

The more of your heart’s possessing

Returns to make you glad.

– John Greenleaf Whittier

Christmas is a great reminder of the universal truth – it is better to give than to receive.

It’s a curious thing that life works this way, but it appears to be true.

Christmas isn’t a season to get, get, get and consume everything you can get your hands on.

It’s a time to give – gifts, to be sure – but importantly love, peace and joy.

Make it a great day.

Jake

Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion’s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don’t see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it’s not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it’s always there – fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge – they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaky feeling you’ll find that love actually is all around.

The above is the very beginning of the movie “Love, Actually” (a Christmas favorite at our house).

It’s a great reminder that love is all around us.

Sometimes we forget.

Sometimes we let ourselves fall into the trap of thinking only of ourselves. We forget that we are happiest and at our best when we are loving others.

At Christmas we are reminded of these simple truths.

Keep the Christmas mojo going on past Christmas this year. Keep the feelings of love and selflessness at the forefront – where they belonged all along.

Make it a great day.

Jake

“It’s Christmas Eve! It’s the one night of the year when we all act a little nicer, we smile a little easier, we cheer a little more. For a couple of hours out of the whole year, we are the people that we always hoped we would be.” — Bill Murray

Christmas time is a great time to be the person you’ve hoped you would be.

Be a little kinder.

Be a little more patient.

Be a little more generous.

Be a little more of who you were made to be.

Make it a great day.

Jake

Your life becomes meaningful in precise proportion to the depts of the responsibility you are willing to shoulder. – Jordan Peterson

We were built to seek out and find meaning in our lives. Some fall victim to trying to find it where it can’t be found: stuff, money, food, drugs, alcohol, etc.

Real meaning in our lives comes through the hard stuff: responsibility, love, relationship, humility, service, etc.

Where are you looking for meaning in your life?

What are you doing today to move closer to more and deeper meaning?

Make it a great day.

Jake

https://youtu.be/n1yzqsWxcBY

Maybe not on the traditional Christmas song list, but this is my favorite song version of telling the Christmas story.

It’s also interesting to me that in my head this song is always “Irish” despite who is singing it and when.

I imagine a miserable rainy, Irish Christmas day outside while a band plays this song with red faces while the patrons at the Pub dance.

The joy they find is hopefully connected to that very first Christmas day when God decided to send his son to die on a cross for you.

Merry Christmas.

Jake

I try to remember to share the story below each Christmas….in case any of you don’t believe in Santa.

Always remember that you are on Santa’s team.

Merry Christmas.

Jake

My grandma taught me everything about Christmas. I was just a kid. I remember tearing across town on my bike to visit her on the day my big sister dropped the bomb: "There is no Santa Claus," jeered my sister. "Even dummies know that!"

My grandma was not the gushy kind, never had been. I fled to her that day because I knew she would be straight with me. I knew Grandma always told the truth, and I knew that the truth always went down a whole lot easier when swallowed with one of her world-famous cinnamon buns.

Grandma was home, and the buns were still warm. Between bites, I told her everything. She was ready for me.

"No Santa Claus!" she snorted. "Ridiculous! Don’t believe it. That rumor has been going around for years, and it makes me mad, plain mad. Now, put on your coat, and let’s go."

"Go? Go where, Grandma?" I asked. I hadn’t even finished my second cinnamon bun.

"Where" turned out to be Kerby’s General Store, the one store in town that had a little bit of just about everything. As we walked through its doors, Grandma handed me ten dollars. That was a bundle in those days.

"Take this money," she said, "and buy something for someone who needs it. I’ll wait for you in the car." Then she turned and walked out of Kerby’s.

I was only eight years old. I’d often gone shopping with my mother, but never had I shopped for anything all by myself. The store seemed big and crowded, full of people scrambling to finish their Christmas shopping. For a few moments I just stood there, confused, clutching that ten-dollar bill, wondering what to buy, and who on earth to buy it for. I thought of everybody I knew: my family, my friends, my neighbors, the kids at school, the people who went to my church.

I was just about thought out, when I suddenly thought of Bobbie Decker. He was a kid with bad breath and messy hair, and he sat right behind me in Mrs. Pollock’s grade-two class. Bobbie Decker didn’t have a coat. I knew that because he never went out for recess during the winter. His mother always wrote a note, telling the teacher that he had a cough; but all we kids knew that Bobbie Decker didn’t have a cough, and he didn’t have a coat.

I fingered the ten-dollar bill with growing excitement. I would buy Bobbie Decker a coat. I settled on a red corduroy one that had a hood to it. It looked real warm, and he would like that. I didn’t see a price tag, but ten dollars ought to buy anything. I put the coat and my ten-dollar bill on the counter and pushed them toward the lady behind it.

She looked at the coat, the money, and me. "Is this a Christmas present for someone?" she asked kindly. "Yes," I replied shyly. "It’s … for Bobbie. He’s in my class, and he doesn’t have a coat." The nice lady smiled at me. I didn’t get any change, but she put the coat in a bag and wished me a Merry Christmas.

That evening, Grandma helped me wrap the coat in Christmas paper and ribbons, and write, "To Bobbie, From Santa Claus" on it … Grandma said that Santa always insisted on secrecy.

Then she drove me over to Bobbie Decker’s house, explaining as we went that I was now and forever officially one of Santa’s helpers. Grandma parked down the street from Bobbie’s house, and she and I crept noiselessly and hid in the bushes by his front walk.

Suddenly, Grandma gave me a nudge. "All right, Santa Claus," she whispered, "get going."

I took a deep breath, dashed for his front door, threw the present down on his step, pounded his doorbell twice and flew back to the safety of the bushes and Grandma. Together we waited breathlessly in the darkness for the front door to open. Finally it did, and there stood Bobbie. He looked down, looked around, picked up his present, took it inside and closed the door.

Forty years haven’t dimmed the thrill of those moments spent shivering, beside my grandma, in Bobbie Decker’s bushes. That night, I realized that those awful rumors about Santa Claus were just what Grandma said they were: Ridiculous!

Santa was alive and well … AND WE WERE ON HIS TEAM!

Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks, shall win my love. – William Shakespeare

I once listened to a podcast where the author of a book on marriage said that one of the biggest predictors of happiness in marriage was kindness.

Were the couple nice to each other?

Our interactions each day are an opportunity to choose kindness.

With our spouse.

With the stranger at the gas station.

With the opposing political party.

With our sons and daughters, parents and friends.

Where to start?

Think of a time when you felt a kindness was done for you. Think of a way to do something similar for someone else. Look for the opportunity. It won’t take long.

Make it a great day.

Jake

As costly as it was in the lives of our men and women in uniform, in military assets, and in esteem and pride, Pearl Harbor was a watershed moment for America. – Joe Baca

The anniversary of Pearl Harbor was on Saturday and each year that when it passes I reflect again on that generation and what they have done for us.

I found this paragraph in a blog while reading about “The Greatest Generation”:

“The Bible instructs us to give honor to whom honor is due (Rom. 13:7). Surely this passing generation of ordinary people who did extraordinary things deserves our gratitude and recognition. They won history’s worst war and saved the world. They built the America you and I know and benefit from every day. They may very well be, as Tom Brokaw calls them, “the greatest generation any society has ever produced.”

I am not a historian and so I won’t argue whether or not they were, in fact, “the greatest generation”.

I will agree they were great though.

And the reason I think so is because they gave so much.

They gave their friends, brothers, and sisters in a great war so that the world would remain free.

They gave their youth in service to their country.

They gave their all in rebuilding after the war.

If you ask me, all of that adds up to greatness.

Make it a great day.

Jake

Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call ‘humble’ nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.

If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realise that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.

C.S. Lewis

Not much to add to this passage.

I would encourage everyone to read some CS Lewis when you get a chance.

Make it a great day.

Jake