It was great to be back with the church family after having to cancel our services (including our annual New Year’s Eve Family Game Night) the weekend before due to painfully cold temperatures.  Then again, I can’t say that being stuck at home with my wife and children particularly felt like much of a hardship to me -- it’s kind of the best birthday present that I could’ve asked for...

Before I forget, let me say that I hope everyone reading this had a very Merry Christmas!  I have to confess that Alex and I were actively praying for a white Christmas, so for those of you who don’t like snow, feel free to be angry with us.  But the rest of us are blissfully happy to have been able to look out and finally see the lovely dusting of snow everywhere...

We’ve had such a nice Advent season so far this year.  And in and amongst all of that, the weather even got warm enough this week for the workmen to come and finish the work on our shed.  Life is good...

It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas around here.  Not much snow yet (we were supposed to get something today, but... nope), but the temperatures have sure dropped, and the wind is whipping everything around enough that the workmen couldn’t work on our roof today like they’d planned.  On the plus side, we got our Christmas tree, so there’s that....

We’re launching into the Christmas season with wild abandon here at First Covenant Church!  Thank you to everyone who stayed afterwards on the 26th to help us decorate the building -- it looks beautiful!  And yes, I’m aware that there are some FCCers who will want to keep the decorations up until Easter, but we all just need to be willing to enjoy them while they last...

Okay, before I forget to comment, I hope that last week, you had a very Happy Thanksgiving!  We had the blessing of being able to spend a chunk of quality time with our extended family this past week, though Megan and I both caught colds at the end of the week that curtailed that a bit (and our recently-purchased van caught a cold as well -- ask me about that sometime).  But we all have so much to be thankful for that it’s hard to dwell on the hiccups in life...

What a sweet Sunday morning worship service we had this week! First off, it was sweet for me because I was able to dedicate little Addison Diemer to the Lord on Sunday, and that’s always one of my favorite pastoral duties.  It was, however, not so sweet for Addison, who pretty much screamed through the whole thing...

So yes, on Sunday, I wore my tattoos proudly.  I’m sure someone’s put pictures up on Facebook somewhere...

There’s a bunch of old British poems that go something like this:

            Remember, remember

            The fifth of November,

            The Gunpowder Treason and plot.

            I know of no reason

            Why the Gunpowder Treason

            Should ever be forgot...

Since you’ll be reading this after October 31, let me just wish you a very Happy Reformation Day!  People tend to get the wrong idea when I say that to them.  For instance, some people think that I’m joking -- that I’m making a big deal about something trivial just to be funny (but that couldn’t be further from the truth).  Others think that I’m just trying to find something other than Hallowe’en to celebrate on that day (which I explained a bit more in detail in the podcast interview that I had last week with Aletheia Classical Christian School headmaster Chris Marchand, where we discussed the nature of evil and the history of the Church’s response to Hallowe’en... as well as Darth Maul’s double-bladed lightsaber...).  Still others take that as some sort of passive-aggressive attack on the Catholic Church (which comes out of some understandable over-sensitivity, but ignores the fact that pretty much all of the original Reformers were active, Catholic clergy)...

I just shared something with someone yesterday that I’ve shared with various others over the years -- that sometimes, whole weeks go by where I feel shocked that I get paid to do something that’s this rewarding and this much fun... and then other weeks come by where I remind myself that it’s times like this when I earn all of that back pay...

So it was hot.  Then it was rainy, overcast, and actually cold -- Alex even wore a sweater.  And now it’s sunny and hot again.  I am remarkably confused.  Either that, or the weather is....

We had another wonderful day in the Lord this Sunday morning here at First Covenant! Thank you in particular to everyone who’s been praying for the outreach to Peoria Heights High School that we took part in, in connection with Stand for Truth Ministries’ outreach team -- the Christian band, Attaboy.   We hosted Attaboy as our Worship Team on October 1, and then they held an assembly at PHHS last Wednesday, followed by a free concert that night at the Lakeview Community Center, where they shared the Gospel message with teens...

I am a huge fan of Albert Einstein’s maxim, “Everything should be made as simple as possible... but not more so...”  But nowadays, people seem to be committed to finding overly-simple answers to complicated questions...

Peoria is hurting right now, after police shot and killed an armed robbery suspect this week... Let’s all be in prayer for the man’s family, for the police department, for our community, and for our country in general.  Pray for wisdom, pray for strength (moral strength, physical endurance, and strength of character throughout this whole situation), and pray for peace for everyone.  Whatever else we may find out about who did what, the undeniable truth is that a man is dead now because of violence that should never have happened...