Tim Woodcock writes... Though I had heard the Stevie Wonder song “Someday at Christmas” before, I didn’t really pay it much attention until I heard it on “the Uncle Lanny mix” about 20 years. Let me explain. Uncle Lanny is my wife’s uncle who lives in the Boston area; 20 years back, he gave us a CD, burned from his computer, of Christmas music. In my immediate family, it’s become a tradition of many years standing to start Advent, the countdown to Christmas, by listening to this CD (although nowadays the music is organized as a Spotify playlist).   It starts with Nat King Cole singing about chestnuts roasting over an open fire, then Elvis Presley is experiencing a Blue Christmas – standard stuff but it’s a tastefully curated mix of Christmas hits. The song that always catches my ear, the song that always makes me catch my breath, is Stevie Wonder’s version of “Some Day at Christmas.” The song begins this way: Someday at Christmas men won't be boys Playing with bombs...

Tim Woodcock writes… This is a very striking photo that encountered recently. I received it embedded in an email from an organization called Embrace the Middle East. While its meaning might seem plain, there was no caption, so I put it aside for a few days, assuming that it was a tragic candid photo of a church nativity scene, somewhere in the Palestine/Israel area, in which the church had been badly damaged. But there is more to the story than that... Several days later, it occurred to me that with the wonders of technology, I could do a “reverse image search” online to find out what exactly the photo was portraying. Many companies offer this feature; Google’s search worked best for me. It’s an image from Bethlehem that began to be circulated about 10 days ago. It does not show a recently bombed church at all but is an artistically created creche in the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem. To reflect the warzone around them, the church create the seasonal decoratio...

"From the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the Lord is to be praised" - Psalm 113:3 Sunrise photo contributed by Mike Willock 

  Photos contributed by Mike Willock. (Good eye, Mike!)

Mike Willock writes: Last week included, after Halloween (October 31), All Saints Day (November 1) and Dia de los Muertos (November 2). Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is a holiday in Mexico when families remember the relatives and friends that have gone before. They make an ofrenda (offering table) with pictures of lost relatives and items of food or other things that their relatives enjoyed in life. The Pixar movie Coco is a wonderful animated tale about a little boy Miguel and his old grandmother Mama Coco. If you haven’t seen it, you should. You can stream it on Disney. This week I have been thinking about the pictures and other items that would go on my ofrenda. I found slides of my paternal grandfather John and grandmother Verna, one with two of her brothers and their wives gathered around the family table with Barbara. I found a remembrance of the Celina, Texas, farmhouse written by my mother in the 1990’s. I found a picture of the old barn that was the subject...

Mike Willock writes: In a recent sermon, Pastor Travis reflected on a mission trip in South Dakota where he and others built housing on an Indian reservation but never was able to meet the residents to talk with them and learn their stories. During the worship service, my mind traveled back to the late 1950’s and my grandfather’s farm in Celina, TX, a small farming community about 40 miles north of Dallas. There were no land acknowledgments then, but I have since learned that present-day Collin County was part of a buffer area shared by the Caddo, Cherokee, Delaware, Kickapoo and Tonkawa tribes. I remember rich, black farming land and rolling grazing land. Today Celina is slowly being absorbed into the sprawling Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. For several summers in my early teens I traveled by train to spend a week with my Celina grandparents. The house was built on a hilltop and last painted in 1900, with a wraparound porch and swing. The porch ceilings were light blue and ther...

During Sunday's sermon, Rev. Travis referenced a classic commercial for Snickers, starring Betty White as a football player, or at least football player who "playing like Betty White." The ad, which is often mentioned as often of the most memorable ever made, ends with the tagline, "You are not you when you are hungry." The point - the astute theological point - that Travis was making was the Israelites wandering in exile, and lashing out at Moses, are collectively what we might now call "hangry" - grouchy, uncooperative, not their best selves. Perhaps Moses ought to have shown them this video to remind them that "you are not you when you are hungry." Here is a video of the ad, which you may not have thought about in years: You are not you when you are hungry