Dayspring 
By Foy Valentine

Christmas is a time for celebrating.

No wonder tha    t when I was a kid we shot off firecrackers, lit Roman candles, waved sparklers, killed the fatted chicken, feasted on fruit cakes, and generally made merry.

Christmas is a time for happiness.

It is a time for gifts, for angels, for stars, for music, for joy, and for lights.

When Christmas comes, the winter solstice is already past.  The days are getting longer already.  In the natural order of things, day has begun to conquer night.  Things are looking up.

The people of God have special reason to rejoice for “the dayspring from on high hath visited us” (Luke 1:78).  Consider this profundity in its context.
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...And to All a Good Night
By Edwin S. Gaustad

The Christmas season is a time for joy to the world, and good will among men--and women. Sometimes. Certainly not in Jerusalem, rarely in the courts or the public schools of the United States, and generally not in the mixed memories of what tradition may suggest or require. All these perplexities and confrontations, and we have not even yet arrived at the new millennium with its intensified demands and expectations.

Let us begin with what more or less sacred tradition seems to require of us in America. And where better to begin than with the Puritans and their strong religious commitment? How did they celebrate Christmas? They didn't. Christmas was part of that papal calendar, along with the Feast of the Epiphany, Ash Wednesday, Ascension Day, All Saints Day, and what-have-you, that the Puritans were at pains to reject. December 25 could come and go, with Puritans not so much as nodding their heads in the direction of a special holiday, and certainly not one of revelry, indulgence, and wild abandon.
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Blessing
By Myron Madden

• The Blessing as God's Gift to All
• Blessing Patterns in Families 
• What is Blessing? 
• Blessing in the Family 
• Blessing Beyond the Family 
• What is the Power to Bless? 
• Who Has the Power to Bless? 
• Conclusion

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Two Poems:  One to Chew on and One to Lick
By Kenneth Chafin

Today’s Prophet 
One to Chew on  and One to Lick

Truth-Telling: An Exercise In Practical Morality  
By Charles Wellborn

Any respectable list of aphorisms must include the time-honored words, "Honesty is the best policy." Most of us pay sincere lip-service to that admonition, but in everyday life the translation of the words into action can often present a puzzling challenge.

I was reared in a Christian home. Again and again my parents instructed me always to tell the truth, and I was sometimes punished when I failed to do so. I identified truth with the facts of the matter, insofar as I knew them. The apocryphal tale of George Washington was a familiar story. "I cannot tell a lie. I chopped down the cherry tree," the future "Father of Our Country" declared, to the moral applause of ensuing generations.

I began my formal schooling with a firm conviction that it was always right to tell the truth, but I soon faced a worrying problem.
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Updated Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Hal Haralson Vignettes

• Anything Exciting Happen in Anahuac Today? 
• The Saga of Old Red 
• The Private Was a Preacher - Missing 
• The Night Cometh By Hal Haralson

Bigotry: An Ethical Evaluation 
By John M. Swomley

Is it ethical to criticize the doctrines of a church or denomination to which we do not belong? Fear of being anti-Catholic or guilty of bigotry has silenced some Protestant theologians who otherwise would have given vocal support to Catholic theologians who openly seek changes in Vatican doctrines or discipline.

Stated another way, is it ethical to remain silent when one church uses political pressure or legislative action to impose its doctrine on others who do not recognize its authority? Or is there a virtue of silence when a dominant church asks smaller denominations to accept its doctrines, bureaucracy and "infallible" leadership as the price of ecumenical unity?

It is important to wrestle with such questions from a secular as well as a religious perspective.
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Sowing and Reaping
By William H. Griffith

Choices matter and there are consequences. This was the point of the prophet Hosea's warning to the people of Israel: "For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind." It is a law of nature that cannot be refuted. When you plant corn, you reap corn. When you plant soybeans, you reap soybeans. You cannot expect to sow wild oats and not reap wild oats.

We read in Hosea 3:1-5 that God asked the Prophet to go and love a woman who already had a lover and was an adulteress.
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Watching The World Go 
By Ralph Lynn

• Room for God 
• A Case for Orthodoxy in Ethical Conduct

Christmas Wishes By Katherine Nutt Shamburger

I wish you pink sunsets
And Halloween skies
Fluffy clouds and a rainbow
Rich coconut pies.

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