What I want to do this Sunday and next Sunday is just do a two-part message entitled The Precious New Year. where we just kinda begin the year by focusing on some things that based on scripture should be precious to us and to just settle on those things and then let our year be built around them both as a church and as individuals. So the title of the message today is a precious New Year Part one, and we're gonna be drawing the points of our message this week and next week from 1 and 2nd Peter. on, on Christmas morning, just under 2 weeks ago, I, I opened.
My Bible that was on my bedside table right after I woke up, and within a few minutes, the idea for, this message and next week's message, was born. I then went downstairs. And gathered together with our family, some of whom were visiting and And after taking some time to read the Christmas story in Luke 2 and praying, By the way, I always try to do that as slowly as possible. To prolong the agony for the kids and waiting for their gifts.
but after doing some scripture reading and praying, our family began opening gifts. And as we did so, I noticed myself doing something that I do, just about every year at Christmas. As everyone is opening gifts, wrapping paper and empty boxes and unwrapped gifts start piling up around me and everyone else, which always begins, just the chaos always begins to Leave me feeling nervous about some of my gifts getting lost in the mix. So I start getting possessive and territorial and feel a compulsion to carve out a safe space amid the chaos.
In which I can protect my gifts. And this year I found a large gift bag and I made sure that I put all of my gifts as I opened them into that one bag so that none of my precious gifts would get lost or mixed up with other people's stuff and get accidentally taken by them. A couple of years ago, one of our kids got a $100 bill for Christmas and ended up losing it amid the chaos of wrapping paper and boxes and bags being thrown away, and I'm not about to let that happen. To me....
