Yesterday had some great moments and some head scratching ones as well. I guess I could say that about most Sundays, is that true for you? As for my musings …

-We had a few people return for the 2^nd or 3^rd time yesterday at my 10:30 church. We also had a first-time visitor, a 2 week old beautiful baby.

-Both of my churches are bringing in a lot of food to share with others. One of the churches is collecting for the Salvation Army Christmas Food baskets and the other is collecting to give directly to 2 or 3 families that we are serving.

-An exciting development this past week is that we are now able to record the Sunday message and post it to a link for anyone who missed the service. I suppose someone who was in the service could listen to it a second time, though I doubt that will happen much.

-My Christmas series of messages has really connected with me this year. It appears to have struck a chord with several others as well.

-My fantasy football team lost and now my season is over. I knew some of you have been worried about this part of my life.

-Last evening my wife and I drove around looking at Christmas lights and decorations. We didn’t see as many as we had hoped for, but it was a nice hour together and the hot chocolate that she brought along was delicious.

-I had a great time of prayer yesterday morning and this morning. I needed that, I always need it, but I really needed that time with the Lord and to hear from Him the last couple of days.

-I love that our platform at my 10:30 church is transforming a little each Sunday and will culminate on Christmas Sunday.

-A nice development at my 9:00 church is that someone who visited on our Friend Day last month has returned for worship 3 of the last 4 Sundays.

-I was encouraged by a couple of conversations last week with people in my churches who shared how they have been applying principles from recent messages in their lives.

-I have been discouraged with my lack of progress in planning recently.

-This coming Sunday is wonderfully frustrating day to plan for from a preaching perspective. At both of my churches the children will be sharing the Christmas story from their perspective. That is always exciting and fun. The frustrating part is that I will still need to share a brief message after the children finish. The children of the 2 churches are not doing the same things. Also, the length of the 2 programs is not the same. I often talk about having a flexible message that can either be shortened or stretched a bit on the fly. I am going to have to be very flexible and adaptable this week.

-I loved sharing with a group of men from several different churches on Saturday morning. Bonus, the breakfast was outstanding.

-I am having a brain freeze so I am going to stop musing.

Here’s hoping you see signs of Jesus being with you this week.

Dennis