Get out your pencils and paper and I will begin to outline God’s Guaranteed Weight Loss Plan. With this plan you can lose the weight of bitterness and anger caused from lack of forgiveness. If you are carrying around an unforgiving spirit it is weighing you down spiritually and emotionally. Forgiveness may be the most unnatural thing that the Lord asks us to do. Forgiveness flies in the face of all the inborn sense of justice that we possess. A man once commented to theologian John Wesley, “I never forgive.” Wesley responded, “Then, sir, I hope that you never sin.” The Gospel of Mark seems to set the forgiveness bar at an impossible height to clear. “Be alert. If you see your friend going wrong, correct him. If he responds, forgive him. Even if it’s personal against you and repeated seven times through the day, and seven times he says, ‘I’m sorry, I won’t do it again,’ forgive him.” Really now.
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I have to admit that Joni and I are not teary eyed to see 2006 slip into history. It has been a hard year. Don’t most of us see next Monday (New Years Day) as a fresh start? Don’t most of us hope and pray that the  New Year will be better? We make steadfast resolutions of how we are going to do better next year. The reality is that January 1st is just another day. We could just as easily resolve on May 18th or August 3rd that we are going to change how we live. But there is something psychologically powerful about the New Year. January is named after the Roman god Janus. He was unique because he had two faces…one to look into the past and one to look into the future. Today Janus the two faced would be a very successful politician. Someone once accused me of being two faced and I won the debate by asking this question. If I
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Greeting cards have all been sent The Christmas rush is through But I still have one wish to make A special one for you     Lyrics from ‘Merry Christmas Darling’ – The Carpenters Yesterday I braved the day after Christmas shopping throngs with the lovely Mrs. Burchett in search of sale priced Christmas ornaments and other half-priced treasures. Actually I found the shopping frenzy to be only slightly less dangerous than the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain. So I spent a fair amount of time in a nearby Starbucks while she braved the frothing throngs. But I was with her in spirit. My caffeinated quiet time gave me an opportunity to reflect on the odd way we celebrate Christmas. The build up to Christmas goes on for weeks and then, almost before you can file a lawsuit, it is over. We rush pell mell to Christmas Day with intensity that would make Coach Bobby Knight proud. The day itself, like the average Super Bowl,
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No day of the year has generated more written material than Christmas. I thought I would collect a few thoughts from people with bigger brains than me to share as a Christmas gift to you. Those who know me realize that I must start with humorous thoughts on the day. The first comes from one of the greatest comic strips ever produced. Oh look, yet another Christmas TV special!  How touching to have the meaning of Christmas brought to us by cola, fast food, and beer…. Who’d have ever guessed that product consumption, popular entertainment, and spirituality would mix so harmoniously?  ~ Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes There is a remarkable breakdown of taste and intelligence at Christmastime.  Mature, responsible grown men wear neckties made of holly leaves and drink alcoholic beverages with raw egg yolks and cottage cheese in them.  ~P.J. O’Rourke Christmas is the season when you buy this year’s gifts with next year’s money.  ~Author Unknown Oh, for the good old
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I love your feedback. Here are some stocking stuffers gleaned from recent comments from you. I have received a lot of fun and favorable feedback to my post about what sound the cattle were making when they were “lowing” during the lyrics of “Away in a Manger”. Who knew that an intrepid reader of this humble blog would speak cow? Reader Leslie took the time to let me know that lowing really is a distinctive cow sound. According to Leslie, the official bovine linguist of this blog, lowing is “when you hear a mother cow ‘talk’ to her calf, you will hear a lowing. It is a very low and soft type of moo. Most mooing has a high pitch at the end of it. Lowing is soft and comfortable.” I think you can see that the time invested in this blog is well worth it when you impress friends and family with this little factoid. Thanks Leslie! Gary L. Burchett wrote
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I must begin with a brief disclosure. I am a member of the media and I am an Evangelical Christian. Both effect how I view a program like After Jesus. While being in television sports production makes me a lightweight to many who deal with hard news…the principles of journalism are the same. Being a member of the media causes me to be both sympathetic and suspicious when I evaluate a project like After Jesus: The First Christians. I am sympathetic because I know how impossible it is to cover such a sweeping topic to the satisfaction of all. I am suspicious because I believe that even the best journalists can allow a bit of bias to creep in…sometimes without even realizing that it is happening. So I was curious about how CNN would handle this topic. I believe I am the third member of the Crosswalk bloggers to weigh in on the show. I confess that I am a little intimidated to
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I love to learn new words. So when the term zeitgeist cropped up in a recent news story I immediately sought to find the meaning. Dictionary.com defines zeitgeist as a German noun that means the spirit of the time; general trend of thought or feeling characteristic of a particular period of time. Google has adopted the word to title it’s ongoing charting of the search patterns of internet users around the world. Each calendar year produces the “Year End Google Zeitgeist” which, according to Google spokespeople,  speaks to our collective consciousness. After reviewing the list I would suggest it reflects our collective cultural unconsciousness. I am not sure whether to laugh or cry or alternate the two responses. If I hired the guy who does the movie trailers my thoughts would be something like this…(dramatic music)… In a world full of suffering, genocide, hunger, loneliness, broken families, spiritual longing, and fear…millions of cyber warriors search for answers to save the
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