“What you win them with,” a seasoned pastor once advised, “is what you win them to. If it is hotdogs, clowns and balloons, you will have to keep the grill going and the clowns on retainer, because the moment you stop, people will leave.” By God’s grace, the church I was serving at the time was growing rapidly, and we who were on the pastoral staff had a healthy sense of inadequacy, so we sought the counsel of pastors of larger churches. That seasoned pastor was not at all suggesting that we hire clowns and start grilling hotdogs, his was a word of caution. Years later, I learned that his advice was not original, but a piece of wisdom shared by discerning pastors.

I just finished reading in Genesis about Joseph and his grace toward his brothers, who had sold him into slavery. God sovereignly raised him from slave to second in authority in Egypt to ready it for a famine; Joseph invited his family to join him. His father, Jacob, near death, made him promise not to bury him in Egypt. He directed Joseph to do something strange: Joseph was to place his hand under Jacob’s thigh, then give his promise.

I am forever losing things – keys, wallets, shoes – you name it, I can lose it. So prone am I to losing things that one year for Christmas, my wife bought me a chip that attached to my key fob that would show the location of my keys on a map on my smartphone. Great idea, but I lose things at home and the mapping feature was not that precise.

There is an old news story that has been imprinted on my mind since I was a 4-year-old child. In July of 1960, a 7-year-old boy named Roger Woodward was swept over the edge of Niagara Falls and dropped nearly 200 feet into the roiling waters below. He survived.

I had a short career in the animated film industry as an animator of such popular cartoons as Scooby Doo and The Flintstones. Every Saturday morning, I not only watched the cartoons I had animated, but also the credits that ran at the end just to see my name in them.

Not long ago, my wife and I had breakfast at a restaurant that has become our favorite breakfast destination. I had eggs benedict: two poached eggs, each set atop a piece of Canadian bacon and a halved English muffin, then blanketed with a hollandaise sauce. They were delicious. Eggs benedict is a dish of misnomers: the bacon is not Canadian, the muffin is not British, and France, not Holland, is the country of origin for the sauce. A label is no guarantee of authenticity.

The congregation I serve as pastor, is a church plant of the Evangelical Free Church of America. Yes, we are as advertised, evangelicals, though these days with gluten-free, sugar-free, and caffeine-free products, a person might surmise we are not.

The day after Christmas, what my kin call Boxing Day, a kinsman posted on Facebook pictures of various Christmas cards reading, “JOY to the world!” and “Peace on Earth,” then gave this advice for the new year, “We must find joy where we can since peace eludes us.” At first blush, this advice seems insightful given the bleak state of our world; news outlets are awash with reports of crime and war. Peace on earth seems nonexistent and joy a rare commodity. The reason these proclamations of joy and peace seem such non sequiturs is that they have been reduced to mere holiday slogans severed from their source.

My attitude toward New Years Eve has been a mixed bag. As a kid, it was the one day of the year that I was allowed to stay up late, but I never could stay awake. In college, New Years Eve always promised a raucous party, one that I would never be able to remember the next day. When I joined a band, New Years Eve became the night I made “big” money doing something I loved.

It is December, and our neighborhoods have exploded with strings of sparkling lights spilling off roofs and hugging hedges. The colder, crisper nights, like the pathetic fallacy of a Shakespearean play, have lent a modicum of credibility to the artificial icicles dripping off the eaves. Chubby inflatable snowmen, Santas, and cartoon characters sway gently in the chilly breeze in improvised choreography to some unheard night song. Nativity scenes softly lit offer a quiet counterpoint to the eclectic spectacle, reminding those who dare to ponder that there is a Christ whose quiet incarnation in Bethlehem brought hope to the world.