This post will not be fraught with the lyrical references of my last post. It has been one of the best holiday seasons I have had in a long time. The season started with a brief visit from our friends the McMullins. They were on their way to rendezvous with their family. It was a great time for talking and hanging out.Our church party went well and was a lot of fun. We had a good attendance. The next evening we held a candlelight service at the church. For many of us it was a first and was a great success. It was a good time of prayer and reflection. I am hoping the success of this service will lead to more opportunities for creative times together for my church. That night my mother and sister arrived from Cleveland TN and the next day my brothers came up. It was the first time we had all been together for a few years it and our time together was wonderful. Everyone had a good time and we got to enjoy one another's company. I received some great gifts but the fact that my whole family came up to be with us at this time when Kim is so close to giving birth to our daughter was so special.

We (my wife and I) are in Hoschton, GA, with my wife's family for the holidays. It has been a fun week hanging out and what not. We have watched Charlotte's Web, played many video as well as card games, shopped, and walked the dog and eaten a lot of good food. It has been a fun week and fun hanging out with Kim's family. It is odd being so old in this family (Kim is the oldest child) because in my family I am the youngest. I rediscovered my love for spades and realized I enjoy playstation games other than Madden.

In all this the strength of this family and their love for one another continues to be evident. I am privileged to have been accepted into such a warm family. The fun of the holidays are a welcome contrast from the normal pace of life, and the brevity of its duration makes it all the sweeter.

I love Christmas. I always enjoy it. the memories from childhood standout the most. I am the youngest, and all my siblings are several years older than me. So when I was a kid they lived a long way off. Christmas was always filled with the anticapation of their coming in from around the world, literally, and then being around the house for a few weeks. The Holiday then was a long affair, with a lot of time spent with my family.

One Christmas in particular, in the early '80s, was very special. Not only did the brothers and sister come home, but so did my Mom's sister's family and my uncle. It was great. Half of us had to sleep on pallets and we stayed up all night playing games and talking. We played in the church gym (my Dad was a pastor) and went out to the lookout on Mobile (AL) Bay. It was the only opportunity I had to spent a large amount of time with my Uncle, my Mom's brother.

Adulthood has been different for the holidays. We all have lived in the same town for so long a lot of that specialness seemed to have dissabated. We all hung out, and it has been great to live so close to one another. But it has been different. This year, it is actually me (and Kim) coming back to Cleveland for Christmas. It is a new feeling. Some of that old anticapation can be felt again.

Merry Christmas.

I must admit I am very excited over the emminant arrival of the football season. I am a big fan, and enjoy all manner of games, from College to Pro, to fantasy games. I can sit and enjoy just about any matchup, from Division 3 college teams to National championships. As an Alabama fan, I approach this season with tempered hope, knowing we are on the upswing but still have a lot to do to replace our graduating seniors from last year. The Titans, who I have liked even before I moved to Nashville, don't look that great either.

But football is football, and I will be glued to the tv.Hope springs eternal, or at least in each fall. It will be a good fall for many reasons, and one of those is football.

So I went to my family reunion today (biological). And in a way I had another reunion (spiritual) later on that day. Both were really enjoyable. My father's family had not been together in some time, since way before my father passed. It was interesting to see again where I had come from, and hear stories I had heard a thousand time again, but this time only from uncles. My Dad would have told many of them had he been there.

My spiritual family, or at least a part of them, also met up in Nashville (my new home-another post soon about that), Though I have a lengthening history with them, this reunion was all about the future, and what God was doing in all our lives. This was a meeting to celebrate and reflect on new stuff. New passions, new jobs, new opportunities. It was an interesting contrast from being with my Daddy's people, where all there is to talk about is twenty + year old stories, all of which I do treasure.

It is funny how jotting in the date book come together in reflective ways, seeing where I came from in the same day I see some of where I want to be in the future. I miss my Dad, and being with his brothers was kinda hard. So it was good that the day ended with hearing new things, and new directions.

I was thinking earlier today about the whole issue of theodicy, or the justice of God (which also deals with the problem of evil) when I received a phone call. I was preparing a lecture on the subject over the past week for my class, so I was sorta forced to look at the issue. It was quite disheartening really. The more I look around at stuff, the less I have answers that make sense of it. The way lives around me have turned out were unanticapated to say the least.

About the time I was going to sit down and type this out I received a phone call as I mentioned above. It was my Mom telling me my brother had received early leave from the Army and was home. He had spent the last year in Iraq, and we knew he had returned to the states. We did not expect him for another week, so this came as quite a surprise. So I met up with him at Waffle House, his usual haunt, and proceeded to spend the day with him and my family.

Considering that my reflections on question of theodicy and the problems of this world revovled around so much of the past year, including the absence of my brother in that year was not an insignificant part of that year, I found it ironic that my reflection and his return coincided as they did. The justice of God is incomprehensible, and so much of life is without explaination. But even in inequity there is grace, a grace that ultimately is sufficient.