How is Christmas joy marketed nowadays? Well, you gotta have a huge Christmas tree decked out in red, gold, and navy blue decorations, bedazzled with white lights and an oversized silver star up top, with countless, beautifully wrapped presents underneath. Or Christmas joy is a brand new white Lexus with a huge red bow on top... "Look what I got you for Christmas, hunny!" Or perhaps Santa driving a slick shiny red Benz with white Benzes in front serving as his entourage of pseudo reindeer? And you can't forget the Budweiser Clydesdales delivering a fresh 30 rack. This is what Christmas joy is all about, right? 
 

The phrase "Jesus loves you" has been tossed around so much in this country, that it's become kind of a tired, trite, meaningless cliché. Just for kicks, try telling your non-Christian friend, hey, "Jesus loves you," how do you think they'll respond? After being initially weirded out that you even broached the topic of "God" with them, most likely, their reaction will go something like: "Ok, cool... that's nice... so what?!" That's kind of the problem with Christmas. Perhaps because it comes around every year, or perhaps we've just heard the message so often, we kind of take the Christmas reality of God's love for granted. This is unfortunate, because God's love is the most shocking fact in the universe.
 

I can't believe it, but people already have their Christmas trees up! Thanksgiving has come and gone, and Advent season is upon us. If you aren't familiar with Advent, it's like Lent, but before Christmas instead of Easter. The word "Advent" comes from the Latin word "Adventus," meaning "coming" or "arrival. It begins the 4th Sunday before Christmas and ends on Christmas Day. Advent is a celebration of the first coming of Jesus and the anticipation of his second coming.
 

I don't know about you, but I can stand movies with heart-wrenchingly sad endings. Manchester by the Sea, Shutter Island, and Se7en, round out my top three saddest movies ever. Stay away. I don't need to get punched in the emotional gut by a movie. I watch movies to be entertained. Want more sadness? Read the news.

When Scripture uses the word "family," it doesn't just refer to your immediate family, nor just to your extended family. It actually refers to your entire extended family over three to four generations. This means that when you think of your "family," you should be going back to the mid-late 1800s. Though we can be affected profoundly by events and people in our lives, no one impacts us more powerfully than our family. 
 

Most people have heard that the Bible is the best-selling book of all time. However, this familiar observation obscures the even more shocking fact that, in the United States, the Bible is the best-selling book of the year, every year. Conservative estimates ball-park the number of Bibles sold every year in the United States to about 20 million. 168,000 Bibles are sold or given out every day. The amount spent annually on Bibles has been put at more than half a billion dollars. YouVersion, a top downloaded Bible app has over 100 million total downloads. More than 66,000 people are using a Bible app at any given second. 3 people share a Bible verse on their social network every second. 
 

Michelangelo has "The Creation of Adam", Michael Jackson has "Thriller", Michael Jordan has Game Six of the '98 Finals. What will your magnum opus be? The term "magnum opus" comes is latin for "great work." The magnum opusrepresents a person's greatest achievement, the seminal work, the crowning achievement. It's a masterpiece. It's the ultimate result of our greatest passion. It's our legacy.