(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Things You Can
Do (In The New Year)”, originally shared on December 31, 2025. It was the 392nd
video for our YouTube
Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my
wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
God became human flesh to die for us. What can we do in 2026 to live
that gift? Today, we’re going to find out.
We’ll be welcoming, or maybe tolerating with dread, the inevitable
turning of time to 2026 tonight.
Some new laws are coming
tomorrow.
Grocery stores will no longer
provide plastic bags but will require people to bring their own reusable bags.
Restaurants will be required to
list major food allergens on their menus.
Electric bicycle (Ebike) riders
will have to use flashing rear red lights or reflectors with solid red lights
at all times.
Some changes may be made to our
lives, not by the law but, solely at our own discretion, like the resolutions
that will last no longer than Christmas wrapping paper. Some will resolve to
eat healthier, commit to some cause, or work out more. In fact, gyms see a
surge in membership at the beginning of every year and, I’m told, most of those
new members drop off by April.
What can we resolve to do that
we actually will do? Well, we could start with Christmas.
We’re still in the Christmas season,
on the sixth day of the twelve days of Christmas so we, and the vast majority
of churches in the world, will be looking at a familiar text about God’s gift
of Himself next Sunday: John 1:1-18.
It’s usually read on Christmas
Day, after the most familiar and personal and detailed of the Gospel stories of
Jesus’ birth, Luke 2:1-20, has been read on Christmas Eve. So, you may
have missed it if your church didn’t have a Christmas Day service. Or if it did
and you didn’t go. 😊
Or, they did have one, and you
did go, you may have had only the vaguest idea of what that reading was about,
because John wasn’t likely written for you.
The Gospel of John was written
for a primarily non-Jewish audience among the newly converted Christians in the
pagan districts of the Roman empire. They knew very little about Jesus and even
less about anything that came before Jesus.
Maybe they knew a little about
Moses and the importance of the religious Law given to Moses, the Law that was
so hard for the early Jewish Christians to see past.
So, John used the Greek
philosophical and cultural language that those new Christians would understand.
(If you would like to see the Christmas story told in a totally different way,
check out “Christmas According to Kids -Southland Christian Church”, on
YouTube)
In John, Jesus isn’t a cute
little baby born in horrific circumstances. Jesus is the Word made flesh.
That’s about it, as in John 1:1-5,
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All
things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into
being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life
was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the
darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
The natural “chaos” of the
world is overcome by the “logos”, the state of order that is the word, but with
a capital “W”: “Word”. In fact, everything that exists came into being through
the will of the Logos, through the Word, through a word. And now
the Word was being made flesh in the same way, through a pure act of the will
of God. Nothing, and no one else.
In fact, the first words of
both the book of Genesis at the start of the Old Testament and the fourth
Gospel, at the start of the New Testament are the same, “In the beginning” and
both describe the work of God’s Creation.
John the Baptist is presented
as a preparer for the Word and a witness to the Word, as in John 1:6-9,
6 There was
a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a
witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He
himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9 The
true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
Then the abstractions gradually
become more personal. The Word came to make those who believed in Him, in his
essential self, recreated as the children of God, as in John 1:10-13,
10 He was in
the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not
know him. 11 He came to what was his own, and his own people
did not accept him. 12 But to all who received him, who
believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who
were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but
of God.
He is the Law given
through Moses, and He is more than the Law. He has fulfilled the Law. He has
come to bring grace and truth. The philosophy of God is that truth is not an
idea to be debated. The Truth is a person. Jesus is the Truth. He is fully God
and fully human being, and he has made God known, as our Gospel reading
concludes in John 1:14-18,
14 And the
Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as
of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. 15 (John
testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes
after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ ”) 16 From
his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 The law
indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No
one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart,
who has made him known.
God has been made visible in
Jesus Christ.
How can we make him known in
2026?
Bob Porter was a diabetic whose
disease had taken his sight and one leg. He was confined to a wheelchair. He
was all alone and feeling sorry for himself one night in an apartment near
Christmas in 1969 when he remembered that he had known people for whom buying a
Christmas tree at Christmas was an impossible luxury.
He also knew that supermarkets
had lots of unsold trees as Christmas approached. So he called around from his
apartment to the supermarkets he knew in his Southern California neighborhood,
and he asked them if they would be willing to donate the trees that, by a week
before Christmas, they knew that were
not going to be able to sell. Some said yes.
Then, he called places in
low-income neighborhoods who agreed to pick up and distribute those trees.
The first year, he distributed
1,500 trees. Sixteen years later, by 1985, when he died, he had developed the
Bob Porter Christmas Tree Project into a nearly year ‘round effort, all of
which he did by placing phone calls from his wheelchair, in his apartment, to
retailers and pick-up truck operators, and then to wholesalers and trucking
companies throughout California and beyond.
By then, he had given away
150,000 trees to low-income families. The growers, the truckers, and the lot
operators all got a write-off. Poor people got a Christmas tree.
Win-win-win-win!
I met Bob several times as the
church I served in Compton was one of his distribution sites. I think that a
community group kept the project going for a short while, but then it ended.
There are no photos if him that I can find online today. He’s been pretty much
forgotten. I’ve often wondered “why?”
Every one of us has a
particular spiritual gift given to us at our baptism to build up the Church,
the body of Christ. They have nothing to do with our skills or talents, or our
jobs. They are gifts given to us by the Holy Spirit to build up the Church. And
we don’t use them so that we will be remembered.
Each of us is equipped to do
something to make Jesus Christ known in some way through the whole Body of
Christ so that people are transformed into a new Creation in a living
relationship with the one, true, living God.
How can we do something that
will last? How can we make the eternal God known among all people?
Every congregation already has
all the gifts that they need to do what God has called and equipped it to do.
Some people have the gift of Evangelism, but all of us have been given the role
of evangelist.
I’ve accumulated ideas over the years of ministry that I used to present
with the announcements in a church a served before Sally and I retired. Here
are seven small things that the Holy Spirit can use as the means to move within
people you know and care about to bring about life-transformation.
They are ideas from others’ experience that I have seen online and
revised or accumulated from reading books and articles and have revised, or
things that I’ve heard about and revised, though with no source that I can find
or remember, but for whose inspiration I am grateful. I came up with many of
them from my own experience.
1.
Wear a Sign
You don’t have to put on a
sandwich board and walk down the street. A sign is something that points to
something else. Wear your mother’s gold cross necklace, your father’s fish pin,
or buy your own. Wear a t-shirt or a polo shirt with your church’s name on it
or with a Christian message. They can create opportunities to share Jesus.
In my experience, it’s mainly
existing Christians who will respond, but you never know who will see them, or
who will comment.
2.
Text Somebody
Text them from church: “Guess
where I am.” It’s really good.” “Come with me next Sunday”.
3.
Forward Announcements from
Your Church to Somebody
Include an encouraging message
to people who feel estranged from the church and, when the time is right,
invite them to come to church with you. As Paul writes to the church at
Corinth, in 2 Corinthians 5:18-20,
18 All this is from God, who reconciled
us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of
reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was
reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against
them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. 20 So
we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we
entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
4.
Mail the Good News
Did you get a Christmas Card
from someone? Did it have a stamp with a Christian message on it? It created an
impression, didn’t it? Did you send them?
Stock up on greeting cards with
a Christian message and send them for holidays, birthdays, to say “thank-you”,
in times of sadness or celebration, etc. State your faith.
5.
Strengthen your Faith
Work on yourself, not on your
witness. Relax. The Holy Spirit will give you the appropriate message to share
and speak through you. Make yourself a good instrument and listen to God.
Isn’t the new year a time to
“turn the page?” Read your Bible, pray, read Christian books, web sites and
blogs, serve others in the name of Jesus. You can’t give away what you don’t
have, but you can share what you do have. Develop that. Always be ready to be
the means by which the Holy Spirit acts.
As Peter counsels in 1 Peter 3:14-16,
14 But even if you do suffer for doing
what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be
intimidated, 15 but in your hearts sanctify Christ
as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an
accounting for the hope that is in you; 16 yet do
it with gentleness and reverence. Keep your conscience clear, so that,
when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may
be put to shame.
6.
Listen for an Opening
“I don’t know what to do…” “I
feel so stretched…” “Everything has changed, etc. all could be openings for
empathetic listening. Listen. Share your experiences and your wisdom. Listen
some more. Share what your faith has meant to you.
7.
Witness When Eating at a
Restaurant
Pray before your meal just like
at home, not to show your righteousness but to be visible and unashamed. Let
your light shine. And leave a big tip. Show your server that Christians can be
grateful and generous. 😊
It’s not easy to be a Christian. It never has been. Be faithful and grow
in your faith. That is, be open and
receptive to God’s working in you. As Jesus
said, in the context of the first Christians, in Matthew 10:16-20,
16 “See, I am sending you out like sheep
into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. 17 Beware
of them, for they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their
synagogues; 18 and you will be dragged before
governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them and the
Gentiles. 19 When they hand you over, do not worry
about how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will
be given to you at that time; 20 for it is not you
who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.
It is very rare to see instant results when sharing your faith. Be
patient. Let things happen in God’s time. You are not in control. God is. You
never know when people might respond to God’s activity through one of these
means.
Maybe these 7 ideas will stimulate your own thinking about how you can
share the faith that God has given you.
We received some Christmas cards this year that were made by the
Hallmark company. Their slogan, since 1944, has been, “When You Care Enough to
Send the Very Best!”
It’s a very good message for this Christmas season, as we start a new
year.
God sent us his very best. He sent himself. And now He sends us as his
friends, His Body, and as His witnesses, and as His ambassadors.
You may ask, “Who? Me?” But
remember, you’re ready. God has given you everything you need to share the good
news in your witness and in your actions.
You’ve probably already
participated in, or at least heard of, community toy drives, food banks,
backpacks at the beginning of the school year, and lots of things that we do
for others in the name of Jesus Christ?
I heard of a new one the other
day: wood banks.
They mostly happen in rural
areas where people depend upon wood burning stoves and heaters to cook and stay
warm in the winter.
Some people can’t afford to buy
wood, or are not able to chop it into a size that a stove will burn. So people
are cutting and chopping the wood, then stacking it for people to pick up, and
even delivering it to people who need it, free of charge.
That’s both a statement against
our current economy and a testimony for the work of people who do what needs to
be done for people who are in need.
It’s a metaphor for what we do.
God has provided the fuel and
built a fire of the Holy Spirit under us and within us. God has
equipped us and sent us to reflect the light and the heat that is God at work
in the world through us.
We have something good to
share, the best news in the history of the world, given to us at Christmas. God
has called, equipped and sent you to share it with people you know.
Be a Christmas blessing. Share the Good News!
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