LukeDooley.com

I’m writing this on my iPhone as I lie (lay?) in bed after a wonderful Christmas day.

The day started with my wonderful wife waking me up in eagerness to give me the gift she bought for me. She was so excited because on the past she has failed to surprise me, either due to lack of a lying gift, or poor gift hiding skills. Nonetheless, this year I was clueless, and after opening I was wonderfully delighted. She got me a remote control… A Logitech Harmony 550 Advanced Remote Control. To some yes, just a remote control. To me though, it’s so much more. It’s my entire theatre system controlled with one slick device. It’s my other 4 remotes tucked away in a drawer forever. It’s a pure awesome man toy, and I love it! Oh yea, and Sadie (dog toys) and Jen (book, shoes) opened their presents to, but mine was so much cooler.

From there we headed to my mom & dad’s house for the giant extended family Christmas luncheon. At 2:00 there were 35 people in the house. It was crazy… and awesome! I love my family, even the crazy ones. It’s great to see everyone in the same house enjoying a great meal, and wonderful memories. It’s a crazy couple of hours that I look forward to each year. I especially enjoyed the part where I forced several family members to watch a slideshow of photos on dad’s HDTV from our Journey to Guatemala this summer. I love retelling those stories and spreading the message of compassion! I also noticed that little cousins are growing like weeds, and turning into “cool” teenagers with cell phones & iPods… I wonder if they still think I’m cool?

Eventually the house cleared out, and there were only a couple of us left. Dad and I wanted a “snack”, so mom reheated the Christmas Eve breakfast, made fresh biscuits & cinnamon rolls, all in about 10 minutes… at 7:00 at night. My mom is pretty much amazing!!

After eating & cleaning up, Jen & I headed home. We stopped at Wal-Greens to grab something, and saw quite an eclectic group of people. Interesting folks shopping at Wal-Greens at 8 pm on Christmas Day!

That brought me home where I used my new remote to turn on the: TV, Cable, & Receiver (all with one button!!), in order to watch Lebron & the Cavs squeak out a win against the Wizards.

Now I lie (or lay?… I really have no idea) in bed feeling thankful, lucky, and wishing I could do it all again!

What did your Christmas look like? (Also, is it lie or lay?)

Yep… I bought some new shoes. Ten pairs of shoes actually. I have no idea what they look like. I doubt they’d actually fit my feet. But that’s all okay… they aren’t for me. They are for a child somewhere that I will never meet. I bought 10 pairs of shoes for $25… quite a bargain if you ask me.

You too can buy some shoes. Here’s what you do. Just go over to the website for Souls4Soles and buy some shoes. It’s super easy to do, and instantly makes you a part of something bigger. If 720 more pairs of shoes are donated before December 14th, a donor will kick in an additional 500 shoes. Not to mention you can win all kinds of cool stuff like: an Amy Grant signed guitar (yea, not that cool, but come on…), a trip to Mexico (very cool), a keychain (spend $10), or some soothing foot cream (spend $25).

Go buy shoes! Oh, and if you need some motivation… watch this video… it’s the most motivational video ever created!

I gave birth to a sermon this past Sunday morning. I realize if there are any ladies that read my blog, you may be offended, and tempted to write me flaming comments about how I “Don’t even begin to understand…” and you’re right, I don’t. It’s probably a bad analogy, but the only one I can think of.

The short story is that God has been doing some remodeling of my heart the past few months. It’s pretty easy to trace the starting point back to my trip to Guatemala with Journey Church in August. That was the beginning. Another key landmark on this journey has been the reading of Francis Chan’s book Crazy Love. It rattled me to my core… I still haven’t dealt with all of the ramifications from this book. More recently, I came across the Advent Conspiracy video which I’ve posted on this blog twice in the past couple of weeks. I was inspired by the words, imagery, and music. I was shaken by the keynote statistic that Americans spend $450 Billion Dollars on Christmas each year, and it would only take $10 Billion Dollars to provide clean drinking water to all of earth inhabitants. The lack of clean drinking water is the #1 killer of human life in our world today. I actually planned to use this statistic as one of the primary illustrations of my talk on Sunday, and completely forgot about it. When I realized that Monday afternoon, I wished I had a time machine so I could go back and share it.

So basically, God has been working on me in this area of poverty, wealth, America vs. the world, rich & poor, and my place in all of that. This past Sunday I had the opportunity to give birth to some of what I’m wrestling with, and what God is teaching me. If you were not

 at Journey Church on Sunday, I encourage you to listen to this talk. Not because it’s me, but because the Message God is sharing with me, and wants to share with you is so important. It could change everything…

Click here to visit the CincyJourney media page and listen to the talk. You’ll find it as the uppermost link in the list of talks. You can also search for “Journey Church West Chester” in iTunes and subscribe to our podcast.