Chismville

Our little family arrived safely into Maryland to visit Joli’s wonderful family once again! We have had such a wonderful time of fellowship! Joli and I have been staying at Jenny and Daniel Wold’s home while the kids have been staying over at the Howards. Why? Because we stay over at the Howards usually quite late, and the kids are already asleep. Therefore, Joli and I drive to the Wolds, sleep and then return to the Howards in the morning. It has been a very refreshing vacation.

We had a wonderful Christmas and are looking forward to two more events during the following week: a Dinner Theatre and Kendra & Jesse’s wedding!

We’ll be home next Friday evening. Enjoy the new crazy and fun Family Photos here: View Now

The Chism Family hosted our 4th annual Reindeer Antler Party last Saturday night! We had another great turnout. Thank you to all our dear friends and family members who were able to attend. Joli did an excellent job baking, as usual. It is true that I have gained a little weight since marrying Joli, but there are good reasons: My Beloved Can Cook! Wow! You should have tasted those cookies! Unbelievable.

Joli’s job (besides the many hours shopping, cleaning house, taking care of kids, and baking cookies) was entertaining the guest! She was the perfect hostess. I got the privilege of working in the kitchen as the Barista. This years number one seller of coffee drinks was anything that had Eggnog in it! I kept trying to sell black coffee with no cream and sugar, but it was THUMBS DOWN! People wanted eggnog, vanilla, white chocolate, etc. I must say: it was fun making the specialty fufu drinks, and I enjoyed every minute. Why? Because coffee making still allows me to get in plenty of good conversations: people do have to stand there and wait for their cup you know! People kept asking me, “Did you work at Starbucks.” Nope. Starbucks was not popular when I was in high school, so I had to learn how to make good coffee by trial and error.

Anyways…we are now counting down the hours as we pack up and ship out to visit our East Coast Family: The Howard Clan! We leave on Wednesday morning until January 4th. We can’t wait to see you all. Thanks for reading. Until next time…signing off! Merry Christmas To All!

Yesterday, Pastor Mark preached from several well know passages: Luke 1:39-56, Matthew 1:1 & Genesis 12:1-3. It was another excellent message on the true meaning of Christmas.

Here are a few key points I jotted down:

• The backdrop of Christmas is sin
• The motive of Christmas is grace
• The focus of Christmas is Jesus
• The purpose was redemption: God sending his Son to deliver his people from their sins!

The reason I posted this blog with the title “Abraham the Pagan” is the best part! If you read through the verses mentioned above, you will discover how God used Abraham to prophecy and fulfill His promise of redemption through His Son, Jesus Christ. God told Abraham to go to a land that He would show Him. He also promised a blessing upon Abraham and that people from all nations would be blessed through him. This was a direct reference to the Son of Promise who would bless people from all nations with the grace of forgiveness and eternal fellowship with God! The amazing thing about Abraham is this: He was a pagan before God called him! The two major monotheistic religions: Jews and Muslims both hold Abraham in high regards but for the wrong reasons. Before God called Abram, he was an idol worshipper who was not seeking after God. His entire life is also plagued with sinfulness and decent. Therefore, it was not because Abraham was someone special or did enough good works that God called him. God, by his amazing Grace, called Abraham to himself and blessed him. His entire life thereafter is filled with God working in and through him! He was richly blessed (undeserved) to be of the line of Christ in Matthew 1:1.

So, God works through sinful people. Many people hate Christians today because they feel we are to exclusive. However, as Pastor Mark pointed out, Christians are just the opposite. All other religions are based on some form of merit: disciplines, fastings, code of ethics, rules, duties, etc. Christianity is saying, “God saves us not by our merits but by Jesus of Nazareth!” It is an invitation to come and drink the Gospel of grace proclaimed to us in the Bible (Rev. 22:17).

I hope I never forget year after year the true meaning of Christmas: Jesus is and always will be the reason for this season!

Today was one of the longest days at work I can remember as a married man. I had three “complaints” looking back: 1) I really missed Joli, 2) Did not get to see the kids awake! 3) I did not feel productive at work. I stayed because there was a computer wiz. fixing our Internet and Server. He had such a hard time, and finally had success at 8:45 pm!

Coming home this late does not typically happen, and I am very glad that is the case. I hate working late, because I miss my family. I am thankful that I do have a great overall schedule. I also came home to my wonderful wife who greeted me with a big smile, hug, a kiss and a nice scrumptious dinner! Yippee! It is good to be home!

Below is a section from Romans 8 that really hit home for me this morning:

“You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.” Romans 8:9-11

Because I am not a trained theologian, I won’t dare to scrutinize the deep and somewhat challenging meanings Paul wrote about in Chapter 8 of Romans. I would like to share briefly on a few lighter items I saw that I hope are helpful for those of you who care to read on.

I have met a few people that go to church, call themselves “Christians” and yet do not believe in deity of Christ or the Holy Spirit. The only thing they are willing to admit to is that there is a god but not Jehovah! Then there are the Mormons who credit Jesus as being a god but not the One and Only True God. Finally, the Jehovah Witness “faith” denies the Biblical truths of the Trinity. While meditating on the verses above today, I was amazed at the detail Paul wrote about to stress the Oneness of the Godhead! Oh how I wish that those who claim to be religious would take the time to meditate on the truths in Romans. This book focuses on the essentials of our faith: human wickedness, all have sinned, justification by grace, sanctification and so on. It is packed full with the Gospel message which finds its origin with the Triune God.

Here is the truth broken down:

1. Verse 9 begins by saying that we Christians (those who have been regenerated by Christ) are in the “Spirit.”
2. “No if the Spirit of God dwells in you…
3. “If anyone has the Spirit of Christ…”
4. “But if Christ is in you…we are dead to sin”
5. “…Spirit is life because of Righteousness
6. “If the Spirit of Him who raised up Christ dwells in you…”
7. “He who raised Christ…through His Spirit that dwells in you!”

Could Paul be more plain about GOD’s work in our hearts?

God is the only ONE who could have accomplished our redemption, not by just a man. Jesus came to earth as a man but was still called the “God-man” or Immanuel, meaning “God with us.” He came to do the will of His Father, but he was not lesser in power than His Father. Why is this? Well, is my father a better person because he is my father? Is he more powerful and greater? No, he had the role of a father to me, but he is not greater and better. Just like the roles of a husband and wife. God created them equal in His eyes but gave them different roles. Anyways, when Jesus came to earth, he lived as a servant and fulfilled all His Father’s will. Before He accomplished our salvation, he told his disciples that he would be leaving soon but would send them a “Comforter” who would not leave them. This one was also called the “Spirit of Christ.” Jesus now took on a more greater role, that of a King! The Holy Spirit now dwells in the hearts of believers and accomplishes the work of sanctification and drawing men and women to Christ.

Well, there is many more words that can be said about those three verses above, but for times sake…I will end for now. I just wanted to pass on what I got out of this incredible section of God’s Word! To God be the Glory!

It’s snowing in Libertytown, Maryland. My sister and I had a phone date this morning. After my morning devotions, while I fixed oatmeal pancakes for my little bunnies, I got to talk to Jenny. Her study today was canceled because it is snowing. Oh how my heart ached to look out the window and see that magical sight of snow fluttering down and dusting everything, then coating everything in a glittery white blanket. Jenny told me about the episode on Christian radio from Family Life Today on the stories behind various Christmas carols. The story behind Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer moved me to tears twice–first when Jenny told it to me and then hearing it again over the internet! Who would have thought there could be such meaning in Rudolph! After talking to Jen, I got to download the episode from the internet and was thinking about how David and I got married in August and used Handel’s Messiah for our Processional and Recessional. That is so appropriate considering how we love Christmas and love listening to and playing Christmas music all around the year. Handel was a very famous musician, however, it was late in his life when his popularity had waned and he feared debtor’s prison that he wrote the Messiah as a response to a moratorium request by a simple person. God inspired Handel with the Messiah and the king loved it. Handel was able to live out his years as a free man without debts after writing the Messiah!

Jenny and I both expressed our very strange desire to be able to set foot outside in our pajamas without having to worry about people seeing us. A couple days ago, I went to a mom’s Christmas brunch with my sister-in-law, Emily. We were asked to tell our most memorable Christmas gift. My mind clicked back to the Christmas Eve I was nine years old. My mom and Grandpa Hake walked across the front lawn with a white pony named Cashew. Living on a 126 acre horse and Christmas tree farm, I certainly didn’t think that this pony had much of anything to do with me. I couldn’t believe my ears when I discovered that this pony was to be ours! She was mine to care for and “play with” and ride. There were so many other memories associated with that snapshot. We performed plays on the chicken house roof. We went toboggoning down the hills in the fields behind our white farmhouse. We spent days loading wood onto a pickup and then stacking it neatly beside our house. Then we enjoyed hot wassail with orange slices floating in it with cloves poked into them, that had been simmering all day on our woodstove. One New Years we tried to crack a pinata that wouldn’t budge. We had made the pinata from a balloon and newspaper strips and wheat paste over several weeks and filled it with candy. At last we tore into it and the candy burst out! We went canoing on our pond and one time just as we were about to board the canoe, we discovered a snake sunning himself in our boat. One year when our cousins were visiting from Taiwan, we played a modified version of capture the flag in the snow. Each team built little snow fortresses and mounded piles of snowballs behind our walls.

Oh how I hope there’s snow when we go back east for Christmas! Joel is quite smitten with the love of snowmen lately. He’s always asking us to draw pictures of snowmen and model play dough into snowmen with carrot noses and scarves. I so want to enjoy the snow with our kids. Last year I was talking to a sweet friend who grew up in a small castle in Germany. We were reminiscing about our childhoods together. Her husband is now stationed in San Diego. She could so completely understand my longings in lieu of such beautiful childhood memories. It is so hard to think of raising your children in the city when you grew up with safe rolling green hills to run through and creeks to get dirty in and a lamb that followed you everywhere and horses to ride and fields of Christmas trees and the simple pleasures of rural living. Hopefully our little family can fly back this New Year with an airplane full of two weeks of happy memories that will last all year long!

Yesterday we heard an excellent sermon illustration that really hit home for me. Pastor Mark shared about a friend of his who was on a warship during Vietnam who tried to sleep after his 24 hour shift. He was exhausted and ready for a nice nap! The problem was that they began their cannon gun practice during the time he should have been sleeping. After 12 hours of trying to sleep, he realized it was useless. After several days of little or no sleep, he finally went to his commander and told him about the problem. The commander responded, “We’ll look into it” The man returned to his job disappointed knowing that what the commander really meant was, “To bad! Deal with it!”

After almost a week of very little sleep, the exhausted sailer once again walked over to his bunk, laid down and fell asleep without hearing a single cannon that night! Why? Because his body got use to it. It was able to shut out the sounds of the canon in order to rest.

How many times have we heard the story of Jesus’ Birth and in a sense “fall asleep.” We’ve heard it so many times that we can tune out the entire story. However, this is one STORY that is like a Canon. It is an awesome and powerful story that should cause us each year to give an attentive ear to the message of Christ’s birth and ministry!

Hope this little illustration will ring in your ears this Christmas season!

I have enjoyed the purposeful feeling of studying, but lately the deadlines have been a real drag! This week I had three paper assignments. I think I was in denial about it or about having kids, or the mixture of those concepts. Joel has quit taking a morning nap and recently gone on strike for taking any naps at all. At two years old he thinks he knows what is best for himself! Trying to get my studies in around the edges has been a stressful sort of joke! I’ve felt like Esau, only instead of my birthright for soup, I’d sell my responsibilities for a NAP! I wish I could earn a few bucks every time some person says,”Finishing your degree and taking care of two toddlers with morning sickness–I don’t know how you do it!” Lately, I’ve been telling them, “I don’t!” I’ve felt like I’ve been getting by on mediocre in so many categories of life! Anyway, I just finalized the edits and submitted all three of my assignments that are due this week. It is a wonderful feeling. I got to dig out many of my old paralegal materials for a research paper on Marbury v. Madison. I’m the leader for a discussion forum this upcoming week, so I got to use one of my personal hero and friend, Linda Chavez’s recent articles. I hope they don’t mark me down for using such a “conservative” article. I am so eager to finish up my education so that I can spend more time playing with my children and taking them on outings, being more cheerful for my husband, keeping in touch with my friends, and keeping the nooks and crannies of my house clean!!!

Last weekend, I called my dear friend, Mrs. Wold, to ask her for advice with a very busy boy and she exhorted me to not fear asking for help. Why do I feel I’m admitting to defeat when I ask for help with my kids? It is difficult to write a paper with Joel dumping taco seasoning all over the floor and with Chalice chewing on my hair spray.

I have been thoroughly enjoying listening to Christmas music and seeing the Christmas decorations everywhere. Joel and Chalice loved helping me decorate for Christmas, while I dashed around praying they wouldn’t break anything! David enjoyed making fun of me when I cried listening to (David’s FAVORITE musical artist) Josh Groban singing I’ll be Home for Christmas. He threatened to write a blog about how Josh Groban made his wife cry. Well, it really wasn’t Josh’s sonorous voice so much as the voices of the military servants in the line of duty leaving messages for their loved ones from far-away lands. Maybe I was thinking how incredibly blessed and happy I am that I will be home for Christmas, not just in my dreams.

The past two days of rain have been delightful. I keep thinking….if it were only 80 degrees colder, it would be snow!