Advent Carols #1

Happy first Sunday of Advent!! As often as I can throughout this Christmas season, I will be posting some of my favorite Christmas Carols. The first carol is O Come O Come Emmanuel. I love this hymn. To me, it is a very appropriate song to begin advent, for it is speaking of the future coming of the Christ, asking him to come and free Israel. It can be interpreted as speaking of either the first or the second coming of Christ, but for now we shall interpret it as the first coming of Christ. "O Come, O come, Emmanuel/And ransom captive Israel/That mourns in lonely exile here/Until the Son of God appear/Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel/Shall come to thee, O Israel." Rejoice! For the Son of God has come, and will come again. Here is the song along with its beautiful lyrics.

Change

In 2009, while at the Do Hard Things Conference in Gadsden, AL, I heard Brett Harris say something that I'll never forget. He said "I know it's hard to believe, but in order to change something in your life, you actually have to change something in your life." Of course, we all laughed, because it sounds rather rhetorical. But think about it. How many times do we say we are going to change something, but never actually make the needed change? We say, "I'm going to be better to my brothers and sisters," but do we actually change our heart attitude toward them and love them more than we did before? So often we talk about the changes we are going to make in our life, but we are too lazy and too uncertain or motivated about them to actually change anything. This is something that lately has been very challenging for me. I've been realizing how many things I've said I would change, but never got around to. So I challenge you. In order to change something in your life, you really do actually have to CHANGE SOMETHING IN YOUR LIFE. So change.