My heart always has been stirred by the songs of Christmas. The words of our hymns and carols often express the theology and beliefs of Christian faith, which enables us to learn God’s truth, even as we sing. In addition, there often is a story behind the song that helps us to appreciate it more. One of my favorite carols (and I’m obviously not alone in this) is Silent Night, written by Joseph Mohr and Franz Gruber in 1818. I never cease to be amazed that this Christmas classic only came about as the result of a problem.  In a village near Salzburg, Austria, it was a snowy Christmas Eve. Joseph Mohr, an assistant pastor at St. Nicholas Church, was preparing for the midnight service but the church organ was broken. How could there be music without an organ? And a Christmas service without music was unthinkable!  Desperately searching for options, Mohr showed Gruber (the church organist and choir master) a poem he had written two years earlier while serving in a diff...

I find myself – maybe you do too – attracted to ever-increasing efficiency, productivity and hurry. In our culture, these qualities have become the undercurrents of striving and accomplishing. The need for speed shows up in our lives and in our language: speed reading, speed eating, even speed walking. How easy it is for us to blindly follow where our culture leads, living at a pace that stretches our personal resources and strains our limits. Without realizing it, our need to “do” can become a series of unbroken tasks which make us feel a sense of being chronically short of time. Even worse, we can begin to believe that we arewhat we do.  Yet as a Jesus-follower, all of this seems to be at odds with God’s words in Psalm 46:10, “Be still and know that I am God”. Our meaning comes from our connection with him, not our list of accomplishments. And we’ll never really know him fully unless we sometimes choose to be still. Furthermore, if we are not careful, our incessant bus...