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Cybersalt News

Oh look, Chicken Thursday! OK, today's mailing is very late, but it is still Thursday on the left coast of Canada.

Every year I try to send out a separate mailing for Christmas Eve, and I intended to do so again this year, but after celebrating an early Christmas with a couple of our kids and their families, Grandma Cybersalt and I were just too tuckered out to put together our regular mailing on time. So I am combining today's mailing with a Christmas Eve mailing - which will actually work much better for all of you keeners living in the earlier time zones.

You may recognize this picture of us in our Christmas masks from last year. These were sewn with great love by my younger sister, Melissa. I mention "great love" because Melissa suffers terribly with rheumatoid arthritis. Even though sewing helps to distract her from the pain she lives with, it's still not easy for her. And so last year, when we received them as a surprise in the mail, I quietly thought, "So much work for something we will be wearing for only a few weeks."

Fast forward one year and here we are wearing them again.

We are all tired of COVID and everything brought with it, taken from us, and what has changed seemingly forever. The pandemic continues to make what used to be simple harder, and what was already hard even more so. In so may ways we thought it would be over by now, or at least easier. But it's not.

We sing a song at our church that speaks to the wearying experience of being disappointed that the change and deliverance we want has not yet come to our lives. It sings of the reality that God will once again do the delivering work in our lives that he has done in the past. It may not be happening as fast as we thought or expected, but it will happen some day.

That is why we celebrate even the hardest of Christmases! We remember that the "back then" good work of God's deliverance, born of a virgin in Bethlehem, is like what He is going to do in the "not yet" of our lives, until all His plans and promises are fulfilled. Remember, God sent a great Savior because our need was great. And where our need IS still great, He can and will deliver for sure.

So whomever you are, wherever you are, and however you are, put your trust in the Jesus of Christmas because He will not fail you.

Today's video share is the song I mentioned above.
Click here to watch it.

From Susan and I, a Merry and Blessed Christmas to you all.

~ Pastor Tim

'Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period preceding the annual yuletide celebration, and throughout our place of residence, kinetic activity was not in evidence among the possessors of this potential, including that species of domestic rodent known as Mus Musculus.  Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward edge of the wood-burning caloric apparatus, pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding in imminent visitation from an eccentric philanthropist among whose folkloric appellations is the honorific title of St.  Nicholas.

The prepubescent siblings, comfortably ensconced in their respective accommodations of repose, were experiencing subconscious visual hallucinations of variegated fruit confections moving rhythmically through their cerebrums.  My conjugal partner and I, attired in our nocturnal head coverings, were about to take slumberous advantage of the hibernal darkness when upon the arenaceous exterior portion of the grounds there ascended such a cacophony of dissonance that I felt compelled to arise with alacrity from my place of repose for the purpose of ascertaining the precise source thereof.

Hastening to the casement, I forthwith opened the barriers sealing this fenestration, noticing thereupon that the lunar brilliance without reflected as it was on the surface of a recent crystalline precipitation might be said to rival that of the solar aeridian itself -- thus permitting my incredulous optical sensory organs to behold a miniature airborne runnered conveyance drawn by eight diminutive specimens of the genus Rangifer, piloted by a miniscule, aged chauffer so ebullient and nimble that it became instantly apparent to me that he was indeed our anticipated caller.  With his ungulate motive power travelling at what may possibly have been more vertiginous velocity than patriotic alar predators, he vociferated loudly, expelled breath musically through contracted labia, and addressed each of the octet by his or her respective cognomen -- "Now Dasher, now Dancer...et al.  -- guiding them to the uppermost exterior level of our abode, through which structure I could readily distinguish the concatenations of each of the thirty-two cloven pedal extremities.

As I retracted my cranium from its erstwhile location and was performing a 180 degree pivot, our distinguished visitant achieved, with utmost celerity and via a downward leap, entry by way of the smoke passage.  He was clad entirely in animal pelts soiled by the the ebony residue from the oxidations of carboniferous fuels which had accumulated on the walls thereof.  His resemblance to a street vendor I attributed largely to the plethora of assorted playthings which he bore dorsally in a commodious cloth receptacle.

His orbs were scintillant with reflected luminosity, while his submaxillary dermal indentations gave every evidence of engaging amiability.  The capillaries of his molar regions and nasal appurtenance were engorged with blood which suffused the subcutaneous layers, the former approximating the coloration of Albion's floral emblem, the latter that of the Prunus avium, or sweet cherry.  His amusing sub and supra-labials resembled nothing so much as a common loop knot, and their ambient hirsute facial adornment appeared like small, tabular and columnar crystals of frozen water.

Clenched firmly between his incisors was a smoking piece whose gray fumes, forming a tenuous ellipse about his occiput, were suggestive of a decorative seasonal circlet of holly.  His visage was wider than it was high, and when he waxed audibly mirthful, his corpulent abdominal region undulated in the manner of pectinated fruit syrup in a hemispherical container.  He was, in short, neither more nor less than an obese, jocund, multigenarian gnome, the optical perception of whom rendered me visibly frolicsome despite every effort to refrain from so being.  By rapidly lowering and then elevating one eyelid and rotating his head slightly to one side, he indicated that trepidation on my part was groundless.

Without utterance and without dispatch, he commenced filling the afore-mentioned hosiery with articles of merchandise extracted from his afore-mentioned hosiery with articles of merchandise extracted from his afore-mentioned previously dorsally transported cloth receptacle.  Upon completion of this task, he executed an abrupt about-face, placed a single manual digit in lateral juxtaposition to his olfactory organ, inclined his cranium forward in a gesture of leave-taking, and forthwith effected his egress by renegotiating (in reverse) the smoke passage.  he then propelled himself in a short vector onto his conveyance, directed a musical expulsion of air through his contracted oral sphincter to the antlered quadrupeds of burden, and proceeded to soar aloft in a movement hitherto observable chiefly among the seed-bearing portions of a common weed.  But I overheard his parting exclamation, audible immediately prior to his vehiculation beyond the limits of visibility: "Ecstatic yuletide to the planetary constituency, and to that selfsame assemblage, my sincerest wishes for a salubriously beneficial and gratifyingly pleasurable period between sunset and dawn!"

Don't be worried about your smartphone or TV spying on you ... your vacuum cleaner has been collecting dirt on you for years.

"Be a Billionaire!"

and Help

Refugees and

Persecuted Christians

What did Adam say the day before Christmas?

Tomorrow is Christmas, Eve!

"Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."

- Luke 2:10-12

In a remote village in Central America the word got out among the peoples of the region that one of the American missionaries that had served this country for many years was about to return to the US to live our the remaining years of her life.

The nationals desired to honor her for her years of service with a public time of appreciation. News of the event went to all parts of the country in which the missionary was known to the people. One very old and very poor man walked to the ceremony over mountainous terrain for 4 days to bring his gift to the missionary.

The gift consisted of 2 coconuts, but it was all the man had. The missionary recognized the man as coming from the remote village in the mountains.

"Brother, I cannot believe that you would walk so far to present me with this gift," said the missionary to the man.

His response?

"Long walk part of gift."

Featured Illustrations are items well suited for illustrating or inspiring a point in a sermon, speech, or devotional. Funny, moving, or perhaps even graphic, the point of them is the point you make with them.

Rev. James Snyder, God's Penman, writes . . . . 

Everybody has their own definition of what naughty is. So my great concern is why we allow this man called Santa Claus from the North Pole to determine who is naughty or nice?

For some reason, I got on Santa’s naughty list this year. You might ask, “How do you know that you’re on his naughty list?”

The answer to that is very simple, The Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage said to me this past week, “I think you’re on Santa’s naughty list this year.”

I don’t know how she knew that, but I never question what she knows or doesn’t know. So if she says I’m on Santa’s naughty list, I am for sure on Santa’s naughty list.

The Cybersalt Digest is a ministry of Pastor Tim and Cybersalt.