MAC KIRK

Christmas "The judge knew that Sgt. Joseph Serna had been through a lot. The former Special Forces soldier did four combat tours in Afghanistan over a nearly two-decades-long career with the U.S. Army. Through those years, the Fayetteville Observer reported, Serna was almost killed three times: once, by a roadside bomb, then again by a suicide bomber. During a tour in 2008, Serna and three other soldiers were driving down a narrow dirt road in Kandahar when their armored truck toppled into a canal, the Associated Press reported. As water filled the vehicle, Serna struggled to escape. It was his fellow soldier, Sgt. James Treber, who saved him. “I felt a hand come down and unfasten my seat belt and release my body armor,” Serna recalled to the AP. “Sgt. Treber picked me up and moved me to a small pocket of air. He knew there was not enough room for both of us to breathe so he went under water to find another pocket of air.” Treber died from the accident, but Serna survived.

Sunday before Christmas Day, 4th S in Advent Have you ever been frazzled? Is that a word? It certainly is a feeling of overwhelming angst and the opposite of quiet , peaceful serenity. I came across a book called, Overcoming Anxiety for Dummies and there are a lot of good ideas in there to try and settle one's emotions and thoughts down. Some people avoid anxiety for example and doing that may increase it. For example if you do not like parties, just don't go, but as the book illustrates after a while you become isolated, and being around people for any reason creates more anxiety. There are exercises which offer momentary relief such as "controlled breathing" or the " progressive muscle technique". While many of these exercises are very helpful for a short time and give us relief , I wonder if they really get to the long term solution. I liked the book but the fixes were not permanent at least for me. God offers us as His people and follow

2nd S in Advent----the most famous Collect/Prayer in the PB " The Word of God is a two-edged sword; as for the weapons of natural reason, they are the armour of Saul, rather cumbersome about the Soldier of Christ than needful. They are not of force to do that which the Apostles of Christ did by the power of the Holy Ghost: ' My preaching', therefore saith Paul, 'hath not been has not been in the enticing speech of man's wisdom , but in plain evidence of the Spirit and of power, that your faith may not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.' ...if I believe the Gospel there needeth no reasoning about it to persuade me, if I do not believe, it must be the Spirit of God, and not the reason of man that shall convert my heart unto him." Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity , Richard Hooker, 1554-1600, Anglican theologian. The question today is about the Word of God, the Holy Scriptures , 66 books of the Old and New Testaments. The prayer for to