Inspired by my good, but gullible (jks), friend Eddie, I will blog everyday for the next 31 days. But on what topic?

This year with Aaron getting sick, my parent’s divorce, Charlie being born, and Pedro moving in with us, my mom decided to put up a Christmas tree. 

My family has an on and off again relationship with Christmas. We stopped celebrating Christmas when we grew up since Christmas has always been about getting new toys. Besides that, my parent’s church always condemned the holiday, preaching that it was wordly and borderline sinful to celebrate.

This year our Christmas tree is real, as in a real tree that once had its roots in the soil, rather than the fake plastic Christmas tree we use to have. This tree sheds and makes a mess, but it smells good; deep down we’re hoping Charlie doesn’t start peeing underneath it.

So maybe that will be the topic of my blog posts for the next 31 days: The real Christmas and the real Christian.

I almost feel like Winston Smith in Orwell’s 1984. In the dystopian novel, writing your own thoughts can book you time in jail. When Winston began to write his own thoughts in a journal he bought, he knew he was basically sentencing himself with the Thought Police. He wrote anyway, in sheer panic, realizing later why he did it: because his thoughts are the real him.

I can relate to Winston because I feel like I never write about the real me in this blog. I avoid the topic of Christianity as much as possible and refer to it in passing since I am too well aware and conscious of my non-Christian friends reading this. Not verbalizing this part of my life to my friends is causing too much of a gap between us.

So here goes:

Today is Sunday, which has been my favourite day of the week for the past year because Sunday means going to church.

To me, going to church is vital to my sanity. It’s a time to recap, be reminded of what the important things in life are, and be reminded of what the point of what I do is. It is also a time to rejoice.

Anyway, so today, after much coaxing on my part, Eddie and Johnny finally struck up a conversation with this new guy just as we were about to leave (their conversation ended up with a ping-pong tournament).

Max, the new guy, asked what was so good about this church, since he noticed that a lot of people who attended do not live in the direct neighbourhood. He’s like, “the message is good and the food is good. What makes this place so good?”

Although it sounds like he answered his own question, I think he was looking for a better answer.

So I answered him in my head, “nothing we’ve done makes us good. If the food is good, it is because God made the company you ate the food with good. If the message is good, it is because God wanted us to be reminded of his love and the Spirit was working with that brother. If you find us giving you hospitality, being a good neighbour, inviting you to join us for other meetings, it’s because we love God and want to spend time with Him.”   

Maybe I’ll voice out my answer next time.