Save the whales? What did the cows do wrong?

Seemed like a particularly apt pic, and probably prophetic.

My big news for the day is the appointment this afternoon with the surgeon. I'm now on the schedule for Tuesday, December 9th. I'll report at 8:00 a.m. to fill out paperwork. Always paperwork. At 10:00 they'll give me an injection of that same radioactive juice I got for Tuesday's test, which has to sit in me for a couple of hours before this surgery. Don't know why. Dr. Cooper will take out the lower left parathyroid gland, make sure that's the only problem, and close me up. Should go home that evening.
He said I'll have to take it easy for a couple of weeks afterward and then everything will be fine.
I'm eager to get on the other side of this procedure. Dr. Cooper said symptoms related to this should disappear relatively quickly - 10 to 14 days. The osteoporosis shouldn't advance any further and will likely be reversible.
I'm especially pleased that the surgery will happen this quickly. I had prepared myself to hear "January."
You'll probably think this crazy, but the only part that bothers me is the two weeks of "taking it easy." I asked him if that meant I couldn't train and he said yes. I know, the triathlon will be done by then, but I've already located other events on the calendar - both running and cycling - that I had set my sights on. This is the season of the year here when they hold those events; temps are ideal and rain rare. So I'll have to study that calendar closely.

Obama ran against four more years of Bush. So far his cabinet appointments look like four more years of Clinton. Some in the media are suggesting that the Obama supporters who signed on for Change You Can Believe In are wondering if they got a bait-and-switch routine.

I won't miss "Pushing Up Daisies" but "Eli Stone" was a good show. Alas, they're both canceled.

Josh W., one of my former students, pastors a church in Glendale - a north Phoenix suburb. They have an annual Thanksgiving pot-luck on the Sunday night before Turkey Day. I've been asked to bring a 15-minute devotional at this Sunday night's edition. Josh told me the food is outstanding; a church full of great cooks.
I'm between dinner and dessert. I was told "no more than 15 minutes," and with homemade desserts waiting in the wings I dare not go long.
I have some preliminary thoughts but I need to get it nailed down.

The thing about holiday speaking gigs, even at the preacher's own church, is that it's really hard to come up with something even remotely original. Think about that as we approach the season of Christmas sermons.
How many years have preachers been called upon to do Christmas sermons? Gotta be 1,700 plus. Multiply that by...how many of those sermons each year? Minimum two, usually more. Add in evening services where applicable and you're up to a minimum of four, and probably closer to six. Let's go with an average of four, a conservative figure - times 1,700 years - and the total comes to 68,000 Christmas sermons.
OK, here's the real problem: There's only one, yes one relatively short birth narrative in the Gospels, and that's in Luke. Matthew tells us about the visit of the wise men, but that happened when Jesus Christ was a toddler. Since preachers often feel pressure to come up with yet another engaging Christmas message, they have been known to treat Matthew's record of that Magi visit as though it belonged alongside Luke's birth narrative. Hey, let's not get all wrapped up in technical things like hermeneutics at Christmastime. So throw in the Magi passage. Add a couple of OT prophetic passages like Micah 5:2 (Bethlehem will be the place of his birth) and Isaiah 7:14 (the virgin will conceive). Still not much to draw on for six sermons a year, especially when a pastor spends six, eight, ten years at a church. That's 40 Christmas sermons, give or take. He preaches some really great stuff in April that almost nobody remembers in May. But Christmas sermons? Try recycling one of those years later and watch the phone ring Monday morning!

I've got to work through some possibilities for a guest gig at Josh's church. Guest speakers get off easy. And this will be our first Christmas at Pathway, which takes the pressure off some. But a couple of suggestions, if I may be so bold. First, give some thought to the plight of your pastor this holiday season. Trust me, they're all thinking the same thing: "What am I going to do this year?"
Second, give some thought to how much energy we put into Christmas. We can't be surprised that retailers make the season longer every year; it's their bread and butter. But consider the money and attention Christians give to an event that gets scant biblical notice, as compared to the effort we put into the resurrection celebration, which gets more coverage in the gospels than anything else (40% of Mark's entire book, for example).
I'm not naive enough to think the American church will scale back Christmas programs. Or that pastors will boycott Christmas sermons. But even as we decorate the church (dance studio?), go to another rehearsal and listen to a fourth Christmas-themed message, let's keep in mind that this is not what God had in mind. If he did he'd have given us a lot more information than we have in Luke's brief account - like the month of Christ's birth.
And when we get to Easter let's give it all we've got.

FWIW, YMMV