A pastor came to our town one year to replace our old pastor. This pastor had some very specific ideas about holiness in the Christian. One of them was that women SHOULD NOT WEAR PANTS! Yep, women should not wear pants. It wasn’t the Christian thing to do.

I wasn’t living in Alaska at the time, so I didn’t hear exactly how forceful he was about the whole thing. But apparently he really stressed it. Now I’ve heard of people down south telling women they shouldn’t wear pants, but coming to Alaska and preaching that nonsense. What are you crazy? This is Alaska for crying out loud. It’s the land of foot deep mud that sucks your boot in so you end up pulling out your foot from your boot while half your sock is hanging off your foot. You have no way to balance yourself, except to plunk your foot down in the mud that just sucked in your boot. Now your foot is stuck, next to your boot. You try and pull the other boot out of the mud, and your other foot comes flying out of that boot. Your sock didn’t even bother staying on. You have to balance yourself again, so now the other foot is stuck in the mud next to your other boot. The mud is freezing cold. You try and free one or both feet and you end up landing right on your bottom, in the mud with both feet and both boots stuck in the mud. Now trying doing all that in a dress! I dare you.

Or how about the mosquito problem in Alaska? In Alaska we say the mosquito IS our state bird. It certainly feels like it is. The mosquitoes are so thick during the summer, you need pants to cover yourself up. Pants are your mosquito shield.

Or how about gutting 300 salmon in one day. You spend the whole day, gutting and filleting salmon. There is blood, salmon guts and slime, everywhere. It get’s everywhere. The last thing I would want to do would be to wear a dress while dealing with all that blood, guts and slime. Yuck.

I suppose if you did none of those things and just stayed indoors all day, you could probably wear dresses all the time and get away with it. But that’s really not the point. I am a Christian woman who wears pants all the time! There, I said it, I feel better now.

The point really isn’t that telling women they have to wear dresses if they are Christians, but there should be exceptions for Alaskan Christian women. The point is that nobody should be telling anyone that what they wear makes a difference. (Well, okay, men wearing women’s clothing is an exception, but that’s a discussion for another time). I wear pants, always have. AND I’m a Christian. I know, when I die, I will go to Heaven and God will not care about me wearing pants. What He will care about is whether I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior. That’s it. I promise you, my wearing pants will not come up. I know this for sure.

Holiness is never external. It’s not about what’s on the outside. The Pharisees during Jesus’ day were all about the external. They dressed a certain way, acted a certain way, wore certain things and prayed a certain way and what did Jesus call them? He called them white washed tombs. On the outside they were clean, but on the inside they were dead men’s bones. Yikes. That’s pretty serious.

Holiness is Jesus living inside of you. That’s it. So simple. It’s not wearing dresses if you are a woman. Holiness isn’t wearing a cross or not wearing a cross. Holiness isn’t raising your hands in church or not raising your hands in church. It’s not how big your Bible is (whether you can knock someone out with it or not). It’s not what you eat. It’s not DOING anything. Isn’t that beautiful? I love that.

I’m a terrible rule follower. Maybe that’s why I love the gospel so much. It’s nothing I can do. I can’t follow a list of rules to become righteous. I love that God took it all away from us and simply says, “Accept my Son as your Savior.” Don’t DO anything. Just take the free gift of Jesus Christ!

I’m probably lazy by nature, that’s why I’ve responded so well to the gospel. But if you are a Christian and you feel compelled to Do something, look into that. Remember that holiness, again, is Jesus living inside of you. You can be all clean on the outside and not have Jesus living inside of you. That’s not a good place to be. Because you don’t want to be a Pharisee. Christian women can wear pants. It’s not an issue, really.

There is much discussion about limiting guns right now. It is due to the many shootings we have had as of late. I think this is an on-going discussion that I want to weigh in on. I’m an Alaskan girl who was a card carrying member of the NRA back when I was sixteen. I think the idea of taking guns from people is ludicrous. Here’s my humble opinion.

You have to know where I come from. I am from Alaska. Alaska is a very different place than here in Southern California. Alaska is like the wild west. People go up to hide in Alaska. They move up there to live off the land. They move up there to escape the cement jungle down here in the lower 48. (Have you figured out why we call it the lower 48?). I grew up around guns. I grew up in a small town where people had gun racks in the back window of their trucks, WITH guns in those gun racks. Everyone I knew went hunting. Whether it was for spruce chickens, moose, or caribou-everybody did it. Even my mom went spruce chicken hunting and she was a city girl from the lower 48. At camp, part of our activities were shooting guns, besides dodge ball and hiking, we shot pistols, .22s, and shot guns. (Between me and you, girls were always better shots at the first).

I told you I was a card carrying member of the NRA at 16. Here’s how it happened. For P.E., in the small town I’m from, we shot .22 rifles. Yes, you heard me right-.22 rifles during P.E. class. The most important rule we had for shooting .22 rifles was to make sure everyone was in place before you started shooting. You didn’t want to be shooting while other kids were walking in front of you. That was a kind of important rule. They broke us up into twos, we went up to the P.E. teacher’s office, got our .22 and a box of ammo. Then we walked over to the line where there were these big targets at the end of the old gym. The teacher taught us to shoot laying down, kneeling and standing. We learned to load and unload our guns. We learned to site the gun before shooting. We learned how to carry the rifle from the teacher’s office to the line-that you don’t wave the gun around. Imagine HS students given rifles and ammunition in school, during school hours, to shoot targets. Imagine that. And the weird part in all that was that there were NO SCHOOL SHOOTINGS during that time. NONE! And we didn’t live in some weird utopia. Most kids in the class DIDN’T get along. But it never dawned on us to go take a gun and shoot people with them. When we finished the class, our teacher gave us an application for the N.R.A. We were certified now. We were all card carrying members of the N.R.A.

Guns are very useful. Especially, living up in Alaska where there are big creatures that want to eat you. Bears are plentiful up there. And bears are very hungry and grumpy. The mama bears are especially irritated. I was taught at a very young age that a small bear cub IS the most dangerous bear. Why? Well because there is ALWAYS a big mean mama bear right around the corner who doesn’t like anyone messing with her babies. She can’t be reasoned with. She’ll bite off your head and ask questions later. No exceptions.

Now people may say that Alaska is ok for guns because there ARE creatures that want to eat us. But guns aren’t just for creatures that want to eat us. They are for our protection. Protection against tyranny! What did Hitler do before he declared a Holocaust against the Jews? He took everyone’s guns away. We live in a mad, mad, mad world now. I know I’m not saying anything new. The government doesn’t have a right to take guns away from us. We fought the Revolutionary war, with guns and ammo. We fought against tyranny! We weren’t going to take it anymore! And we didn’t! There are terrorists who have killed us. There are more terrorists out there right now, who are planning on killing more of us. They used guns. Why would you disarm people now, when they need guns to protect themselves now, more than ever? We can’t be that stupid.

I know I’ve said nothing new. But I’ve said my piece. Taking guns away from law abiding citizens is simply a recipe for disaster. Being able to own guns is our constitutional right. And I for one, will fight to keep the right. We can’t go down without a fight. There are simply too many bears and terrorists out there in the world.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day

Their old familiar carols play,

And wild and sweet the words repeat

Of peace on Earth, good-will to men

I thought how as the day had come,

The Belfries of all Christendom

Had rolled along th’ unbroken song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head:

“There is no peace on earth,” I said,

“For hate is strong and mocks the song

of peace on earth, good-will to men.”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

Then ringing, singing on its way,

The world revolved from night to day-

A voice, a chime, a chant sublime.

Of Peace on earth, good-will to men!

Henry W. Longfellow

It’s Christmas time. The season of perpetual hope. Yet, on December 2, terrorists killed 14 Americans and wounded 17. I didn’t want to talk about the San Bernardino massacre. It’s Christmas time. But we have to face such things. They are a reality in the world in which we live.

Matt Walsh wrote an excellent blog post about the hope we have in Jesus Christ. That God has intervened, already, for such a time as this. Jesus Christ already came down to earth as a baby. Grew up. Was persecuted by the Jews and finally crucified on the cross for our sins. He rose from the dead three days later. He then ascended into heaven. Jesus already paid the price for our sins. He already made a way for us. All of us. All of us are in need of a Savior. Jesus Christ is our Savior.

In the face of such evil acts, and because it is Christmas time, we should talk about hope. Hope is wonderful. Hope gives us reasons to live when faced with life’s troubles. It lifts us up. It helps us carry on. Hope has conquered tragedies, depression, every struggle men and women face. Without hope, what’s the point?

Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines hope: “to cherish a desire with anticipation.” Part of hope, is anticipation. Ever watch your kids when they are anticipating something? We used to count the kids’ anticipation with the number of sleeps. Five more sleeps before your birthday. Three more sleeps before Christmas is here. You could look in your kids’ eyes and see the glimmer there, the anticipation, the hope. Their eyes would sparkle with so much hope.

I grew up celebrating Christmas. I loved to see the presents under the tree. I couldn’t wait to open them. I remember one Christmas when we got a package from my grandmother. Both my sister and I received the same gift from her. It was a small package. We shook it. We squeezed it. It was squishy at first squeeze, but you could feel something hard underneath the squishiness. My sister and I would pick up that package everyday before Christmas to squeeze it and guess what it was. Squishy and hard-what could it be? We had days and days to wait, before we could open up those gifts. The anticipation was soooo exciting. Whatever could it be? We had no idea what that gift could be. It stumped us. Of course on Christmas morning, we zoomed over to that gift and opened it first. Oh, that’s what it was. It was this cologne bottle, with a cute animal cover over it-squishy and hard! We never could have guessed. The best part of all of that, was the anticipation. The waiting and wondering was so exciting.

Christmas time is a great way to show kids what hope truly means. The hope for certain gifts. The hope and waiting until Christmas to open the gifts. Now that I am an adult, hope isn’t an abstract idea. It’s embedded in my brain through all those past Christmases I celebrated. I still love Christmas time. I love listening to the Christmas music. I love buying gifts for my family and wrapping them. I love all the celebrations and anticipation of Christmas day. Hope is the crux of all the celebrating. It means even more to me as an adult. The anticipation of the Messiah coming to this earth. He brought hope to all of mankind. He was the Savior of the World. I still look forward to Christmas, but now it so reminds me of my Savior. The greatest event in human history, the God of this universe, the great I Am coming to dwell among men! Hallelujah.

I love “Carol of the Bells,” and all the versions of it. That song seems to represent hope over any other Christmas song. When you listen to it, you hear the song get faster and faster. You can feel anticipation in that song. Something is coming and faster and faster it goes. It’s a great refection of the hope we celebrate at Christmas time.

Jesus Christ is our hope and salvation. He IS the reason we celebrate Christmas. As we look forward to Christmas, I have a sense of anticipation for the coming Messiah again. I hope for Him to come and take His children home. I long for it. Christmas only inspires me more as I anticipate Christ’s return. And oh how great it will be! Way better than a cologne bottle with a cute animal cover over it. Way, way better.