So a couple of weeks ago, if you were here, I know we got a lot of guests, you were here a couple of weeks ago.

I'm not going to recap all that. But a couple of weeks ago, I made this comment that we have a tendency to when it comes to Bible, the stories in the Bible, or we call them Bible stories.

They're not stories. It's history, but we call them Bible stories. We have a tendency to sanitize those and kind of glamorize them.

In some cases, kind of romanticize them and sort of sand off the rough edges.

And part of that is because we want to tell our children these stories.

And so we want these stories to be appropriate to all ages, which is fine because we need to share these stories with our children.

But at some point as adults, it's not healthy to do that. And the reason it's not is because in

sanding off the rough edges and harmonizing everything and making everything beautiful and

wonderful, it's easy to actually miss the point of the story and to miss the people

that are part of the history of our faith. Because your life isn't that way. Your life isn't

glamorous all the time and your life isn't sanitized and your life is gritty and it's hard.

And when we when we so elevate these Bible

stories and characters to the point where we just can't even relate to them, we not only miss

the power of the narratives, we actually miss the message that's in the narratives. And again, I understand why we do that.

But maybe one of the reasons, if you're not a person of faith or you used to be, used to be a

Christian, maybe part of the reason that it was so easy to walk away is that the church you were raised in

or the version of Christianity you were raised in so elevated and so sanitized

and separated these narratives from the real world, you're like, what does it have to do with me?

What does that really have to do with anything in the real world? And it has everything to do

with your world in my world. And no biblical narrative has been more cleaned up and dressed up,

honestly, than the narrative surrounding the birth of Jesus. Now, I'm going out on a limb here,

so give me some grace. I just have a feeling that every once in a while, those of you who are

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