Welcome to 10 minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Keith Simon.

When my kids were young, there was this expectation that families would put up Christmas lights. But there was one big problem with that expectation.

I didn't want to put up Christmas lights and I was way

too cheap to pay someone else to do it. There were several reasons I didn't want to put up

the lights. First it was always cold when people put lights on their house

and I don't like cold. Second you have to be

kind of handy and have the right tools to do that job and I am definitely not handy which is

why I don't have any tools at all. Finally, spending a weekend in the winter putting up

lights instead of watching football? Well that didn't seem like a good trade to me.

But the problem was that my kids friends dads weren't as pathetic as me, so when we'd visit people's

houses we'd find them all decked out in lights.

And I had to explain to my kids why we didn't have lights on our house. You mean you can hear their questions now can't you?

Dad why can't we have lights like Johnny's house does?

Are you ready for the answer I gave them?

I told my kids that Christmas lights could cause fires,

which of course made them scared to go into the house,

which I should have anticipated, but hadn't.

So then I made up another story to fix my first story.

I told them that if they held my hand as we walked through the bushes with Christmas lights all over them and in through the front door that they'd be safe because they would be with me.

They either believed me or pretended to believe me because we finally made it inside.

When you're a kid, you often feel safe because of who you're with.

...