from the firing line…

That is a common year-end saying and a suitable sentiment for forward thinking and forward looking people. I would surmise that most of us have some memory from the last twelve months that we are ready to toss out with the close of 2009. And it is good to move on from bad events, sad experiences, and negative thinking – unless there was a lesson to be learned in them.

Life is not always easy, the roads we travel not always smooth, but for the child of God – even the toughest of times have purpose and reason behind them. There is nothing that can come into my life or yours without the “permitting” hand of God. So when I sigh and mutter, “I am sure glad that’s over.” Maybe I would do well to reflect on the lessons God had for me in those times of trial, testing, or unpleasantness. Did the trials serve as God’s chastening? Was I brought into a closer relationship with the Lord? did my faith fail or grow stronger? Did the Lord desert me? God never left my side and here I am – a survivor of 2009. As someone once said many years ago, “The trials of life are meant to make us better, not bitter.”

So as we close out another year, we may be ready to let it all go… and that is okay. God’s mercies are new every morning, and we then, can look forward with fresh anticipation to the new year with all it holds in store for us. It is a fine balance we should embrace – learning from the tough times, but also not allowing them to rob us of a fresh future in 2010.

Philippians 3:13-14
¹³ Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, ¹⁴ I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

This was sent to me and I thought I would share it with you. Enjoy!

by Pastor Al Hughes

Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones

and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems

logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second.

This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has

1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney,

fill the stocking, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever

snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move

on to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the

earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations

we will accept), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household, a total

trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us do at least

once every 31 hours, plus feeding, etc.

That means that Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3000 times

the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on

earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second – a

conventional reindeer can run, at tops 25-30 miles per hour.

The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming each child

gets nothing more than a medium sized LEGO set (2 Ibs), the sleigh is carrying

321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight.

On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting

the “flying reindeer” can pull TEN TIMES that normal amount, we cannot do the job

with eight, or even nine-we need 214,200 reindeer. This increased the payload, not

even counting the weight of the sleigh, to 353,430 tons. Again for comparison, this

is four times the weight of the HMS Queen Elizabeth.

353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance.

This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecrafts re-entering the

earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy

per second, each. In short, they will burst into flames almost instantaneously,

exposing the reindeer behind them, and creating a deafening sonic boom in their

wake.

The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second.

Santa meanwhile, will be subject to centrifugal forces of 17,500.06 times greater

than gravity. A 250 Ib. Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to

the back of the sleigh by a 4,315,015 pound force.

In conclusion, if Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he is now dead.