Is this Christmas morning?

Blood Bank (Spotify)"Blood Bank" by Third Eye Blind.  The ep it comes from is so-so.  That closing track just about exceeds the jaw dropping power of songs like "The Background" and "God Of Wine" (tracks 12 & 14 from their debut).

Explicit lyrics, fyi :-

Hope y'all had a gr8 Christmas.  My heart goes out to those that didn't and rarely do.

As for me, my Christmas was a fit.  I spent most days alone, trying to muster gratitude for God and all that He's done and all that He is and promises to do and be in years to come --- and not really succeeding, probably 95% of the time.

I try to be social and it mostly backfires.  Snippets of conversation that never are followed up with.  I get bored and rush off, not sure if there's more I could or should do to extend myself.

I was going to visit my Grandmother & co. in Missouri.  I stayed behind to simplify and economize the already expensive trip.  My sister was already prepared to pay a decent chunk of money for 3 days of dog sitting understanding that her husband would be unable to get enough time off work to leave the same time she and my mother were planning on leaving.  That pretense was misguided and he ended up leaving very shortly after they did.  So price of dog sitting suddenly went up.  My sister's husband didn't seem to understand the severity of having his parents dog sit my mom's dogs and nobody was in any frame of mind to try and explain it to him.

I wasn't giddy with excitement about going on a 8+ hour drive in the 1st place.

So,

it was a fitting Christmas.

The Great Commission

"Idle hands are the devil's playground"  The truth of that expression does exist, if my experience of having way too much time at hand is any indication, even if The Bible itself doesn't put those words in that particular order to the forefront of one's mind.  Much like "The Lord moves in mysterious ways" is not a Bible verse or a piece of one, but nonetheless is demonstrated to be true, both in a variety of passages within The Bible and the pages of individual people's lives.
The Great Commission is not presented to us because God is incapable of doing it Himself.  It is not because he refuses to do it Himself.  It is presented to us because, with the help of The Holy Spirit, and the knowledge of God's will and the availability of His Word, we have the means to express our Love FOR GOD by participating in the Purpose for which Jesus came to Earth.  The Holy Spirit can and will help us accomplish this and it will help prod the listener in moments galore to follow, regardless of how dismissive or uncaring they may come across at the immediate receipt of Your Testimony.  That doesn't mean everyone will heed those proddings.  There are many people who will perish, either because of Our lack of Good Conduct or because of arrogance or a combination of the two.  I think in many cases, Christians beat themselves up a bit much over not "doing enough", when the fact is, being a "hypocrite", while certainly not an OK way to live, does not excuse another's overall dismissal of The Truth.  It should go without saying that hypocrisy does make your Testimony rather flimsy, since The Holy Spirit was sent to transform us into A NEW SPECIES OF LIFE.  People who are visiting a church at your request and find among you a bunch of people slandering and judging others, backstabbing and engaging in gluttony, are more likely to tune into Atheism Today than The Holy Bible.
The more one is humbled and thus realizes a need to alter their behavior(s), the more they will WANT to serve Jesus.  The Great Commission is a gift to those who want it.  To those that don't want assignment to expand God's kingdom, I would recommend to keep asking God to deliver.  The alternative is to either A) live life believing that death is literally THE END of your cognition (which is technically a possible reality, but I don't see how one benefits in that assumption, especially given the evidence of the contrary)  or B) live life knowing The Truth but not walking in it, and risk losing out on something that you may eternally regret.  I believe we have lots to lose out on.  Most of us, that is.  There are a select few Christians who will receive The Choicest Meat from God's table.  The VIP Rooms of Heaven will be a relativity puny number and The rest of us may someday enter those rooms, much like the luxury cars that come loaded with the newest and greatest features; those features eventually are found in basic entry level vehicles.  While the Common Man is driving what once was a luxury car, the new luxury cars are now loaded with features that didn't exist when the Common Cars' features were only available on luxury cars.  That's not to imply God is going to make up cool stuff to show us when we get to Heaven just to make sure we don't get bored.  All of Heaven exists.  But if we take it all in -- how could we? -- then it'll look rather blurry and fuzzy and nothing will distinctly stand out.
The story of Adam & Eve and the lack of personality demonstrated is intentional, I do believe.  As is the lack of personality demonstrated of God.  We without Jesus and The Holy Spirit are so In The Wrong, and many of us either fail to recognize it or we try downplaying it with extremely weak justifications like "I'm not as bad as That guy......."
We as Christians do not automatically become The New Creation that is mentioned in The New Testament.  We are A New Creation, but it is not a Finished specimen for many of us.
When we among us have become ambassador's of God's desire for justice, we may find ourselves learning more about the ins and outs of God's personalty.  We may find ourselves able to listen to Him speak His mind and provide a window into His sense of humor and His fashion sense and taste in music etc. etc (I don't think He wears clothes, but who can say?)
But we, even those of us in The Christian Life, are not fully in line with God's pursuit of justice.  Many/most of us struggle with greed and bitterness.  I myself confess I do suspect I would be a lot less bitter feeling from time to time if I was more diligent in my Walk with Jesus.  I truly do not deserve Salvation.
  I thank you Lord Jesus, Father God and Holy Spirit for your undeserved kindness and generosity toward me.

Love Is The Law

I may be taking this to levels that even I am not certain of, but this is the impression I get
You see nothing of God's personality in The Bible. 
What you see in The Bible is a burning desire for God to not be so far away from His creations.
What you see in The Bible are the consequences for not allowing God to have the throne of our hearts.
Adam & Eve's personalities are also not in The Bible.  Adam & Eve are not depicted as newborn babies at any point in scripture, but I get the impression from the small segment that illustrates the downfall of mankind that Adam & Eve were unwise.  They were innocent and naive.  They obtained knowledge of Good and Evil by following Satan's advise but they did not obtain the wisdom they'd hoped for.  If they'd obtained wisdom along with said knowledge they would have a much easier time choosing Good over Evil and instructing their offspring in doing the same.  Instead, they gave birth to the first murderer in human history.
God doesn't expect us to be unselfish.  If he expected us to not be selfish, he wouldn't bait us into obeying Him with promises of prosperity and good health.  He would maybe use that tactic to begin with, but he doesn't.  The tactic of GETTING SOMETHING IN RETURN is used all throughout The New Testament as well as The Old Testament.  What God hopes for and seldom receives is a lack of greed.  Greed is when someone has less than you and you do nothing to help despite your abilities.
Enjoying life is not the same thing as Greed.  "Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep".  Obviously, being not in the presence of weepers is not a sin otherwise we'd be weeping all of the time.  On the other hand, if God's people ever had succeeded in fully embracing The Great Commission, we wouldn't have an Earth to harbor weeping.  People would have their tears wiped away and any sadness left in them would be replaced by a warm fuzzy feeling that comes from knowing You care, but instead we go about our day trying to have a little bit of personal space.  Think about it --- why is this Earth still standing?  God doesn't expect it to just go on spinning for no reason.  It's The People on it that He's concerned about.
"The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance."  (NIV; 2nd Peter Ch 3 Vs 9)
  THANK YOU GOD FOR YOUR PATIENCE!!!!!!  When people say "We don't deserve Jesus", I usually intercept that as "We are not designed for demanding anything from God", because we as humans never DESERVED anything from God.  Adam and Eve never DESERVED breath in their lunges.  The angels never DESERVED their Heavenly duties.  We as humans are subject to God's will, even if we rebel against it.  He loves us, and always has. but now that I write this down in that way, it really does resonate in the belittling way that it comes across, and I can't help but tear up in sorrow and regret.  We not only DO NOT DESERVE salvation, but we HAVE EARNED fates far worse than the Promise of Jesus and the fulfillment of it.
I do still contend that God does not expect us to be unselfish.  However, our selfishness will be lavishly indulged when time comes to embrace our inclination to be selfish -- that time, of course, being The End Of Time as we, most societies on Earth, understand the definition of Time to be.

GB3 or whatever it's gonna be called

I guess Ivan Reitman's quoted ETA of summer 2019 was a bit overly optimistic.  Dan Aykroyd said last month it was being written.  Even if it's finished now, it's still gotta get filmed and edited and touched up etc.

Someone asked me if I watched those "ghost hunter" shows, and I said that's no and elaborated by saying that element of the movie (the 1984 original) was not what I watched it for.  I cited the friendly and upbeat atmosphere of the film as reasons for watching it, even though that probably isn't the top reason I have enjoyed the movie all these years.  What I like about the film is the crackling of "barbequed dog hair" toward the end, the rustling of the paper in the opening scenes, the high pitched cello-ish sounding instrument heard throughout much of the movie, the rumbling of foodsteps before Gozer chooses its form for The Traveller, and the concise and expressive way Gozer says "THE TRAVALLER! HAS COME", there's so much to relish in that film after all these things were experienced by me as a 2 year old who had never seen or heard such things before.

The 2016 remake had the comradery, it had the nice interlude shots of NYC (the character, not the prop used for it, which would be Boston -- no need to be an idiot, please), it had the crescendo ending, but the comradery was written into the script, not an authentic byproduct of the cast's chemistry.  Yes, the cast got along.  So what?  It's not unheard of for 4 people to get along with one another.  The shots of NYC and the crescendo ending were mixed in with long drawn out scenes that gave the impression that the story being told was worth a 2 hour running time.  It wasn't.  It isn't.  Ghostbusters lasted 1 hr 45 minutes because they had that much to offer.  Neither film had a great story.  Both films made little to no sense if you consider them for their stories.  However, the ebb and flow of GB'84, the visuals and the sounds, the humor and the enthusiasm that the cast exuded from the screen, made the story somewhat easy to fall into, and be spellbound for that length of time.  I was bored by GB:ATC within 30 minutes.  The only time in GB'84 do I ever get a little impatient (not exactly bored) is when Bill Murray's character is beating around the bush in Sigourney Weaver's abode and doing not much of anything except pointing this gadget around.  That's only because I've seen the movie like 800,000 times and I know darn well there's a much more exciting scene following it up.  It's the same kind of antsyness that causes me to turn off most movies by the 20 minute mark even if I am enjoying it/them.  But I shut GB:ATC off within 30 minutes and never wanted to go back.  I had seen it in theaters and I knew there was nothing of substance beyond where I turned it off (and by substance I don't mean "slime", I mean worthy of attention.......ugh).

What confuses me is Dan Aykroyd says he liked the film.  I can see someone not posting 8 different blog posts that regurgitate the same sentiments in different ways, but, I Mean, is this the film Dan Aykroyd was really hoping for after champinoning a sequel/reboot all these years?  They wanted to make a GB3 in 1994 or somewhere aound there.  They were going to do it back in 1999/2000, and almost 1.5 decades later, 25+ years in total, plus the 3/4 of a year they spent filming it and that same time length being shelved with a summer release come hell or high water, they finally have it accomplished.  I can't believe Dan Aykroyd is fully satisfied with the film.  I can see being happy it got made, but being happy with the finished product seems like a bit of an overstatement.  Maybe it's just too much buildup of testosterone, idk.  I did get the sense that the film was geared more toward a female audience.  I don't know how many females were ever really all that gung ho about GHOSTBUSTERS, in concept or in practice, or what about the original film women liked.  All the things I cited above are the very things that movies on The Hallmark Channel and the Lifetime Movie Network are lacking.  And who is the primary demographic for that programming?  Men?  I'm pretty sure not...maybe I'm mistaken.......Rgh.