The Phil Files

I love the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth (Luke 1), who are enabled to have a baby in their old age. The baby’s name is John — whom we often call John the Baptist. God uses the pregnancy of Elizabeth in her old age to be an encouragement of Mary, the mother of Jesus. The whole season of joy that goes with Jesus’ birth begins with Zechariah, Elizabeth, and the birth of their son, John.

Their story echoes with the laughter of Abraham and Sarah’s gift of a child in their old age. This child’s name was Isaac, which literally means “laughter.” Both of these stories remind us of both God’s intention to use everyday folks to do great things and also His sense of humor.

I write about all of this in my Heartlight.org post today, Season of Joy. But there are some questions that I’d love your input on related to this story and implications for us! (Just comment on this blog post!)

We find ourselves in two situations that challenge our openness to joy: the current difficult economic conditions and also the “busy-ness” of the season. How do we reconnect to the joy of God during these times?

The story of Zechariah and Elizabeth, as well as the story of Abraham and Sarah that it reflects (Genesis 18), both are told with irony and a touch of humor. Yet frequently we do not notice humor in the great stories of God. Why do think that is so?

Why are awe at the work of God and also the ability to laugh with God both important in our lives and our worship?

Zechariah’s song sounds very much like a quotation of Scripture or an ancient song, why do you think these were the first words out of his mouth?

What is the greatest disappointment you face in your life right now?

What does this story say to you about the work of God in your life?

“Are you guys OK?”

“Where did you go?”

“I didn’t get my daily email devotionals?”

“Our links to you didn’t work. What’s going on?”

To answer your questions with one answer, I will simply say, “Things are crazy here!” I’m in Austin and we moved our servers — 11 of them and several other key parts of our Internet services — from one side of Austin to the other. Things went very well for the early part of the move, although some of you noticed we weren’t available.

After about six hours working on things, we left our set up running just fine. Then, in the middle of the night when our email devotionals were going out, our servers overloaded the circuit they were on and all of Heartlight’s servers went down along with several church web sites, several sites we support in other countries, and all of our email services.

When we awoke this morning, it was like juggling jello — the faster and harder we worked, the messier it got. We believe everything is up and going fine, now, but not without the incredible work of John Kirkland, our chief technical guy. (John’s in the top picture looking calm, cool, and collected as he does his stuff. I’m in the bottom picture looking like a crazed unkempt maniac turned loose in the server farm.)

Anyway, we apologize for the inconvenience and the craziness and we are working to prevent this from happening again. We hope to get all the email for today out, although it will be many hours late.

Please keep us in your prayers. We have a few steps more to complete this move, including moving heartlight.org to a new, faster server. In the interim, things are crazy here … but that is kinda normal!

By His grace,

Phil