12/25/24 - 2074: Cocoa, Candlelight, & Christ's Love

Jim: You've tuned into iWork4Him, the Voice of collaboration for the Faith and Work Movement.

Martha: Merry Christmas everybody. We are your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg, and our mission is to transform the workplace of every Christian into a mission field. What can that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.

Jim: All right. Christmas. It happens every year, but for the most of us, it catches us off guard. I'm not sure why. We know it's coming, but are we really prepared? We've spent weeks shopping for the right gifts and days preparing our favorite dishes. Having lived in the frozen tundra of Minnesota and the sunny paradise of Florida, I've seen Christmas to the extreme. Cold and hot, snowy and wet. Lit up palm trees to lit up Christmas trees, but inside each of our families, we celebrate Christmas differently.

Traditions reign on this day, but does our faith impact our Christmas or does Jesus remain in the manger for the day? All I know is that celebrating the birthday of our savior and Lord who gave up everything so that we can have access to our [00:01:00] heavenly father - that's something I want to be memorable. We invited some dear friends from Atlanta to join us on this Christmas day to share their Christmas cheer. Lou and Sabrina Reynolds, welcome to iWork4Him a special Christmas Day edition.

Lou Reynolds: Thank you. Thank you so much for having us here.

Sabrina Reynolds: Yeah, we're excited.

Jim: All right, so we're doing this together and we're asking joint questions. So how many Christmases have the two of you celebrated together?

Sabrina Reynolds: Actually we've celebrated 30 Christmases together, two of which before we were married and 28 married.

Martha: That would make 40 for us, Jim, because we just celebrated at Thanksgiving 40 years since our first kiss.

Jim: Oh, that's right. All right. So 40 Christmases, we can't possibly be that old. That's the thing that I don't get is you can have all these celebrations, but you can't possibly feel that old.

All right. So I want to, I want us to go around the room and [00:02:00] share your favorite Christmas memory because, you know, Sabrina, where'd you grow up? Like when you were a kid, where were you, in what state?

Sabrina Reynolds: I was in new york.

Jim: Yes, new york city or new york?

Sabrina Reynolds: Long Island, New York. So cold winters, wet snow some Christmases. Yeah, my favorite Christmas memory was literally tearing through the gifts with my brothers. I have two brothers, an older and a younger, and we knew whose gifts were whose, so we didn't have fights over that. But we did play with each other's toys. And one Christmas, I played with my brother's - okay I'm gonna date myself - Stretch Armstrong.

Martha: Oh yeah!

Jim: Stretch Armstrong was awesome!

Sabrina Reynolds: Yes, and I broke his Spiderman doll on Christmas Day. But my brother was so... he was just such a good big brother. And he was upset but he didn't show that he was mad at me for it.

Jim: So you're a middle child? That explains a lot. (laughter) Okay, but just [00:03:00] for those of you listening, if you ever wondered what was the stretch limit for Stretch Armstrong, if you know what we're talking about, you can look it up on YouTube. I believe that the stretch limit was somewhere between six and seven feet because as teenagers we ran across a stretch Armstrong and we tried to see how far could stretch Armstrong stretch and somewhere between six and seven feet stretch stopped stretching and just...

Martha: We're going to, we're going to digress here for a second, but realize they probably designed it so like as far as you could stretch. It would have been safe, but it's when more than one kid got involved....

Jim: I think there was four boys, four boys pulling on stretch.

All right. So Lou, where did you grow up? What part of the country did you grow up in?

Lou Reynolds: So I grew up in the great state of New Hampshire. So I know what it is to have cold and snowy winters. Very familiar with that. White Christmases were the norm. And so now i'm grateful to not see those anymore, but when I was younger, it was nice to have.

Jim: So in New Hampshire, do you have lobster for Christmas dinner?[00:04:00]

Lou Reynolds: Some maybe that really wasn't our family tradition, but I can see how there may be some.

Jim: Which part of New Hampshire were you in?

Lou Reynolds: Nashua, New Hampshire. So it's the Southern part, close to the Massachusetts border. Not far from Boston.

Martha: So Jim and I lived in New Hampshire for just one year of our marriage. Not even quite a year. I don't think we had any lobster around Christmas time.

So Lou, what is one of your favorite Christmas memories?

Lou Reynolds: Mine, I think it probably goes back really super spiritual, when I got my first bike. How amazing, right? It was like, I couldn't even ride it. I was just excited to get one. Didn't know what I was going to do with it. It was already snowing outside, so I couldn't even go outside and ride it. So I was in the house wheeling around on it trying to figure out how to balance myself. But that's probably one of my most fun memories. Just because, getting a bike was a really big deal.

Jim: Lou is in the house. (laughing) So I was eight and I remember that was the year that I was going to highlight it [00:05:00] for my favorite Christmas. It was the Christmas before we moved to the frozen tundra, Minnesota, we're still in Maryland at the time. And I got a bike. My parents - I was eight. They bought me a 26 inch bike.

Martha: Oh, wow. A little big?

Jim: It was a Sears Hawthorne bike. I think the reason they got it is because it came with a free baseball bat, which I still have to this day.

Martha: So you got both of them?

Jim: I got both of them, but I couldn't ride that bike for three years. It was huge on me. I'm like, what' s the deal with this bike.

Martha: I think they probably knew how much you were gonna grow.

Jim: No, my dad loved baseball. I'm pretty sure he did it for the bat. But that was the year I got, that was the year I got a Redskins football helmet, football outfit, and I got a big wheel that year.

Martha: Okay. So I'm gonna tell you my christmas memory is really more - not a memory of a gift, but more of a... so I grew up in Illinois, and we had snow most of the time for Christmas. I can't even remember not having snow. But for me, it was more the memory of being in [00:06:00] the kitchen.

Christmas was all about baking cookies and having people over and hospitality. And it would start, really the kickoff for my family was December 13th, which was my dad's birthday day. And my mom is Swedish, and that's a Swedish holiday called Santa Lucia. And so we would serve dad breakfast in bed, give him a piece of our nativity set that we were collecting that every year we would get a new piece for.

And that really launched the Christmas season for our family. So it was really special. And it was like, we made sure the house was decorated by then, all the things, and from there on out, I think it was free reign, cookies, and the rest of the season. To me, that's really what I think of, is that family time and working together and making all the treats to love on other people. So those are good memories for me. And I think that falls in with the kind of traditions that my family had as well.

Jim: All right, Lou, so if you didn't eat lobster for Christmas, what was your family's Christmas [00:07:00] tradition?

Lou Reynolds: We had a pretty wide variety of things that we would do, but I come from a Jamaican family. Many times what would be on our dinner table was the natural cultural cuisines of Jamaica that so many people have become fans of over the years, just because there's a Jamaican restaurant just about every state that you go to. Things like stew chicken or curry chicken were normal things for us to have at Christmastime and then on occasions, we'd have jerky just to mix it up and do something different.

Jim: Is it jerk turkey or is it just regular turkey? Jerk chicken is - jamaican jerk chicken, that's my thing. Florida, first time I ever experienced that. Alright, what about you, Sabrina? Traditions? Whatever your favorite Christmas tradition is. Food is good, we can always talk about food here, of course.

When I was growing up, we didn't really have many traditions. We put up the Christmas tree together with those big, gigantic, colorful lights, again, dating myself, [00:08:00] but as far as traditions, we didn't really, it was like this year, let's try something different. We had a Christmas tree, we had the tinsel, we had the lights. But there was nothing, you know that stands out which is why our traditions now stand out to me so much more.

We're going to talk about that after a break, but you know, I just got to thinking about, so It was that same year I think I got the big wheel that our tree caught on fire, and we had a cat at that time and it also I'm thinking "Christmas vacation." Did the cat bite the wire? Is that what caused the fire? I'm not quite sure but the cat lived so probably not, but we had a Christmas tree fire one time.

Jim: And I don't know. We never really had, my family wasn't much for traditions. My mom, she didn't really like cooking. She didn't like decorating. It was more for us kids, but it was good.

All right before we go to the break though and hear from one of our sponsors, let's talk about faith and work and Christmas. How do you guys see fitting Christmas into your work at this time of year?[00:09:00]

Lou Reynolds: Yeah, you know for us it's really important that not just our staff, but also who we find ourselves working with on a day to day basis know the and understand the why behind what we do. There are things like rest that we want to incorporate into that. It's not just all about the work itself, but understanding that we're going to take the time to celebrate Jesus during this season.

And if that means, we have to put a pause on some of the things that we were doing and maybe not set the same deadlines that we normally would, that's okay. And we're not afraid to tell people that and be comfortable with that, but also in how we serve those that we work with, specifically with our staff, we want them to know that it's a time to rest, it's a time to celebrate. The celebration is all about who Jesus is and what he's done and that's okay to be comfortable in even if they don't believe the same things that we do, that's okay. But we want you to know why.

Jim: That's pretty powerful. I love Christmas time to really, if you [00:10:00] involve people that you work with, that you do business with, that you hang out with on a daily basis, whatever that may be, get them involved in your family. Involve them in some of your traditions. So many people that we work alongside, that we work with that are customers or vendors or whatever, that are alone at the holidays, and to invite them and to be a part of your day, to experience your family. Your dysfunctional family is no different than my dysfunctional family, but if you want to be a part of our day, that's fine. Please join us. That's exciting.

Martha: And I was thinking for us, Jim, all of the people that we work with are remote. So we don't have a Christmas dinner or anything like that.

Jim: Eat your own food. Join us at dinner on Zoom.

Martha: You take me to dinner and I'll take you to dinner. But I think of my dad who was a entrepreneur and business owner all of my childhood into my adult years. And mom and dad always had a Christmas party and they very intentionally, all of the employees and their spouses or significant other came. But it was [00:11:00] very important that it was about the birth of Christ, not a gift giving craziness thing. It was very intentional and I, that set such a good example for me to see that it can be a Christmas party for the true meaning of Christmas.

You can love on your employees, whoever it is that you invite to the table, but do it in such a way - with intentionality. Speaking of those traditions, most traditions are one that you want to repeat over and over, or maybe tweak it from year to year and make things keep getting better and better.

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Jim: All right, as Lou and Sabrina said, 30 years, 28 married, two years before that, they've celebrated their 30th Christmas together. Let's talk about married life, Christmas traditions, typical Christmas day for you guys. What's that like? And you guys live in Atlanta now, we're living in Southwest Missouri, but we lived all over the place, so have you guys. Talk about that typical day when you got kids at home and that kind of thing.

Sabrina Reynolds: I can't even say how grateful I am to not be in the cold. Yeah, we don't dream of white Christmases here. Maybe we might have to wear a light jacket.

Jim: Yeah, you talk about snow in Atlanta, that's hell on earth, people. Twenty lanes of traffic with snow, that is a recipe for a living nightmare.

Sabrina Reynolds: Yeah, we'll be shut down for a month. (laughter) No, but one of my favorite traditions [00:13:00] was actually Lou, he instituted this tradition on Christmas morning where first of all, I'll go back to Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve, we'll all watch Christmas movies together.

So everybody gets to pick their favorite Christmas movie. And it hasn't changed much over the years. But the three movies that we watch are the Polar Express, It's a Wonderful Life, and my favorite, A Christmas Story. So we'll watch those movies, and during Polar Express, I will make hot chocolate for my kids.

Our kids are 25 and 18, and they still look forward to hot chocolate during the Polar Express movie. And then Christmas morning we don't get up and start tearing open gifts. We have a big family breakfast together. So it is a giant family breakfast and we just, laugh and talk and enjoy, each other's [00:14:00]company.

And then sometime in the afternoon, we'll finally mosey over, to the living room and start distributing all the gifts and we'll just sit down together and we'll open gifts one by one and celebrate what each person has received, each and every gift. So yeah, it's a long process. It's almost like a full day extravaganza.

Jim: As long as there's eggnog involved, that's okay. Is there eggnog involved in your family traditions? I bet eggnog's a stretch for a jamaican guy. I bet that's really a stretch for a jamaican family. Eggnog, I don't know.

Martha: Jim just loves eggnog. I do. He wants any excuse.

Jim: We had to make a rule in our house. Martha's a Christmas Fanatic. Let's just say that she'd like to start decorating for Christmas on november the first. We had to institute a rule. No Christmas music playing in the house because she'd play it year round. I just - you can't get those songs out of your head. So no Christmas music plays in your house until the eggnog is on the shelves . [00:15:00]

Martha: But the beautiful thing is that pretty much all the time there's eggnog somewhere, that we can find. So we've, it makes it very wonderful that I can play my Christmas music.

Jim: So what did you love about how we raised up our kids and having Christmas? Because I'm not much of a traditions guy. Do we have any traditions?

Martha: Yeah, we had traditions. Simple things that the kids always could count on, whether it was the packages of Lifesavers in their stocking, the books of the Lifesaver candies that you get all the different flavors and all that. Simple little things like that, candlelight service on Christmas Eve has always been a big part of our tradition, making sure that we're putting the focus on the right thing going into Christmas. Even observing that it's Advent, it's the coming of Christ, during the month of December to prepare our hearts.

There's so many things that you probably don't even think of as traditions.

Jim: Christmas calendar thing that you did.

Martha: Yeah. So in fact I have the calendar my mom made out of felt when I was a kid and every day[00:16:00] you put an ornament on the tree and it counts down to Christmas. Just things like that, that are staples now in our life that we just may not even think about them as traditions, but I think the bottom line is just that in the midst of all the crazy and all of, the thoughts of gifts and things like that, and the busyness of parties and stuff, is remembering the real reason why we actually celebrate.

I remember when that theme came out where the reason for the season because a lot of people have gotten, had gotten sidetracked over the years, and I love now that people understand that it is Christ's birth, and that is what we truly need to be focusing on, and so that's just an ongoing tradition.

Jim: We're just a week away from the end of the year. But today we're still focused on giving and receiving gifts with our family and close friends here on Christmas Day. Let me just say to each one of you that gives a listen or subscribe, a comment, [00:17:00] and a donation is giving us so much.

Each one of you could contribute to iWork for him in a simple way. Like a listen, a subscribe, a comment, and a donation. We're grateful for each and every one of you, not for the numbers, but because it means that you see the importance of connecting the faith with every area of your life, especially your work.

Thank you for being a part of the team and if you want to know more of some of our goals for 2025 for iWork4Him, go to iWork4Him. com / 2025 to learn more and follow the links to get involved.

All right, Lou and Sabrina, I want to talk about today, Christmas day. Your kids haven't gotten there. I don't see kids in your background just yet. So they haven't gotten there yet, but today, Christmas day, what's it going to look like today for your family on Christmas?

Lou Reynolds: Yeah. Today is, it's really all about us connecting together, being able to spend this time together. And, all of the things that sometimes throughout the year you can dismiss or not really be intentional about, we want to make sure that we highlight those things and so we'll have an [00:18:00]opportunity to talk with our kids about things that are going on and, that are really important in their life right now.

And it's not that we don't talk about those things throughout the year, but this is just a great day to be really intentional about that. What is God doing in their life? What's the direction that they see him moving in? And those are exciting conversations to have. And we just, like Sabrina was saying earlier, the day is devoted to our family really connecting and talking about how great God is, what are the amazing things that are happening in our lives?

Martha: Which is easy to do when you have a full tummy with a wonderful breakfast that you're going to prepare.

Jim: So is there bacon involved when you're cooking breakfast today? Is there bacon involved in breakfast? Okay. Is it breakfast if it's not?

Martha: Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's the right question.

Jim: That's right. Bacon and eggnog. What a phenomenal breakfast.

But I wanted to ask though, the 18 and 25 year old, do they have significant others that are going to join you later on today for the celebration?

Sabrina Reynolds: Yes, our oldest does. [00:19:00] Our youngest is trying, but he has his family that, he connects with, but definitely our oldest, he has a wonderful girlfriend. We love her so dearly, and we're excited to connect with her.

Martha: Oh, that's so good. I just was going to say, we find ourselves in a very different stage, a different chapter of life right now. And so we can't always do the traditions that we've wanted to, but one of the things we've learned is being flexible and taking what God has given us and making the best of that. And, I was even thinking back to Thanksgiving this year. We actually had a change of plans and spent time with friends and family together.

And it's not about what can or cannot happen, it's what you do with what God has given you. And I think that's really important, because I know that we have friends who, maybe somebody in their family is incarcerated right now, or maybe somebody is sick and in the hospital, or whatever it might be. And it can be very disappointing [00:20:00] to not have it be the way you have this picture in your head that it's supposed to be.

But I just want to challenge everybody, when we're in those situations, to embrace them and to say, Thank you, Lord, for where I am right now and that I can see something in this that is your purpose. And so I just, it's fun to have traditions. But if we tie ourselves too much and don't allow God to show us what that might look like for a season, we can miss what he really has given us.

Jim: But you didn't really talk about our day that we're gonna have today. So we'll be spending it with my 90 and 91 year old parents, our kids that live here in Missouri, Sarah and her husband Caleb and our grand dog Huck, and likely Caleb's grandmother Janet, and we'll be having a meal together.

Yeah, I was going for spaghetti and meatballs. I don't know whether she's going to let me cook - that might be New Year's Eve. Oh, that's New Year's Eve? Yeah. Okay. All right. So what are you going to cook then today?

Martha: I'm still going to go with a traditional meal. So I love that.

Jim: We have traditions?

Martha: Yeah. For the last five years, I've made prime rib. [00:21:00]

Jim: Oh. Oh yeah. I'm all about that tradition.

Martha: And so this is a new tradition and it's you know what? This is secret right here. It's really not that hard to make so ... don't tell anybody. 

Jim: I'm excited. I love prime rib.

Martha: There you go. You know and I know you guys love Christmas, which is why we decided that we wanted to do this show together with everybody. Who knows how busy people's day are and when they're going to get a chance to listen, but we hope that they've enjoyed just this - number one, a little bit of walk down some history, as we all established here, 30 and 40 years together of Christmases. But I just hope that each and every person that is a listener of iWork4Him knows how much we care about them. And we feel like the listeners are a part of our tradition, that we have had this journey, Jim, that's going on.

Jim: I think this is our 12th Christmas show. And we've had kids join us on our Christmas show.

Martha: We have.

Jim: We've done remote Christmas shows. I think we did one from Arizona. Didn't we do one from Arizona? Yeah, when everybody was there. [00:22:00] So I'd like to end the show with us speaking a blessing over our families. Why don't you guys start first?

Lou Reynolds: Excellent. Awesome. I'm just truly grateful and thankful for, all that God has done in our family. I'm thankful for my children and for all that God has done in directing and guiding their footsteps. And I'm looking forward with great expectations for the road that God has paved for them.

The journey that they're going to walk on and praying that God would continue to do the work in their hearts to guide them, lead them in how they serve and what he wants to do and using them to be a blessing for so many others.

Sabrina Reynolds: Yeah, my prayer is that in every season that they would see his hand at work.

We know that every season is not always blissful, so we pray that they would see his hand at work in every season, that no matter what - the ups, the downs, the good, the bad, the hard, the tough, [00:23:00]that they would just see him at work, that he's there, and he's never left.

Martha: Amen.

Jim: And we pray over our family that God will bring unity back into our family.

We've had a tough year in our family, the Brangenberg family here in Missouri and across the country. And we pray that we can be united in Christ's love and forgiveness and reconciliation, and that going forward our family will be known for the love that overcame. And that looking into 2025, not only will we celebrate more grandchildren, but that we could celebrate friendships that are deep between brothers and sisters in Christ who are not only family members but also walking together with the Lord and may 2025 be a year of healing.

Martha: I think of the blessing that our my pastor prayed over us every Sunday as a child and it says may the Lord Bless you and keep you may the Lord make his face to shine upon you and give you peace.

Jim: Lou and Sabrina Reynolds from atlanta, georgia. Thanks so much for joining us for this Christmas day podcast. We [00:24:00] appreciate it.

Lou Reynolds: Thank you so much.

Jim: You've been listening to iWork4Him with your host jim and martha brangenberg. Merry Christmas! We're Christ followers our workplace definitely our mission field, but ultimately iWork4Him.