Clark Griswold is an amateur!

Published by Roger Butner on

Griswold lights Griswold Christmas

I know.  For those of you who have been following me on Twitter and/or Facebook, you realize this statement comes near apostasy for me.  But what you may not realize is that I grew up in Little Rock, AR, home of Jennings Osborne and family.  Click here to get a visual tour of the world record home Christmas lights display (year after year after year) that truly makes Clark’s efforts look about as bright as a matchstick at dusk.

Osborne lights

Reading the account on the Osborne website paints the neighbors as Grinches and themselves as altruistic. I’ll take the middle ground.  It was truly something breathtaking to behold, but the traffic was an absolute nightmare, and I don’t even want to imagine being a next-door neighbor to the Osborne compound on Cantrell.

Between viewing Christmas Vacation last night, reflecting on the otherworldly light spectacle that grew exponentially for years on end at the Jennings Osborne compound, and reading Trey Morgan’s post this morning, I have been thinking about how over the top we can go about things that have such little eternal value.  Can you imagine a world in which followers of Christ were as passionate about living in the Way of the Kingdom of Heaven as we can be about decorating for Christmas, or cheering for our favorite athletics team, or watching entertaining movies, or posting stuff on Facebook that gets lots of comments, or generally eating, drinking, and being merry?  Sorry, John Lennon – that’s the world I want to imagine!

Here’s to the prophets of living on fire for Christ today – Shane Claiborne and Francis Chan and John Eldredge and Dallas Willard and Richard Foster and Eugene Peterson and…  Who else would you put on this list?

Categories: inspiration

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