Welcome to Truth Talk Live. All right, let's talk. A daily program powered by the Truth Network. This is kind of a great thing, and I'll tell you why. Where pop culture, current events, and theology all come together. Speak your mind. And now, here's today's Truth Talk Live host. Welcome to Truth Talk Live.
This is Peter Rosenberger. Merry Christmas to you. How are you doing?
I hope you're doing well, and I hope you've got all your Christmas shopping done. Are you excited to be in the season? It's a great time of year. It's the most wonderful time of the year, if you'll believe Perry Como. It's the most. But it is a good time. For some folks, it's a bit of a stressor, and I hope it's not for you that way. Last year, I can't help but think about where I was last year because I was in the hospital with my wife for two months.
Right after Thanksgiving, all the way through, really, Valentine's Day. And it was quite an ordeal, but Christmas was kind of different. You know, in the hospitals that we were in Denver, we didn't, not even an estate we live in, and it was a bit weird, you know. In fact, I was doing some of my Christmas shopping around that neighborhood where you have all these Venezuelan gangs that are going on. And after I got back from that, and I looked back and I saw the news reports, and I said, hey, that Target over there, I was there. And it was kind of weird because I had to go in there and buy some things. My son was going to come out with this for Christmas, and I was going to go buy some things there. You know, just little stocking stuffers you get, socks and toothpaste and things like that you do for your stockings. And it was all locked up.
You had to go get the manager to be able to get that kind of stuff. And I thought, what the heck is this? But it was what it was, and now I know why, because there were Venezuelan gangs, and I look back and I'm glad I didn't get assaulted. I saw a lot of sketchy things, but it's going to be a different Christmas this year, and I hope it will be a very good one for you as well. I've got a couple of things I wanted to run by you.
See what you thought. Here's our number if you want to call in. 866-34-TRUTH. 866-34-TRUTH. And that's 348-7884.
866-348-7884. I'd like to know a couple of things. One of them is, this has been a debate going on, where do you get your news? I mean, when you watch the news, or read the news, or whatever, tune in, however you do that, where do you get it? I've been having this conversation with more and more people, and I see the ratings plummet with the mainstream media. Now Fox News' ratings are doing exceptionally well, but is that where everybody's going to get their news, or do people still read stuff?
Where do you get yours? And I'd be kind of curious to see what you think. And then, I've also been watching this thing with the new spending package that they dumped on Congress, and we've got to hurry up and do this. Did you see the size of this thing? I mean, it's massive.
You could jack up your car on it and change your tires. That's how big, how tall this continuing resolution is that they want Congress to pass quickly, or have to shut the government down. And I'm thinking, we go through this all the time, and I thought, why can't these people be more fiscally responsible? Why do they demand that we meet their timetables? I mean, are any of you all comfortable sending in stuff to the IRS late? Are any of you all comfortable getting things wrong with the IRS, or that kind of stuff? And that's another thing I want to ask you. Why do the IRS agents have guns?
Aren't you kind of curious about that? Why do the IRS agents have guns? They should have pocket protectors and calculators, and that's pretty much about it.
But they have guns. They've given the IRS agents guns, which is, I think, a bit unsettling. So there are a lot of things going on, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, at 866-348-7884. I do have a new article out on my Substack page, and you can go out and take a look at that. There are a lot of things I put out there every week, some of it behind a paywall, some of it not.
Every Monday I do one for caregivers called A Minute for Caregivers When Every Day Feels Like Monday, which is my new book. But this one I put out about this healthcare CEO that was murdered, Brian Thompson, and I got tired of the excuses that so many were giving. Particularly, I was thinking about Senator Elizabeth Warren.
I'm sorry, I wanted to call her Liowatha. But she was talking about, you can only push people so far. And she said, there's no excuse for violence, but you can only push people. It gives this caveat, and it was very, very inflammatory to think, this man, his two children are going to wake up Christmas morning, their dad is not there. This woman, her husband is gone. This company's leader is gone. And we're over there debating healthcare. This guy came up and just shot him in the back.
And this guy wasn't even a client. It's a horrific thing. And I wrote about that, and you can go out and see that on my Substack page.
It's at PeterRosenberger.com, and there's the link to the Substack page there, or you can just go to caregiver.substack.com. And I've got a whole library of things there. I hope you'll take advantage of it and read it. But I wanted to at least push back on that. This was not a debate about the healthcare issue. This was murder. And I understand frustration with healthcare stuff.
I've been dealing with it for decades, and my wife is facing surgery number 87 and number 88 at the beginning of 2025. But that is a separate conversation than what happened to this man. This man was targeted and murdered.
And we as a nation should put our hands over our mouth in horror and do what we can to comfort this family and ensure that things like this don't happen again. This is no way to have this conversation, and yet I saw so many in the media that were using this as an opportunity to rail against CEOs and healthcare and all that kind of stuff. And they're equating health insurance with healthcare.
You ever notice the difference? Health insurance is different than healthcare. When I take my wife to the doctor, she's receiving healthcare. When I pay a bill to the insurance company, that is insurance. There is a difference.
Insurance is putting your seatbelt on before the wreck. I'm amazed that we're not clearly having this conversation in our society, but here we are. So these are things that I hope you'll take advantage of. Go out and take a look at it. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.
866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. We're going to take a quick break here in a minute. We'll come back and maybe do a couple of Christmas songs. I've got the caregiver keyboard fired up over here. I know there's some heavy things in the news, but we're going to try to also do some special things today.
I've got a special song from my wife at the end of the program. I'm looking forward to a lot of things here on Truth Talk Live. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Truth Talk Live. We'll be right back. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com Welcome back to Truth Talk Live. This is Peter Rosenberger and we are so glad that you are with us. Merry Christmas to you.
I hope you're doing well. By the way, do you read the Babylon Bee? Anybody read the Babylon Bee?
Sometimes I wonder are these people that write this? Truth is stranger than fiction, so I think they're struggling to keep up with it, but they've got one out there now that's pretty funny. Die Hard points us to Jesus, seven ways that the movie Die Hard points us to Jesus.
There's a big argument going on whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie. It's certainly not a Christian movie and the language is atrocious on it, but I don't know if you all thought that was funny or not. I have a pretty warped sense of humor, but I love reading through the Babylon Bee and seeing what they got over there. It's good to have satire. People wonder is sarcasm appropriate as Christians?
What do you think? I personally think it is and I think biblically it's in there. There are two things that come to mind. One of them is when Elijah was with the prophets of Baal and they were cutting themselves and dancing and doing all the things that they do.
By the way, if you want to be on the program, 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. Do you remember when he was taunting them? He said, where is he? They clean it up in Scripture, but in reality I think he's basically saying, was he in the bathroom? Where's Baal? He was taunting them.
I thought that was pretty funny. There was another one where you remember Gideon. This was during that time when the Philistines would constantly raid and they would have to go and fight. He was in the book of Judges and Gideon was in the threshing floor, which is kind of down below. He's kind of crouched down below doing his stuff, trying to work out of sight I guess. The angel shows up and says, Hail, man of valor. To me that always seems pretty funny because here he is crouched down below, Hail, man of valor. I just thought that was funny. I don't know if you would agree that sarcasm, it's certainly not one of the more well-known gifts of the Holy Spirit, but sometimes it can make a point. In the Babylon Bee they use that to satire and sarcasm to make a greater point and to sometimes hopefully be instructive.
So anyway, that's out there and I thought that was kind of funny. Do you like Christmas carols? Do you like Christmas carols? Do you like Christmas music? I do. I love playing the songs.
I love singing them. I tend to be more on the reflective part of it, so I thought I'll play one for you. Are you going to get a white Christmas this year where you live? We always have one out here in Montana.
We'll just be here for you. The new Christmas is meanwhile. I love the Christmas music. I love playing them. They're a lot of fun to play.
If you've got something you want me to play, I'll try to muddle through it and do the best I can, but I love doing it. We get to do some things for Christmas here in Montana that I didn't get to do growing up. You see, my wife grew up in the panhandle of Florida and it just troubled her to no end that Christmas was warm and hot.
People wear shorts on Christmas day and she said that was just a crime against nature. She said, I want to make sure one day I'm going to live in a place where we had Christmas. We lived in Nashville for 35 years and we would have snow there, but not the big snow. She likes big snow. We've been coming for Christmas in Montana since the 90s and then we moved out here permanently. It's just so much different to have that much snow and all the things that are involved with that. We get to go out on snowmobiles and cut our tree and all the things that are involved. It's just a different kind of Christmas and we're looking forward to it, particularly after last year being in the hospital.
I do love the snow. She's got an article out on my webpage. She's been doing a blog on chronic pain.
She's lived with pain since 1983 and one of the reasons we moved out here is because the low humidity and the cool air is easier on her joints that got so hurt in her wreck. She has a lot of arthritis and so she's been writing on living with chronic pain. She talks about snow, why it means so much to her. If you'd like to see that, it's out at PeterRosenberger.com and she's going to be doing this once a month, just writing on chronic pain.
Maybe some of you are dealing with this. There's a woman who's dealt with severe pain since she was 17 and she talks about why snow is so important to her and one of the things she says is that it reminds her of God's grace. It covers everything in pristine beauty and covers up all the flaws, all the scars, all the marred surfaces. She loves just to look at it and just to see the beauty of it, the cleanness of it.
She thinks this is what Christ has done for us. One time we were out on snowmobiles way up in the forest behind us. We lived back up to the forest and I took her way up top and we're in this thick area of trees and the drifts are really high, deep, deep snow but it was an incredibly still day. It was in the late afternoon, it was snowing and we turned off the sleds and we sat there and we just listened to the snow falling. It was so quiet you could hear the snow falling. You ever heard that?
You ever been in that? It was that quiet and you had that level of stillness and that's one of the things that she loved so much and I understand that. I get that. I'm the same way and I think that when we reflect on the stillness of what God has done for us, just to be still and just listen. How many times in scripture do we hear be still? In fact I don't see anywhere in scripture where it says get out there and be busy and look like you're doing something.
Be still, stand still, stand still, be still. It's hard for us to do that but when we are that's when we experience the calmness and the peace of Christ in ways that we can't do it any other way and that's what snow represents. I hope you'll check it out and read it.
It's out at PeterRosenberger.com and I hope you'll take a look at that. She gets really upset if I plow the snow. She doesn't like for me to shovel or anything. She says leave it just pristine. I say well baby we got to get out of it. So anyway we'll talk some more about this. Merry Christmas, this special Christmas time here on Truth Talk Live.
I'd like to hear your stories with it. 866-34-TRUTH. 866-348-7884. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Truth Talk Live.
We'll be right back. You're listening to the Truth Network and TruthNetwork.com. Welcome to Truth Talk Live. This is Peter Rosenberger. Glad to have you with us here on a Wednesday afternoon. 866-34-TRUTH.
866-348-7884 if you want to be a part of the program. Do you put yourself through unnecessary stress trying to create Christmas traditions? Many of us do. I know I have. We've got to do this. We've got to get this right. We've got to get this. The trees, the decorations, the meals, and the gifts all remain important.
They really are. That's important. But too many of us have allowed trappings to eclipse the seasons meaning. And sometimes the fear that this may be our loved ones last Christmas pushes us to ensure that everything is perfect.
Do you get it wrong? Perfect? Do you make it perfect?
I don't know that I've ever had a perfect Christmas. I go back to what I had last year in the hospital and it turned out to be a better Christmas than I realized because it helped me focus on what was real. When you're buying a tiny tree from Walgreens, a little plastic tree from Walgreens, and that's all you can do in a hospital room. And I put some little lights up there and I did bring in a keyboard and we had a nice decorated room but it was still a hospital room. And you realize this is just different. And Christmas dinner, you're not going to sit around the table.
Gracie's in a hospital bed. We sit around the hospital table and we did play some music, had some fun, watched TV together, and so forth. But how much can you do in a hospital room to make a Christmas memory? And yet I found that we made it more memorable because it anchored us on the heart level. If we have exhausted ourselves by December 26 or were resentful by December 26, what have we accomplished?
I mean, think about it. One of the great joys I've experienced living out here in Montana now is the opportunity to slow down. When I lived in Nashville, and I love Nashville. Nashville's a great town. The Nashville I knew was 25 years ago, but if Atlanta and Vegas had a love child, I think it'd be Nashville because it's out of control down there.
But when you live there, you're going around at breakneck speeds. I remember one time I was in Kroger at the grocery store near us. It was the middle of the Christmas season. We'd been dealing with hospitals and doctors and all that kind of stuff. And I literally said one time to myself, buy a humbug.
I'm embarrassed to say it, but I did it. And I couldn't get caught up in it. When you're a caregiver for a long time and you deal with all these things, it's hard sometimes to get caught up in the season because you're dealing with so many different things that are going on health-wise and it's all up to you. And now you've got the added stress of making Christmas exciting and fun. It got to be very challenging and we were moving around at lightning speed all the time to get everything accomplished. But where I live now, we live 10 miles from a paved road and we're way up in the Rockies.
And it's been very good for me to be able to disconnect from the freneticness of it. I don't know that everybody has to move out in the middle of a mountain somewhere to do that, but in my case, I think I did because of the pace that we kept. And where we live in our little county here, well, did I say little county?
It's a huge county. I move at the pace of the weather and the people and the deer or the elk or cow on the road. You've got to be careful with that. Like Andy Williams said, it's the most wonderful time of the year.
I think I quoted Perry Como for that, but I think it was Andy Williams earlier. Should we not savor Christmas rather than suffer through it? Do we savor it? And do we take time to just enjoy these moments more than just a Christmas Hallmark movie kind of moment, but to really be with our loved ones in such a way? The decorations don't have to look like last year's. I'm hoping my decorations this year will be a little better than last year's hospital room decorations.
The menu may change. The gifts may be more personal than opulent. The time we spend with one another and reflecting on the season's meaning bring more value than our labors or purchasing powers.
You know, you are worth more than what you purchase to your loved ones, and they are worth more to you than what they purchase. That's the whole point of this is to be on a heart level to accept that this is what God did for us and to recognize this and to celebrate this amazing event called the Incarnation. There's a great video circulating on social media about Sinclair Ferguson talking about the wonder and the awesomeness of the Incarnation of just how spectacular this event is that God would come to us. Emmanuel, God with us. Tabernacle with us. It's mind-boggling.
There's no way we could go to Him, so He came to us. Nostalgia is not everything it used to be. You can write that down. But nostalgia doesn't spread Christmas cheer. Hearts do.
That's how it's done. And think about the most meaningful Christmas moments in your life. Was it a gift? Was it a toy? Was it an outfit? Was it even jewelry?
Or was it something from a heart level? Being with someone. A special time and a meal. And it doesn't have to be a fancy meal.
Last year's Christmas dinner for us was certainly not very fancy, but it was special. And even from her hospital bed, Gracie was able to sing great songs of the goodness of God. That in itself is an extraordinary moment.
And it was a teachable moment for me. And I go back to what I experienced when I would leave the hospital and I'd go back to the hotel, which is right across the street. And Gracie used to fuss at me for walking over there. She said, this is not a safe neighborhood.
And it's not, but I didn't know how unsafe it was until I started seeing the news lately. But there's a big grand piano there in the atrium there in the hospital, and I would play for the security guards. It was kind of a lonely, sad time for so many, because hospitals are not necessarily joyful places on a good day.
But I would play. And some patients, I thought it was just playing for the security guards, but patients would come to the balcony up above and they'd have their IV poles and so forth in wheelchairs in their families. And you could see them mouthing the words along, singing, and some of them were crying.
And I thought, you know, they don't want to be here. And here I had the opportunity to play for them and just to spend some time doing some Christmas music. And you remember Reverend Peter Marshall? He used to be the chaplain of the Senate. He went to seminary down in Decatur, Georgia, Covenant Theological Seminary.
My dad went to that seminary. And Peter Marshall, just an amazing minister, and he had a great quote about Christmas. It says, may we not spend Christmas or observe Christmas, but rather keep it. May we not spend Christmas or observe Christmas, but keep it.
And I thought, that's a powerful quote, isn't it? To keep Christmas in our hearts. Jesus was not born on December 25th. We know this.
And that's okay. We have set aside this day to recognize this. We as Christians have co-opted a lot of things that the secular world has done. People say, well, it was a secular holiday. Well, today is Wednesday and tomorrow is Thursday.
Well, that's named after Thor. We've co-opted all kinds of things, but we're not in bondage to them. We choose to celebrate that our Lord came in the flesh to be with us, to live a perfect life, to take on our sin and give us His righteousness. And that is something we can keep all year long.
And it's an extraordinary moment for the church. May we lead with that. May we punch through all the clutter and the clamor of Christmas and be able to help point people clearly to that. And that's my hope for myself and for everyone else, for you.
It will be a time for you to do that. By the way, there is still time for a Christmas gift if you want to give the gift that keeps on walking. And that's at standingwithhope.com. If you need a stocking stuffer, put a leg in it. We put prosthetic legs on amputees. Gracie envisioned this many years ago after losing both of her legs, and she wanted to put legs on her fellow amputees. And you can see all about that at standingwithhope.com slash giving.
At the end of the year, if you want to sponsor a leg, we would love it. We say, silver and gold have I none. Such as I have, I give. In the name of Jesus, stand up and walk.
And they do. We can talk more about that when we come back. This is Peter Rosenberg and this is Truth Talk Live. Truth Talk Live, 866-34-TRUTH. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Truth Talk Live. This is Peter Rosenberg. Glad to have you with us.
And we are wrapping up the show today with Merry, Merry Christmas to you and your family. Do you know who Walter Kirchhoff was? Do you know who Walter Kirchhoff was? Walter Kirchhoff, he stepped into history on Christmas Eve, 1914. And he was an opera singer, but he was also a German officer. And he sang Silent Night in both English and German on the battlefields of World War I. On a beautiful moonlit night, frost on the ground, they described it, Kirchhoff's voice rose from the trenches. Do you remember, they were fighting that trench warfare, which was just horrific.
It's hard for us to wrap our minds just how brutal that was. And so many people died in this war and it was such a foolish war. If you go back and look at the history of how it started, it was just a ridiculously foolish war. And these guys were fighting one another and most of them didn't even know why they were fighting. And these battle-hardened soldiers from Belgium, France, Germany, England. And they're out there, it's Christmas Eve, and all of a sudden you hear this, Walter Kirchhoff, trained singer, beautiful singer, start to sing Silent Night. The moment's poignancy, it spurred other soldiers to sing while they temporarily laid down arms. Incredulously, the battlefield became festive as soldiers tentatively walked toward one another in extended Christmas greetings.
Pope Benedict earlier had pled for a Christmas truce, but to no avail. And the fighting continued until soldiers chose to sing rather than shoot. Just try to imagine what that must have been like. It was just an extraordinary moment.
More than likely, Kirchhoff had no idea of the resulting impact of his voice echoing over the scarred landscape. He followed his heart and honored the moment. Sadly, the truce was temporary, yet history doesn't record the first soldier to resume firing. Did you know that?
There's no record of who it was that started firing again. It only remembers the one who sang of peace, reverence, and the meaning of Christmas. And the teachable moment extends to us today. Families remain filled with conflict over various challenges. In the world I'm in as a caregiver, a lot of those challenges are in the caregiving world. What to do about a family member who's chronically impaired. And a lot of those things can erupt at Christmas.
They can be very painful. Family hadn't been together a while. They come together and all of a sudden, boom, things go haywire and you have conflict.
But the precedent still stands. And this is what I wanted to leave you with today. In the darkest of times, a battlefield of World War I, you think about that night out there.
It's cold. They're in trenches. They're dirty.
They've got the word trench foot. Their feet would get all messed up because they were standing in mud all day long. They weren't eating very well. There was sickness.
All these kinds of things. They're shooting at each other. People are dying.
It's a horrific experience. And then you've got this one voice that lifted heavenward and it calmed a battlefield. You know, if enough people followed Kirchhoff's example, we might not only witness a truce, but also peace. You know, St. Francis of Assisi said, Lord, make me an instrument of that peace where there is hatred.
Let me sow love. There's no doubt that we have a lot of division in this country and around the world. You look at what's going on. Are our voices as Christians voices of peace?
Are we able to lift our voice heavenward and calm a battlefield? I don't know where the battlefield is for you. It may be in your family, maybe in your marriage. It may be with your kids. It may be with your neighbors. It may be at your work. Who knows? I know that last year, you know, we were in a hospital.
That was our battlefield last year for Christmas. And I looked at Gracie raising her voice from a hospital bed and nurses would listen. They would come in to listen. I mean, Gracie's a no kidding singer. I'm going to play a song for you here in just a moment. I'm going to close out with her version of Silent Night that she and I recorded. And I've seen over the years and the four decades I've been caring for her through this process that nurses, many nurses and doctors and so forth would come in just to listen to her sing while she was in distress. Because she understood a greater truth, a higher view of God than even just being in a hospital.
If you remember, Paul and Silas were in prison around midnight and they were singing hymns. This is the invitation we have as believers to do this. Are we willing to do so?
And the only way that we can is if we have encountered Christ in such a way that it transcends these things to the point where Paul says, I don't even count it worthy to be compared. And that is an exceptional place to be. I would love to say I'm there.
I'm not. But he's calling me there. Everything in scripture beckons me there. And God is gently leading me in those places.
Doesn't always feel gentle, but he is. And so as we close up here, I wanted to play Gracie's version of Silent Night, her voice that has stilled a battlefield for the two of us many, many times. That voice that in the midst of all of her suffering and her heartache and her pain and her loss and her disability, she's lifted at heavenward to say, Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth. Next week, we won't be on the air. I mean, I won't be on the air. We'll have Christmas music playing and I won't be there. But I hope that on Christmas Day and maybe even Christmas Eve, too, that you'll play this song, that you can go and get it wherever you get to stream songs.
It's streaming on all the platforms. But I love her arrangement of it. And I hope you find it meaningful as well of her singing Silent Night and knowing the story behind it as she pours out her heart to still a battlefield.
I'm Peter Rosenberger, PeterRosenberger.com. Thank you for letting me be a part of your day today. Merry Christmas to you from Gracie and from me.
You're no virgin, mother and child. Holy infant, so tender and mild. Sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace. Silent night, holy night. Son of God, love's pure light. Radiant beams from thy holy face with the dawn of redeeming grace. Jesus, Lord at thy birth. Jesus, Lord. Jesus, Lord. Jesus, Lord at thy birth. Jesus, Lord at thy birth. Truth Talk Live!
