“Christmas is God lighting a candle; and you don’t light a candle in a room that’s already full of sunlight. You light a candle in a room that’s so murky that the candle, when lit, reveals just how bad things really are.”
― N.T. Wright, For All God’s Worth: True Worship and the Calling of the Church
This may seem like a dark quote but we can never find the solution until we first see the problem. Christmas brought the light that helped us see and then He solved the problem for us!
This day marks the first of four seasonal concerts I am privileged to do this Christmas.
Today I am heading out to Special Touch REACH New England’s Christmas party. Our team is partnering with the Women’s Ministry from Bread of Life Church in Westminster MA to host a Christmas dinner for 50 disabled individuals!
I will fill you in later peeps!
“The nativity mystery “conceived from the Holy Spirit and born from the Virgin Mary”, means, that God became human, truly human out of his own grace. The miracle of the existence of Jesus , his “climbing down of God” is: Holy Spirit and Virgin Mary! Here is a human being, the Virgin Mary, and as he comes from God, Jesus comes also from this human being. Born of the Virgin Mary means a human origin for God. Jesus Christ is not only truly God, he is human like every one of us. He is human without limitation. He is not only similar to us, he is like us.”
― Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline
I see Christ as the incarnation of the piper who is calling us. He dances that shape and pattern which is at the heart of our reality.
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/ready-set-done-7/
The daily post has given us this instruction today…
As it’s been a while since our last free-write… set a timer for ten minutes. Write without pause (and no edits!) until you’re out of time. Then, publish what you have (it’s your call whether or not to give the post a once-over).
To see how others have spent their ten minutes click on the link above.
Here is what I have been thinking today.
Christ Came To Us So That We Might Go To Him
As it is the Christmas season I am preparing, per usual, a funeral service. It seems that every year about this time I find myself doing at least one or two of these funeral events. I suppose it is all part and parcel of being a pastor, and I suppose some would find that really sad. I don’t. Well let me qualify that I don’t find it sad if the funeral I am doing is like the one I am putting together right now. The man who has gone on before us was a Christian man, Not a perfect man, not a man who had it all figured out but a Christian man. He was one of the men who understood that he had nothing to offer God in himself but that God had everything to offer him. And this man chose to take God up on His offer.
I suppose some might think Christmas is a terrible time to do a funeral (like it would be less terrible at some other time of the year…trust me for those left behind there is no good time for death to happen). I think there is another way to look at death at this particular holiday season, though. You see, one way to understand the incarnation of Christ is to see it as God paving the road from Heaven to Earth through the first advent, Christ’s birth. Death at this season then can be seen as a man or a woman taking the very same road in the opposite direction. Before Christ there was no road into the presence of the Father. The way was shut and those who died had no direct access to the kingdom of Heaven. Today because of Christmas or because of Christ’s coming the way is open and this man this imperfect man who didn’t have it all together but who knew and trusted Jesus has now taken the long road Home! Today that man is singing “Joy To The World” in a different place and while that is sad for those of us who miss him, I find it hard to begrudge him the Christmas gift he has waited for all these many years.
http://ceenphotography.com/2014/12/09/cees-fun-foto-challenge-bridges/
This week Cee has challenged us to display the idea behind BRIDGES with our photography.
Please click the link above to see how Cee’s other contributors have displayed the concept.
Here are my thoughts:
I think Isaac Newton was right when he said,
We build too many walls and not enough bridges.
The footbridge in Delft
This world desperately needs more bridges and more bridge-builders.
After all bridges are those things we cross to meet each other. Somehow we have come to think that f we cross over to meet people on the other side of things that means we are coming into total agreement with them. Who taught us that?
Did Christ agree with us in our sin when He went to the cross for us? When he bridged the gap between God and man was that a tacit acceptance of or an agreement with our sin?
Or was it simply a sign that He understood that unless He came to us there was no way we were going to come back to Him?
The cross is the greatest bridge ever made.
If God crossed such a great divide to reach us, how is it that we think we are required to do less in coming to the side of those we disagree with? If Jesus could love and pray for those who wanted to kill Him (while never coming into agreement with them) are we to do any less in our current disagreements?
Now there’s a meditation to be thunk on for a bit!
“Your desire to live a risk free life is a form of unbelief!” Jesus Calling Dec. 9
Today The Daily Post has asked this probing question:
Which do you find more dangerous: wanting nothing, or wanting everything?
You can discover how others have answered by going to:
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/all-or-nothing/
If there is one thing I have learned in all my years of pastoring it is that most extremes of anything are unhealthy and sometimes dangerous.
Wanting nothing is a mindset I am all too familiar with. In my own case it has expressed itself in the thought process, “If I want nothing then I will not be disappointed when I receive it.”
On the surface it can look like a deep-seated contentment and peaceful acceptance of the world but underneath it is fueled by my own spirit of self-protectionism, which crowds out healthy relationships, and a lack of faith which cuts me off from God.
On the other hand is the mindset of wanting everything. Now if the proviso “I want everything…that God wants me to have” is included then what you have is a lifestyle of positive forward-pressing faith. But wanting it all generally precludes any thought of whether or not God wants us to have it. God generally doesn’t want us to have everything because He knows we cannot handle it; So wanting everything often leads us into places of dangerous disobedience to the Divine.
So let’s sum up here: Wanting nothing breeds unbelief. Wanting everything breeds disobedience to God. Both sound pretty dangerous to me. I think I am with Solomon on this one.
give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.
9 Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’
Or I may become poor and steal,
and so dishonor the name of my God. Prov. 30:8,9
“Christmases are never the same. They change from year to year, and they are never really perfect, no matter how hard we try to force them to be so. What is perfect is the miracle in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago and the love of God that continues to burst through the chaos of human imperfection; Christmas is finding the Christ Child radiant beneath the daily grime of life.”
― Julie K. Hogan
“At this Christmas when Christ comes, will He find a warm heart? Mark the season of Advent by loving and serving the others with God’s own love and concern.”
― Mother Teresa, Love: A Fruit Always in Season
