Christmas Eve Evanescence

I didn’t see you come in, but there you were all the same. Right side, fourth row, standing in front of me. Were you there as we sang, “God rest ye merry gentlemen?” If you were, I didn’t notice you. Forgive me. While singing “tidings of comfort and joy,” I failed to offer them to you.

When the band ceased, I stood to offer a Christmas welcome. I tried to look upon the gathered crowd, but the spotlights blinded me. I encouraged everyone to really listen to the lyrics of these familiar carols. Familiarity breeds contempt, but it can also breed forgetfulness.  These songs tell the most amazing story if only we would properly tune our attention. Were you able to hear?

I first noticed you when we stood to sing “Silent Night,” our candlelight anthem. Along the aisles, the ushers lit the candles. One by one, flames leapt to life. You were on the inside of your row, sitting alone, a chair between you and Izzy. Forgive me again; I initially thought you were a child. You were barely taller than Izzy and thin. You held your unlit candle, standing stone still, a charcoal shadow in a pool of lights. With whispered encouragement from her mother, Izzy brought her light to you. Trembling, trembling you tilted your wick to meet her flame. And we sang,

            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.

Did you sing? I couldn’t tell. You were a statue in front of me, the only movement the anxious flame in your folded hands. Perhaps you were heeding my request--listening, listening.

With candles extinguished, the music continued telling us that old gospel story: 

            “Disperse the gloomy clouds of night, and death’s dark shadows put to flight.”  

As I fumbled with the harmony, I continued to watch you. You drew your dark peacoat around your slumped shoulders and you gripped your purse tightly. Your private thoughts were nearly audible: “Am I safe to leave? If I go now, perhaps no one will notice me.” You nervously shifted from foot to foot. You briefly surveyed the congregation calculating your escape, questioning, questioning. With surprising swiftness, you disappeared.

I longed to stop you, to put a hand upon your shoulder and invite you to stay. Like normal, my logic prevailed. What woman, especially one so afraid, wants a strange man three times her size to bar her escape? Like the smoke from your candle, you were gone in an instant. Christmas Eve evanescence.

I returned my attention to pondering Immanuel, God with us.  Forgive me, forgive me, thrice forgive me. In pondering Immanuel, I forgot to show you Immanuel. I forgot that in His church, Jesus is more than lyric; He is life. 

Raising Immanuel

I'm just a lowly carpenter,
building things of wood;
I put my heart and soul in this,
my buildings firm and good.

I've asked a girl to be my wife,
young Mary, sweet and kind;
a flower so pure and lovely,
I was blessed to find.

With longing anticipation,
I'll await our wedding day;
I'll protect the virtue of this girl
and keep my desire at bay.

The whisperings I hear in town
say "Mary is with child."
"It can't be true" I tell myself
my fears are running wild.

O God, I'm hurt and weeping
this pain, I cannot bear;
she dashed my heart upon the rocks
leaving fragments of despair.

Wonderful Counselor, Prince of Peace
I cry to you for aid;
the law says I should stone her
but I can't. I am afraid.

I will divorce her quietly
the most mercy I can show;
A woman deserving death
will just be left alone.

I'll buckle down, back to work
forget about our plans;
swinging a hammer is what I know,
not being a married man.

Tonight I dreamed a wondrous dream,
God's angel spoke to me;
rekindling my cooling fire,
he said "let the marriage be."

"Don't be afraid, strong Joseph
to take Mary as your wife;
the life that grows inside her
is the Messiah's life."

I awoke excited and with dread
the Christ will be my son;
what can this lowly carpenter
teach the Maker of the Sun?

I'll take the girl as my wife
we'll raise Immanuel;
"God with us" will live with us
the Savior come to dwell.

A Christmas Poem

Did the stars open their eyes widely?
     Did the trees tremble with excitement?
     Did the clouds crowd in
          to get a glimpse of the newborn Savior?

Did the rocks cry out?
     Did the grasses whisper and wave?
     Did the streams and falls and rivers
          sing in harmony at the sound of the baby's cry?

All of creation echoes the psalmist
     "Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel
      who alone does wondrous things.
      blessed be his glorious name forever;
      may the whole earth be filled with his glory!"

Meanwhile,
     We turn our eyes upon the latest gadgets
     We tremble at the newest hit song
     We crowd in to get a glimpse of pre-Chrismtas deals.

Meanwhile,
     We cry out, in anger, that a clerk failed to wish us a "Merry Christmas"
     We murmur and grumble about unfair treatment
     We sing not worship, but discord.

Meanwhile, meanwhile
     we lose sight
     of the One who sets all things right

This Christmas
     open your eyes widely
     tremble with excitement
     crowd around the manger

     cry out with joy
     whisper thanksgiving
     sing a lullaby to the One who makes all things well.

As Straw From Fire

As we wait in anticipation to celebrate the coming Christ in the flesh, I thought it a good time to ponder the words of St Athanasius (296-373) in his incomparable book On the Incarnation. I was struck by this section early in the book. As you get ready to celebrate Christmas, ponder these words--slowly and often.

For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world. In one sense, indeed, He was not far from it before, for no part of creation had ever been without Him Who, while ever abiding in union with the Father, yet fills all things that are. But now He entered the world in a new way, stooping to our level in His love and Self-revealing to us. He saw the reasonable race, the race of men that, like Himself, expressed the Father's Mind, wasting out of existence, and death reigning over all in corruption. He saw that corruption held us all the closer, because it was the penalty for the Transgression; He saw, too, how unthinkable it would be for the law to be repealed before it was fulfilled. He saw how unseemly it was that the very things of which He Himself was the Artificer should be disappearing. He saw how the surpassing wickedness of men was mounting up against them; He saw also their universal liability to death. All this He saw and, pitying our race, moved with compassion for our limitation, unable to endure that death should have the mastery, rather than that His creatures should perish and the work of His Father for us men come to nought, He took to Himself a body, a human body even as our own. Nor did He will merely to become embodied or merely to appear; had that been so, He could have revealed His divine majesty in some other and better way. No, He took our body, and not only so, but He took it directly from a spotless, stainless virgin, without the agency of human father—a pure body, untainted by intercourse with man. He, the Mighty One, the Artificer of all, Himself prepared this body in the virgin as a temple for Himself, and took it for His very own, as the instrument through which He was known and in which He dwelt. Thus, taking a body like our own, because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death, He surrendered His body to death instead of all, and offered it to the Father. This He did out of sheer love for us, so that in His death all might die, and the law of death thereby be abolished because, having fulfilled in His body that for which it was appointed, it was thereafter voided of its power for men. This He did that He might turn again to incorruption men who had turned back to corruption, and make them alive through death by the appropriation of His body and by the grace of His resurrection. Thus He would make death to disappear from them as utterly as straw from fire.

Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

The Christmas Scale

Gift Ideas-Christmas 2013

Thanksgiving is past, so we are officially into the Christmas season. I thought I would offer some recommendations, most related to books.

Look for a gift book for a believer
One Way Love by Tullian Tchvidjian is a great book focused on God's radical grace toward believers.  This is, so far, Tullian's best book. 



Is your believer a bit of an intellectual egghead (in the greatest possible way, of course)
Doug Groothuis's Christian Apologetics remains an excellent resource for the Christian wanting to defend their faith. 

How about a gift book for a nonbeliever
Tim Keller's Prodigal God is a short, deeply engaging book exploring God's extravagant grace toward sinners.



Christmas CD
Natalie Grant's Believe remains my favorite Christmas CD.  It has a big band feel to it. 



Looking for a ministry to support?
How about Teamwork Africa? Their mission: Teamwork Africa plants and resources African churches to meet the vital spiritual, physical and social needs of their local communities.




Want a bigger ticket item? 
How about Logos 5 Bible Software?



Want a bigger ticket item for me?  
How about an all expenses paid trip to Liberate 2014.

Whatever happened to anticipation?

Yesterday, even before the tragedy in Connecticut, I had begun to wonder whatever happened to anticipation? It used to be that the month leading up to Christmas, the Advent season, was celebrated the expectation of a Savior.  Many individuals and many churches continue to celebrate Advent, though unfortunately, this seems to be a tradition disappearing from more evangelical churches.  Even those who continue to celebrate have sometimes muddled it.  We have lost our sense of anticipation.  We are not a people accustomed to waiting, to longing. 

We now have an immediate fix for every want.  Two hundred years ago, one might wait months to hear a good word from someone and so words were chosen with care.  They may go years, even decades, without seeing one another.  This absence created a longing for reunion. Now, we have smart phones, Facebook, and email for immediate, constant connection.  This immediacy has brought with it an unfortunate deadening of our affections for one another.  Words are written carelessly, the sense of longing is absent. 

Think too about movies. I remember as a child the anticipation of the holiday season. We would plan out our schedules with the chance to watch Charlie Brown's Christmas or Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.  Now, movies are available on demand.  We can watch whatever we want, whenever we want it and so they become less exciting.

We can get whatever food we want whenever we want it.  We can access any sexual predilection on the Internet at the click of a mouse.  Thanks to websites like Amazon, we can obtain nearly any good we would like.  And so we have no sense of eager waiting for God's good gifts. 

The Jews of Old understood the anticipation of the Savior.  From the time of the fall, from the time of the exodus, from the time of King David, from the time of the prophets, from the time of the silent years, they longed for a Savior.  After the fall, the world existed in a state of sin.  No man made religion, no ritualistic rule keeping, no moral self improvement, no self-esteem programs, nothing could deliver the world from the sin that pervades every corner. And so they waited for the Promised One. 

Two thousand years ago, that promise was fulfilled. Jesus Christ came to earth, born of a virgin, so that he could do what nothing or no one else could.  He came to cleanse the world from the expansiveness of sin.  No doubt, the people of Connecticut are longing for deliverance. Every day, in every corner of the world, people long for release from suffering.  The answer to the pain wrought by sin is the Savior, the suffering Savior, who bore the sins of the whole world that whoever believes in him will be delivered. 

During this season, take time to step back from the constant distractions and immediate fixes and ask God to return to you a sense of anticipation of the only true Deliverer 

John Piper: The Innkeeper

I love John Piper.  I love poetry (largely because of John Piper). This wonderful video shows John Piper reading his poem "The Innkeeper".  Please take a moment to watch it.

The Light Broke Through-A Christmas Meditation

The world was lost and without hope, the darkness pervasive. The prophets of old had long been silent. The fervent hope for the promised Messiah, the One who would come to redeem Israel, the One who would set all things right, had dwindled long ago. Of course, the teachers of Israel knew what was written about the Promised One. They studied the law and prophets diligently. Yet, so many silent centuries later, they were more about ritual than hope. Every day, they would follow the routines set forth by previous generations, not really believing that one was to come to save them.

We see this in the man, Zechariah, one of the temple priests. He certainly knew the stories of old. He knew about Abraham, and as a Jew, would hold him in high esteem. He knew that Abraham was promised a child in his old age, yet when the angel of the Lord appeared to him and promised him a child, he said simply, “How shall I know this because I am old?” Zechariah knew the Scriptures and believed them, but he did not really believe them for himself. Gabriel, the angel of the Lord, basically says to him, “I stand in God’s presence and He Himself told me this. Because you don’t believe it, you will be silent and be amazed by Him!” (Luke 1:5-23). Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth were among the first to see and believe God was breaking into the darkness. 

Just over a year later, the Light broke into the darkness. In a small town, with her fiancée at her side, a young girl gave birth to Jesus.  God in the flesh.  The Word eternal, breaking into human history, to rescue His own. He was “the true light, which gives light to everyone” come into human history (John 1:9). 

Sadly, his own people did not receive him (John 1:11).  They knew the word, but did they believe it? Did they believe the prophets, who foretold God rescuing his people? Many had lost their hope of a Redeemer, believing God was no longer invested in His people. Many were so dedicated to learning about God that they missed God, come in the flesh. Many had their own ideas about who the Messiah would be and to their estimation, Jesus wasn’t him. Many were so busy going about their lives that they did not slow down enough to know that the Rescuer had come.

God did send His son Jesus, delivered in the flesh by a young girl, to save the world. His birthday divides human history.  A.D. stands for anno domini-the year of our Lord. Just like the Messiah was prophesied in the Old Testament, so has His return been foretold and that will also be a time of a great divide in human history.

Though it has been 2000 years, do not lose hope in Christ’s return—He is still invested in His people.  He is still in control.

Do not become so dedicated to studying theology that you miss the beautiful fact that God will return to rescue His own.

Do not assume that God does not exist or that He is just one of many ways to salvation. He is the only way and He will return again, in the flesh to save those who have put their faith in Him, and Him alone.

Do not become so busy that you fail to marvel at God’s intense love for you. 

Just as He came once, He is coming again. Maybe not today, maybe not this year, but he will return--just as He promised--and He will make all things new.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:1-4 ESV)

A Celebrity Christmas

Celebrity surrounds us.  We are bombarded by fame from every corner.  There was a time, perhaps 100 years ago, when fame was reserved for a select few.  Presidents and a few actors earned notoriety, but even their fame was probably limited by a lack of media exposure.  The advent of radio, and particularly television, created the opportunity for greater saturation of fame.  Presidents and actors are now more recognizable because they occupy such a prominent place in our everyday lives.  Although President Taft probably could have walked the streets of rural America without recognition (presuming his enormity did not betray him), President Obama's options for normalcy in this country are limited.  Today, not only are actors and politicians famous, it seems everyone is entitled to a share of the spotlight.  There are innumerable celebrity athletes, musicians, scientists, authors, pastors, and atheists.

The holiday season is no different.  From Thanksgiving to New Year's Day, we see sharply dressed celebrities surrounded by shiny decorations headlining the many network programs.  Christmas even has its own celebrity--jolly St Nick, the man in red, Santa Claus--who seems seems omnipresent for a few weeks. 

However, Biblical descriptions of God reveal that He alone is worthy of celebration.  He spoke to Job out of a whirlwind (Job 38).  When Isaiah (Isaiah 6) saw God, he said that the "foundations of the threshold" shook when He spoke and the "train of his robe filled the temple" and "the house was filled with smoke."  Psalm 97 paints a majestic picture of God Almighty. 

The LORD reigns, let the earth rejoice;
let the many coastlands be glad!
Clouds and thick darkness are all around him;
righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.
Fire goes before him
and burns up his adversaries all around.
His lightnings light up the world;
the earth sees and trembles.
The mountains melt like wax before the LORD,
before the Lord of all the earth.

The heavens proclaim his righteousness,
and all the peoples see his glory.
All worshipers of images are put to shame,
who make their boast in worthless idols;
worship him, all you gods!

Zion hears and is glad,
and the daughters of Judah rejoice,
because of your judgments, O LORD.
For you, O LORD, are most high over all the earth;
you are exalted far above all gods.

O you who love the LORD, hate evil!
He preserves the lives of his saints;
he delivers them from the hand of the wicked.
Light is sown for the righteous,
and joy for the upright in heart.
Rejoice in the LORD, O you righteous,
and give thanks to his holy name!


A great irony of Christmas, however is that its true celebrity, Jesus the Christ, came as a man of no reputation. The omnipotent, sovereign creator and sustainer of the universe came to earth as a helpless, defenseless baby. He was born of a woman who painfully labored to bring him forth.  His tiny form was swaddled in strips of cloth to keep him warm.  He was laid in a feeding trough because no one was willing to give up their lodging.  Isaiah 53:2 prophesied that he "had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him."  He was the creator unknown by His creatures.  He was "the Word became flesh" (John 1:14) who came to "take away the sins of the world" (John 1:29). 

This baby of no apparent consequence changed the world.  John 1:10 says "He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him."  We celebrate Christmas because of that baby, though many do not know him.  More books and songs have been written about him than anyone else in history yet many people do not know why.  In that manger, he was the only light for a dark world.  Today, as he reigns in glory, he remains the only light. 

Do you get bent out of shape about X-mas?

RC Sproul writes:

The simple answer to your question is that the X in Christmas is used like the R in R.C. My given name at birth was Robert Charles, although before I was even taken home from the hospital my parents called me by my initials, R.C., and nobody seems to be too scandalized by that.

X can mean so many things. For example, when we want to denote an unknown quantity, we use the symbol X. It can refer to an obscene level of films, something that is X-rated. People seem to express chagrin about seeing Christ’s name dropped and replaced by this symbol for an unknown quantity X. Every year you see the signs and the bumper stickers saying, “Put Christ back into Christmas” as a response to this substitution of the letter X for the name of Christ.

First of all, you have to understand that it is not the letter X that is put into Christmas. We see the English letter X there, but actually what it involves is the first letter of the Greek name for Christ. Christos is the New Testament Greek for Christ. The first letter of the Greek word Christos is transliterated into our alphabet as an X. That X has come through church history to be a shorthand symbol for the name of Christ.

We don’t see people protesting the use of the Greek letter theta, which is an O with a line across the middle. We use that as a shorthand abbreviation for God because it is the first letter of the word Theos, the Greek word for God.

The idea of X as an abbreviation for the name of Christ came into use in our culture with no intent to show any disrespect for Jesus. The church has used the symbol of the fish historically because it is an acronym. Fish in Greek (ichthus) involved the use of the first letters for the Greek phrase “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.” So the early Christians would take the first letter of those words and put those letters together to spell the Greek word for fish. That’s how the symbol of the fish became the universal symbol of Christendom. There’s a long and sacred history of the use of X to symbolize the name of Christ, and from its origin, it has meant no disrespect.