We pray thee, O Lord, to purify our hearts that they may be worthy to become thy dwelling place. Let us never fail to find room for thee, but come and abide in us that we also may abide in thee, who as at this time wast born into the world for us, and dost live and reign, King of kings and Lord of lords, now and for evermore.
–William Temple (1881-1944)
O God, who before all others didst call shepherds to the cradle of thy Son: Grant that by the preaching of the gospel the poor, the humble, and the forgotten, may know that they are at home with thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
–Church of South India
In June of this year, I had the privilege of spending an evening with about thirty young men and women who had been through this nightmare experience. I met them in Bunia, in Eastern Congo; thirty or so youngsters, none more than the middle twenties, out of several hundred thousand across the globe who have been forced into becoming ‘child soldiers.
I won’t try and make readers wince with the details, though they are the sort of thing that you wish you could forget; the important thing is that they had escaped. They had been brought out of the bush, prised out of the grip of the militias that had captured them and reintroduced to something like normality. At twenty-one or twenty-two, some were completing their secondary school work. All had been assured of a safe place to live if they managed to get away from the militias. Many had been reunited with families. They had advocates and helpers in their communities, people who were willing to stick their necks out to support them when others looked at them with suspicion or even disgust.
How had it happened? They all had one answer. The Church had not given up on them. At great risk, members of local Christian communities had kept contact with them, sometimes literally gone in search of them, helped them escape and organised a return to civilian life.
Church of Ireland Primate, Archbishop Alan Harper:
A personal culture of kindness needs to be reclaimed in modern society. A kind word and a kind gesture can go a long way to making the lives of hard-pressed people bearable. It can light up a life and it says: “I’m someone, not no one.
“I count in the eyes of someone else….”
Go here and download or listen to it from the December 22nd morning show. I found it very helpful–KSH.
Every few years Christmas is on a Sunday and suddenly believers face a dilemma: Stay home hanging stockings and opening gifts, or upend those cherished domestic traditions and go to Sunday church services. That is, if their church is even open.
Nearly 10% of Protestant churches will be closed on Christmas Sunday this year, according to LifeWay Research, and most pastors who are opening up say they expect far fewer people than on other Sundays. Other reports suggest that churches across the board are scaling down their services in anticipation of fewer worshipers.
“We have to face the reality of families who don’t want to struggle to get kids dressed and come to church,” Brad Jernberg of Dallas’s Cliff Temple Baptist Church told the Associated Baptist Press. Similarly, Beth Car Baptist Church in Halifax, Va., is planning a short service featuring bluegrass riffs on Christmas music. “I’ll do a brief sermon, and then we’re going home,” said Pastor Mike Parnell.
A Berliner and longtime member of St. Mary’s church choir, Christian Beier attempts to explain the mystique and tradition behind this piece of music….
“It makes Christmas Christmas,” he adds with a chuckle.
But as gorgeous as the music is for Beier, the core of this yearly event is something deeper.
“It is getting into some dialogue with God. It is being moved by whatever is around us,” he says.
Read or listen to it all (audio for this highly encouraged).
Susan Lee, a divorced mother of three in New York City, is taking a drastic step this year. “No Christmas for me,” she says. “No gifts, no turkey, no tree, no kidding.”
Lee, 41, a marketing consultant, says she needs a break from the stress and spending that are integral parts of the holiday. Her kids will celebrate a traditional Christmas with their dad, but she’s ignoring all the rituals.
“I start dreading Christmas from the time the decorations go up in the stores,” she says. “It stopped being fun for me, so I’ll find out this year if I can do without it altogether. I think it will be a relief. It already is.”
Christmas is…a time to remember family and friends who are no longer with us. They stay with us in loving memory, and we celebrate how much richer our lives are because they were a part of us, shaping us, and making us better for knowing them….
Like many of my Christian friends, I am not overly fond of the commercialization of Christmas. I bristle at seeing decorations any time before Thanksgiving and this year I’ve been particularly annoyed with a car advert that has hijacked one of my favorite secular holiday songs. However, I let all that fall away and think about being with my family and spending time laughing, telling stories, and watching the joy of Christmas shine through the eyes of my niece Quincie.
Christmas belongs to anyone who wants it, and just because I gave up believing in a god doesn’t mean I gave up believing in the love and joy of family. I did not give up the joy of celebration with my abandonment of the absurd. So to my religious and non-religious friends, I wish them all a Merry Christmas or a Happy Hanukkah from the heart and I hope they take it with the true spirit with which I give it ”“ that of the spirt of humanity – something we can all celebrate.
The founders of Neve Shaanan, a neighborhood in southern Tel Aviv, planned their streets in the shape of a seven-branched candelabra – a symbol of their Jewish faith. Ninety years later, the streets are full of Christmas decorations, reflecting a flowering of Christianity in Israel’s economic and cultural capital.
Tens of thousands of Christian foreigners, most of them laborers from the Philippines and African asylum seekers, have poured into the neighborhood in recent years. They pray year-round in more than 30 churches hidden in grimy apartment buildings. But in late December, their Christian subculture emerges in full force in the southern streets of Tel Aviv, whose founders called it the “first Hebrew city.”
On the Saturday before Christmas, the center of festivities was the city’s central bus station, a hulking seven-story maze of concrete.
Anglican Churches in Northamptonshire have for the first time joined together to fund a series of radio advertisements on Heart FM, and a poster campaign linked to them, to encourage people in the area to attend a Christmas service in a local church.
The ads and posters have been produced, and are being used, nationally. They place the nativity in a modern context.
At the same time the Peterborough Diocese, which links Anglican churches across Northants, Rutland and Peterborough, has just launched a new corporate logo and colour scheme for its public “face” to replace the former crest.
While reading this thing, I kept waiting for the moment when the “C” word would or would not be used, in place of the safe, secular “holidays” incantation.
The premise for this story is that it’s hard to get American men to do their duties this time of year, which means heading to the nearest shopping mall and doing their part to keep their marriages and/or families united and the nation’s economy intact. Something must be done.
The answer is to combine alcohol, cigars, grilled fat, credit cards and jewelry….
Recently, we had to move out of our historic building because of damage caused to our walls by the August earthquake centered in Virginia. Within days we received several offers to help house our various services from Lutherans, Methodists, fellow Episcopalians and our generous neighbors at Mount Zion AME Church.
The next thing we know, we are benefitting from the gifts of our fellow citizens and worshiping on Sundays at 11:15 at the oldest Catholic parish in the Carolinas, St. Mary’s on Hasell Street….
…[and later] picture my surprise as an invitation came from the president of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim Synagogue across from St. Mary’s to have Christmas services at their location. Did I get that right? Did our Jewish brothers and sisters just invite us for Christmas at the synagogue?
Just fun–great and wonderful fun. Enjoy it all.
There’s a beautifully groomed Mary in a blue party dress, a fashionable Joseph gazing adoringly at the baby, and wise men carrying a Faberge egg, a crystal bottle of perfume and a decorated skull.
With only twelve days to go until Christmas, a church group unveiled a poster Thursday to remind people of the religious aspect of the holiday ”” while making a statement about modern-day extravagance.
The poster, deliberately designed to look like a fashion photograph, has the words: “However you dress it up, Christmas starts with Christ.”
Christians are using the social-media site Twitter to re-tell the Christmas story in novel ways this year.
In Germany, a Twitter-user called Joseph von Nazareth is journalling the nativity story from the perspecÂtive of Joseph. Describing himself as a “35-year-old third-generation carÂpenter from Nazareth”, he regularly updates the site with short descripÂtions from the Christmas story.
Read it all and check out the winning tweets in the Bishop of Bradford’s competition.
…Every year, mysteriously, all our plans seem to evaporate and it’s the usual mess, with all the last minute panic. There’ll be a good few people concerned just now about what they can afford for a start.
Yet it’s odd in a way, this business of Perfect Christmasses. The story of the first Christmas is the story of a series of completely unplanned, messy events ”“ a surprise pregnancy, an unexpected journey that’s got to be made, a complete muddle over the hotel accommodation when you get there…Not exactly a perfect holiday….
But in the complete mess of the first Christmas, God says, ‘Don’t worry ”“ I’m not going to wait until you’ve got everything sorted out perfectly before I get involved with you….’
Carl F. H. Henry, the dean of evangelical theologians, argued that the Virgin Birth is the “essential, historical indication of the Incarnation, bearing not only an analogy to the divine and human natures of the Incarnate, but also bringing out the nature, purpose, and bearing of this work of God to salvation.” Well said, and well believed.
Nicholas Kristof and his secularist friends may find belief in the Virgin Birth to be evidence of intellectual backwardness among American Christians. But this is the faith of the Church, established in God’s perfect Word, and cherished by the true Church throughout the ages….
This much we know: All those who find salvation will be saved by the atoning work of Jesus the Christ ”” the virgin-born Savior. Anything less than this is just not Christianity, whatever it may call itself. A true Christian will not deny the Virgin Birth.
I would enjoy the goodwill and merriment of X-mas without reservation if I no longer felt it was co-opting and eclipsing my religious holiday. Lighting the Advent candles and reading daily devotions would provide a quiet respite during X-mas season. And on Christmas morning, instead of collapsing in an exhausted and mildly resentful heap, I could begin the real celebration with a full heart.
As a society, we need a designated time of year to celebrate with one another. We need the outlet of X-mas to give us a burst of festive energy to get through the winter. And we need fudge and Santa cookies, darn it. So let’s take Christ out of Christmas and make our culturewide secular celebration official. Just give me Jesus Day when it’s all over.
Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who hast given us this season of holy joy: We bow before thee with adoring reverence and lift up our hearts with thankful praise. Fill us, we beseech thee, with the gladness of thy great redemption, and enable us to join in the angels’ song, Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, goodwill toward men; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
O Almighty God, we beseech thee, give us grace to receive thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ, and to believe on his name, whose birth we celebrate in this sacred season; and grant that abiding steadfast in thy faith, we may evermore rejoice in thy salvation; through the merits of the same thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end.
“To continue playing the game of ‘ain’t it awful what they have done to Christmas’ may be a cop-out,” argued [the Rev. Rick] Lance, executive director of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions. “After all, we contribute to the commercialization of Christmas. We are a part of the supposed problem of abuse that the Christmas season has experienced.
“A revitalization of Christmas will not come from Wall Street, Main Street, the malls or the halls of Congress and the state legislature. The chatter of talking heads on news programs will not make this a reality.”
It would help if churches offered constructive advice. That’s why it was significant that, just before Dec. 25, the Southern Baptist Convention’s news service published several commentaries by Lance and others raising unusually practical questions about how members of America’s largest non-Catholic flock can fine-tune future Christmas plans.
O merciful Jesus, who when thou tookest upon thee to deliver man, didst not abhor the Virgin’s womb: Vouchsafe evermore to dwell in the hearts of us thy servants. Inspire us with thy purity; strengthen us with thy might; guide us into thy truth; that we may conquer every adverse power, and be wholly devoted to thy service and conformed to thy will, to the glory of God the Father.
Wonderful stuff!
O merciful Jesus, who when thou tookest upon thee to deliver man, didst not abhor the Virgin’s womb: Vouchsafe evermore to dwell in the hearts of us thy servants. Inspire us with thy purity; strengthen us with thy might; guide us into thy truth; that we may conquer every adverse power, and be wholly devoted to thy service and conformed to thy will, to the glory of God the Father.
As with the holiday, so with the culture at large. The increasingly post-Christian culture of America and Europe are nevertheless more deeply rooted in Christianity than is usually recognized by its opponents (and some of its adherents). It’s at least theoretically possible that this culture will eventually get Christianity out of its system, out of the roots of its consciousness, and negligible as a cultural force, reduced to the private practices of an eccentric few. This would take several generations, and I don’t think it will happen, but it certainly could. And if it did, the resulting culture would, like Christmas, lose the hope and the humanism which had been its legacy from Christianity. As with Christmas, if the heart were to stop beating, the body would die.
We have seen the prospects for that new culture already, in the totalitarian nightmares of communism and fascism, in the wasteland of pleasure-and-power-seeking which is offered as the good life by much of the entertainment and advertising produced by capitalism, in the drab materialist collectivism of “Imagine” and the absurd materialist egoism of Atlas Shrugged.
Perhaps it’s not even too much to say that if Christmas were to die, the remains of Christian culture would die, too, and with it that softness toward the individual human person””imperfect, of course, and slow to develop””that has characterized it. As long as the mad mixture of the very earthly and the very heavenly which is Christmas””the poor and vulnerable newborn baby among the animals on the one hand, choirs of angels on the other””remains at the heart of the holiday, and the holiday remains very much alive in the culture, the natural coldness and brutality of the human race is always challenged from within the culture itself. Should that challenge be removed, no one would be more surprised by the result than those who worked to remove it. They might not live to see that result, but if their souls were not lost altogether, part of their purgatory might be the knowledge of what they had done to their descendants.
God of all grace, who didst in the fullness of time send Jesus Christ thy Son to be born of a woman, that he might redeem the sons of men and make them the sons of God: Accept our endless praise for this thy mercy; and grant that the Spirit of thy Son may so dwell in our hearts that we may evermore serve and worship thee with the freedom of thy children; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.
Carl F. H. Henry, the dean of evangelical theologians, argues that the Virgin Birth is the “essential, historical indication of the Incarnation, bearing not only an analogy to the divine and human natures of the Incarnate, but also bringing out the nature, purpose, and bearing of this work of God to salvation.” Well said, and well believed.
Nicholas Kristof and his secularist friends may find belief in the Virgin Birth to be evidence of intellectual backwardness among American Christians. But this is the faith of the Church, established in God’s perfect Word, and cherished by the true Church throughout the ages. Kristof’s grandfather, we are told, believed that the Virgin Birth is a “pious legend.” The fact that he could hold such beliefs and serve as an elder in his church is evidence of that church’s doctrinal and spiritual laxity ”” or worse. Those who deny the Virgin Birth affirm other doctrines only by force of whim, for they have already surrendered the authority of Scripture. They have undermined Christ’s nature and nullified the incarnation.
This much we know: All those who find salvation will be saved by the atoning work of Jesus the Christ ”” the virgin-born Savior. Anything less than this is just not Christianity, whatever it may call itself. A true Christian will not deny the Virgin Birth.
Grant us, O God, such love and wonder that, with humble shepherds, wise men and pilgrims unknown, we may come and adore the holy Babe, the heavenly King, and with our gifts worship and serve him, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
–James Ferguson
It’s tough to be on the receiving end of love, God’s or anybody else’s. It requires that we see our lives not as our possessions, but as gifts. “Nothing is more repugnant to capable, reasonable people than grace,” wrote John Wesley a long time ago.
Among the most familiar Christmas texts is the one in Isaiah: “The Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (7:14) Less familiar is its context: Isaiah has been pleading with King Ahaz to put his trust in God’s promise to Israel rather than in alliances with strong military powers like Syria. “If you will not believe, you shall not be established,” Isaiah warns Ahaz (7:9). Then the prophet tells the fearful king that God is going to give him a baby as a sign. A baby. Isn’t that just like God, Ahaz must have thought. What Ahaz needed, with Assyria breathing down his neck, was a good army, not a baby.
This is often the way God loves us: with gifts we thought we didn’t need, which transform us into people we don’t necessarily want to be. With our advanced degrees, armies, government programs, material comforts and self-fulfillment techniques, we assume that religion is about giving a little, of our power in order to confirm to ourselves that we are indeed as self-sufficient as we claim.