And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him….
Read More“If you do not like sentiment and symbolism, you do not like Christmas; go away and celebrate something else.” G.K. Chesterton wrote this in his 1908 essay Christmas. “If you do not like sentiment and symbolism, you do not like Christmas; go away and celebrate something else.”
Chesterton was responding to early twentieth-century rationalists, who wanted to celebrate a holiday without all the old “superstitions” of a virgin birth, angels, and wise men. I’ll admit, Christmas is something I’ve struggled with…
Read MoreOutside the temple there is no peace. You have challenges in your family. You feel arthritis settling in, or some other part of you is aging. Friends turn against you. Irrational people will give you no peace.
But here, in Jesus …
Read MoreGlory to God in the Lowest, for God deliberately falls into the low places. Jesus is God, in the flesh. But in entering the world, He sets aside the rights of divinity. He must learn the alphabet. He cannot walk, He cannot crawl. He must be nursed. And swaddled. He has become the lowest. And He goes down, into ditches, into loneliness, into hunger. He knows betrayal. A feeding trough is His crib. …
Read More“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” And He made man in His own image.
He fell. The image is marred.
Our beginnings are thus already headed toward endings. Some children don’t even make it out of the womb. Others are cut down too soon….
Read MoreThe satire in Peter Gabriel’s song Big Time is often missed. From college basketball to professional wrestling, it’s bumper music for success. “I’m on my way, I’m making it, big time.” It’s the American dream: you can be anything you want to be; you can make it big.
There’s a religious dimension to the song that fits perfectly the modern obsession with bigger and better churches. “And I will pray to a big god as I kneel in the big church.” Then later, “And my heaven will be a big heaven, and I will walk through the front door.”
The way God works couldn’t be more different….
Read MoreDoubtless you’ve heard the myth—and it is most certainly a myth—that the Christian holy days were borrowed from older pagan festivals. You do find this kind of thing in Latin America, where Roman Catholic missionaries renamed local deities as Mary or one of the saints, so the people continued to worship the same statues but with new names. It’s called christopaganism. But that all happened much later. I’m talking about the origins of Christianity.
Jesus probably was born on December 25, or a day close to it. But today, January 1, was a day the early Christians resisted celebrating. That’s because New Year’s Day was “kept with great riot and licence by the pagans” …
Read MoreBlessed be that Child who gladdened Bethlehem today! Blessed be the Babe who made manhood young again today! Blessed be the Fruit, who lowered Himself to our famished state! …
Read More“We have seen the Lord.” Thomas doesn’t believe it.
It’s hard to blame him. The dead remain in their tombs.
Jesus heard Thomas’ words: “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.”
Jesus repeats Thomas’ words back to him: “Put out your finger, and see the wounds; thrust your hand into My side.” And Thomas confesses: “My Lord and my God!”
That confession is Christianity: God is in the manger; God is on the cross. God was made man in Mary’s womb. The God-man died and was laid in a tomb….
Read More“An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream.” It’s not an example. Many of our dreams are the fruits of anxiety or indigestion. I once had a dream that Fritz Pauling and I were in Italy stealing a pipe organ. I don’t plan to do what I dreamed. (Although it might make a pretty good buddy caper movie.) The kind of dream Joseph has is extremely rare. But it should remind us of another Joseph: the son of Jacob who had that amazing technicolor dreamcoat. His dreams got him thrown into a pit, then sold into slavery. To where? Egypt. See the similarities? With this new Joseph, and the Mother and Child, God is going to redo the Exodus.
So the “Angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying.…” Angel means messenger. An angel speaks; that is his purpose: he brings God’s Word to particular people. What’s the message?
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