Sycamore

Found over at Ray Ortlund’s blog in a post titled “Our Intuitive Theology“:

Last one (maybe), from Ray van Neste.  If your Christmas never looks as Norman Rockwell as you’d like, this is something you really should read.  Here’s a small selection:

Christmas is not the pretence that all is well now. Such pretence is a sham and people see through it as Scrooge did. No, Christmas is the blessed assurance that God is still at work redeeming His people. It is the reminder that God accomplishes salvation even when it looks bad. This gives us hope and points us forward to the coming day when God will make all things right. With this truth in mind we can celebrate in hope and declare our hope and joy as a statement of faith.

Trevin Wax carries Christmas with him.  He writes a short and great reflection, reprinted in it’s entirety below:

Why shepherds?

Have you ever wondered why a glorious host of heavenly angels put on their best celestial choir performance for a scraggly band of sheep-keepers? Why not for King Herod? Why not show up the rulers and astound Caesar in Rome? Why go to the lowest people on society’s scale of importance?

Like Mary, we should treasure the Christmas story and ponder these questions in our hearts.

The Christmas story shows us that God’s ways are not our ways. God does not save people on the basis of their earthly importance, physical appearance, wealthy status or position. God saves people on the basis of his mercy alone, and that means that even lowly, smelly shepherds are loved by God.

Once we ponder the Christmas story, we are immediately convicted of our tendency to “write people off” when it comes to salvation.

He’s too poor.

She just doesn’t have it together.

They are too addicted to drugs.

She would never come to church.

Aren’t you thankful that God didn’t write you off? That God reached in and touched you with his salvation?

Take some time today to ponder all that God has done for you. And then ask God to bring people into your life that you can spread the good news of salvation to.

Prayer: Thank you, Lord, for your coming at Christmas. Thank you for the salvation you have provided for a lowly, undeserving sinner like me. Help me to show forth your salvation to those around me in the coming year.

Doug Wilson wrote an article last year that’s worth reprinting in it’s entirety.  Unfortunately, it’s too long for something like that.  Below are some selections, but go read the whole thing.

First, let’s consider the irony of time… For the ancient pagans, history was not history at all but simply a long, recurring, endless cycle, or a meaningless clash of meaningless fated events. They accounted for the disparities by assuming that atomistic fragmentation represented the whole fairly accurately—what you saw was what you got. But Christians, looking at the same phenomena, concluded something quite different. All these strange elements, seemingly headed in every which direction, meant, of necessity that the last chapter of our world’s story was going to be the ultimate denouement. If all things work together for good for them that love God and are the called according to His purpose, then this means that billions of plot points are going to come together in the most satisfying cathartic release possible at the end of all time. The great day of resurrection, the eschatological climax, will be what Tolkien called eucatastrophe, and will be literary catharsis writ large, although large is far too small a word for it.

Bethlehem is the moment in the story when significant numbers of readers start to have that aha moment. The consummate writer, God foreshadows what He is going to do—in fact He was doing that from the earliest prophets on. But at Bethlehem, the central character in this story arrives in the story, and those following the story recognize Him. Those who recognize Him this way are called believers, and as the story unfolds, there will be more and more of us. By the last chapter, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess Him. But in this grand denouement at the end, not only will everyone see who He is, but we will also all see who He has been all along, and we shall see that history, far from being a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, is actually the ultimate ironic tale. Christ as the Word is the irony of time, He is the irony of story. In worshiping Christ, in worshiping the Word, Christians are worshiping God’s irony.

He continues to write on the irony of God’s power, and the irony of God’s love.  If you’re still reading this, keep reading the rest of his article.

The Ruler to Be Born in Bethlehem

5:1 [9] Now muster your troops, O daughter [10] of troops;
siege is laid against us;
with a rod they strike the judge of Israel
on the cheek.
2 [11] But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah,
who are too little to be among the clans of Judah,
from you shall come forth for me
one who is to be ruler in Israel,
whose coming forth is from of old,
from ancient days.
3 Therefore he shall give them up until the time
when she who is in labor has given birth;
then the rest of his brothers shall return
to the people of Israel.
4 And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord,
in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.
And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great
to the ends of the earth.
5 And he shall be their peace.
-Micah 5:1-5

The Birth of Jesus Christ

2:1 In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2 This was the first registration when [1] Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3 And all went to be registered, each to his own town. 4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, 5 to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, [2] who was with child. 6 And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. 7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

The Shepherds and the Angels

8 And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. 10 And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 12 And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,

15 When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” 16 And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. 17 And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. 18 And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. 19 But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. 20 And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

21 And at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.

-Luke 2:1-21

Christmas gives lots of opportunities to see God in a different light.  He lives above the stars.  He made the milky way.  Then He became a man.  Thoughts like that should give us pause, but so often our hurry gets in the way and we miss a good opportunity to reflect.

Lots of people have done much more reflecting than I have.  So today, tomorrow, and throughout the week I’ll be posting reflections from other’s Christmas writings.  Today, I give you a Charlie Brown Christmas.  Don’t knock it.  It gets deep.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Penn (from the comedy duo Penn & Teller) is a hardcore atheist.  Like most comedians - they’re cynical by nature, and they get nothing but encouragement.  Check out this video.  He’s still an atheist, but man.

(HT: Ray Ortlund)

Just ran across an old email from my friend Adam Sugano.  It reads:

a man ahead of his time, g.k. chesterton (1874-1936)
“you are free in our time to say that God does not exist; you are free to say that He exists and is evil; you are free to say that He would like to exist if He could. You may talk of God as a metaphor or a mystification; you may water Him down with gallons of long words, or boil Him to the rags of metaphysics; and it is not merely that nobody punishes, but nobody protests. But if you speak of God as a fact, as a thing like a tiger, as a reason for changing one’s conduct, then the modern world will stop you somehow if it can. We are long past talking about whether an unbeliever should be punished for being irreverent. It is now thought irreverent to be a believer.”

What’s scary is that a lot of believer’s in churches act the same way - God is great, as long as He isn’t a fact.  Beliefs can be fine, but facts actually change your life in ways that don’t make sense to people who believe different facts.

Check out this acoustic recording from Andrew Peterson’s tour.  If you like acoustic style stuff, it’ll make you happy.  (Plus, Harper watched it and he said, “That’s church!”  Apparently he now associates acoustic guitars and no drum kit with Shoreline.)

(HT: Justin Taylor, another Andrew Peterson lover)

Undoubtedly one of the coolest names in the Christian blog world is Trevin Wax.  He writes over at Kingdom People, and he just announced he’s doing a book contest this year.  The guy knows his books, he reviews a ton each year, and I’ve always appreciated his candor, insight, and theological know-how.  He also has a sweet list of the best books of 2008, none of which I own.  All of which I’d like.  So I’m entering his contest, and if you like books I’d advise you to do the same.  Check out the contest page here.