Unexpected

It is easy for the devout to join up with the shepherds and fall into place at the crib and look out into the surrounding night and say, “Look at those silly intellectuals wandering about after a star, with no religious sense at all! Look at that clumsy camel, what an unspiritual animal it is! Look what odd gifts of self-consecration they are bringing; they’re certainly not the sort of people who’d make it in a church!” But we must remember that the child who began by receiving these very unexpected pilgrims had a woman of the streets for his faithful friend and two thieves for his comrades at the end: and looking at these two extremes let us try to learn a little of the height and breadth and depth of his love – and then apply it to our own lives.

- Evelyn Underhill

The Christmas Story

There’s nothing romantic about the Christmas story. If anything, it offers a slice of a brutal world in which a child is born on the street, so to speak, with next to nothing in the way of rights and security, and not even a home. He whose birthday we celebrate at Christmas said, even as a grown man, “I have nothing. I am nowhere at home. Even at night, I have no place to rest or lay my head”.…But now this man from Nazareth comes to us and invites us to mirror God’s image, and shows us how. He says: you too can become light, as God is light. Because what is all around you is not hell, but rather a world waiting to be filled with hope and faith.

- Jörg Zink

Representing Christ

The living Word once took on flesh in Mary’s son. The eternal, living Word – Christ – now takes on a new body in the church. Therefore the apostle Paul said that a mystery was entrusted to him, which he calls the body of Christ (Col. 1:24-26). The fact that the church is the body of Christ means that he becomes visible and real in the world today.
Just as Christ was in Mary, so Christ wants to live in us who believe and love. If Christ is real in us then we will live in accordance with and reflect the character of God’s future. The future kingdom receives form in the church.
For this reason the church must represent now God’s peace and justice in our world. This is why it cannot shed blood or tolerate private property. This is why the church cannot lie or take an oath. This is why it cannot tolerate the destruction of bridal purity and of faithfulness in the marriage of husband and wife. This is why the church expends all its life and energy to make room for God to bring everything under his rule.  

Eberhard Arnold

Christmas is the Promise

That God became a mother’s son; that there could be a woman walking the earth whose womb was consecrated to be the holy temple and tabernacle of God – that is actually earth’s perfection and the fulfillment of its expectations.
So many kinds of Advent consolation stream from the mysterious figure of the blessed, expectant Mary. The grey horizons must grow light. It is only the immediate scene that shouts so loudly and insistently. Beyond the present tumult there exists a different realm, one that is now in our midst. The woman has conceived the Child, sheltered him beneath her heart, and given birth to the Son. The world has come under a different law. Christmas is not only a historic event that happened once, on which our salvation rests. Christmas is the promise of a new order of things, of life, of our existence. 

Alfred Delp

The Magi

The mysterious men from the Orient followed the star and discovered the place where the secret of love lay in the helplessness of a human baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes in the feeding trough of an animal. They discovered the place where God’s love came down. That is the most important thing for every person, to discover in his own time and at his own hour the place where God’s love has broken through, and then to follow the star that has risen for him and to remain true to the light that has fallen into his heart.
The birth of God’s Son is God’s challenge for each of us to manifest his love. There is no manifestation of love quite so complete as that of a life lived in unity and community, a love where houses and doors and hearts are kept open to all.

Eberhard Arnold

Beyond Imagining

The god we have chosen as the highest ideal recognisable by our understanding is certainly not the true God, because God cannot be grasped by our intellect – or if so, we would be capable of forming only a very human, even if perhaps well intended, picture of a godly being. This picture would be very fragmentary and contradictory, and would make God accessible only to intellectuals, to those with highly trained minds, whereas God often lives most purely in those who are simple and childlike.
Now that is not to say that there should only be simple people or, to put it bluntly, that stupidity is godly and desirable. But it does mean that we should understand where the limits of human reason lie and that there is much above and beyond these limits that can only be grasped by faith. And that becomes possible for the person who lets all that is human become silent in order to stand before the divine in adoration, reverence, and awe.

Annemarie Wächter

Expert Calculates Santa's Christmas Eve Workload

Some people will have a stressful load this Christmas season. Take Santa, for instance. Phillip Bump, a technology writer for The Atlantic, has attempted to provide a tongue-in-cheek answer to an important question: what exactly is Santa's yearly workload? Bump calculated the number of Christian children in the world and the geographic distribution of those children around the globe. After factoring in all the nuances of time zones, distance between houses, and how many children live in each house, Bump shared his conclusions about Santa's yearly task:
[Based on CIA estimates] there are just over 526,000,000 Christian kids under the age of 14 in the world who celebrate Christmas on December 25th. In other words, Santa has to deliver presents to almost 22 million kids an hour, every hour, on the night before Christmas. That's about 365,000 kids a minute; about 6,100 a second.
Bump mentions a few caveats: not all Christians celebrate Christmas on December 25th, the CIA's data isn't always up-to-date, and some non-Christians celebrate Christmas too. But all in all, Santa has an enormous job to do! He has to serve over a billion kids in one night as he pulls a huge sleigh with nine reindeer, while he tries to avoid being detected and shot down by the North America Aerospace Defense Command—and don't forget that one of his reindeer has a very shiny nose.

Philip Bump, "Santa's Christmas Eve Workload, Calculated," The Atlantic (14 December 2011)

The Nature of God

The unity of love involves a descent of the lowest kind. God became the equal of the lowliest and took on the form of a servant. But this servant’s form is not merely something he puts on, like the beggar’s cloak, which, because it is only a cloak, flutters loosely and betrays the king. No, it is his true form. For this is the unfathomable nature of boundless love, that it desires to be equal with the beloved.
Look, then, there he is – God! Where? There! Don’t you see him? The Child is the God, and yet he has no place to lay his head. It is sheer love and sheer sorrow to want to express the unity of love and then to not be understood.
But God suffers all things, endures all things, is tried in all things, hungers in the desert, thirsts in his agonies, is forsaken in death, and becomes absolutely the equal of the lowliest of human beings – look, behold the man!
God is not zealous for himself but out of love wants to be equal with the most lowly of the lowly. What power! When an oak seed is planted in a clay pot, the pot breaks; when the new wine is poured into old wineskins, they burst. What happens, then, when God the king plants himself in the frailty of a human being? Does he not become a new person, a new vessel?

Soren Kierkegaard

Observing a Mellow, Domesticated Christmas

When the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci went to China in the sixteenth century, he brought along samples of religious art to illustrate the Christian story for people who had never heard it. The Chinese readily adopted portraits of the Virgin Mary holding her child, but when he produced paintings of the crucifixion and tried to explain that the God-child had grown up only to be executed, the audience reacted with revulsion and horror. They much preferred the Virgin and insisted on worshiping her rather than the crucified God.
As I thumb…through my stack of Christmas cards, I realise that we in Christian countries do much the same thing. We observe a mellow, domesticated holiday purged of any hint of scandal. Above all, we purge from it any reminder of how the story that began in Bethlehem turned out at Calvary.

Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew (Zondervan, 2002), p. 25

The Miracle

When all the winds were mild,

Mary came to me apart

and laid the Holy Child

here inside my heart.

My heart was made the manger,

and my body was the stall.

And now no man is stranger:

my life goes out to all,

To bring to each of them

this Child of heaven’s light,

to let them enter in, like flames
of candles to the holy night.

by Georg Johannes Gick

A Conversation with the Christ-Child

As often as I look at the place where the Lord is born, my heart enters into a wondrous conversation with the Child Jesus:
And I say, “Dear Lord Jesus, how you are shivering; how hard you lie for my sake, for the sake of my redemption. How can I repay you?”
Then I seem to hear the Child’s answer, “Dear Hieronymus, I desire nothing but that you shall sing ‘Glory to God in the highest’ and be content. I shall be even poorer in the Garden of Olives and on the Holy Cross.”
I speak again, “Dear Jesus, I have to give you something. I will give you all my money.”
The Child answers, “Heaven and earth already belong to me. I do not need your money; give it to the poor people and I will accept it as if it were given to me.”
Then I say, “Dear Jesus, I will gladly do so, but I have to give something to you personally, or I would die of grief.”
The Child answers, “Dear Hieronymus, since you are so very generous, I will tell you what you should give me. Give me your sins, your bad conscience, and those things that condemn you.”
I reply, “What will you do with them?”
The Child says, “I will carry them upon my shoulders; that shall be my sovereignty and glorious deed.”
Then I begin to weep bitter tears and say, “Little child, dear little child, I thought you wanted my good deeds, but you want all my evil deeds. Take what is mine, give to me what is Thine. So I shall be free from sin and certain of eternal life.”

Hieronymus, written shortly before his death in 420 A.D.

The God We Don't Want

The Christmas story tells us that God chose the way of descent and emptied himself of his divine prerogatives in order to indwell our nothingness, our darkness. Mary’s womb, barren, lacking Joseph’s potency, becomes home for the naked God. Christmas is thus the story of the God who is conceived in barren space, who is born in the unwelcome place of an empty manger.
Christmas is not just the message of light breaking into darkness but a humiliating fact: foolishness to the “wise” and a stumbling block to the “righteous.” The God who saves is beggarly; he exists in weakness and comes to those who reach up to him with empty hands. Such a God is an embarrassment, not just to the Herods of this world, but to all who are enamoured with themselves and with their own achievements.
If we’re honest, we don’t want this God. We prefer the glorious deity of splendour who dazzles our eyes but also blinds us from seeing our lives for what they are. We don’t want the bloody babe who later is condemned to die, defamed and disfigured, for the reason that we don’t want to come to terms with the stable of our own existence. We have an inn to offer, decorated for Christmas, not a stinking stall. We have cathedrals to worship in, not barns.
And so, we too easily let Christmas move on by. In so doing, we fail to experience how God in Christ wants to enter time and space today. We miss the power that turns our worlds upside down and inside out, where “valleys are made high, and mountains are laid low.” We rob ourselves of God’s gift!

Charles Moore

The Distinctiveness of Christmas

How does one understand that this man, with his individual and datable history, is at one and the same time God? What greatness, sovereignty, and profundity must he not have revealed and lived in order to be called God? What does “God” mean now? What sort of human being is he, that we can make such an assertion about him? What does the unity of the two – God and man – concretely signify in a historical being, one of our brothers, Jesus of Nazareth?
This is one of the central facts of our faith that sets Christianity apart from other religions. Once Christianity affirms that a man is at the same time God, it stands alone in the world. We are obliged to say it: This is a scandal to the Jews and to all the religions and pious peoples of yesterday and today who venerate and adore a transcendent God: one that is totally other, who cannot be objectified, a God beyond this world, infinite, eternal, incomprehensible, and above everything that human beings can be and know.

Leonardo Boff

Giving Room to Christ

It is no use saying that we are born two thousand years too late to give room to Christ. Nor will those who live at the end of the world have been born too late. Christ is always with us, always asking for room in our hearts.
But now it is with the voice of our contemporaries that he speaks; with the eyes of store clerks, factory workers, and children that he gazes; with the hands of office workers, slum dwellers, and suburban housewives that he gives. It is with the feet of soldiers and tramps that he walks, and with the heart of anyone in need that he longs for shelter. And giving shelter or food to anyone who asks for it, or needs it, is giving it to Christ.
All that the friends of Christ did for him in his lifetime, we can do. Peter’s mother-in-law hastened to cook a meal for him, and if anything in the Gospels can be inferred, it surely is that she gave the very best she had, with no thought of extravagance. Matthew made a feast for him, inviting the whole town, so that the house was in an uproar of enjoyment, and the straitlaced Pharisees – the good people – were scandalised.

Dorothy Day

The Christian’s Joy

This is the Christian’s joy:

I know that I am a thought in God,

no matter how insignificant I may be –

the most abandoned of beings,

one no one thinks of.

Today, when we think of Christmas gifts,

how many outcasts no one thinks of!

Think to yourselves, you that are outcasts,

you that feel you are nothing in history:

“I know that I am a thought in God.”

Would that my voice might reach the imprisoned

like a ray of light, of Christmas hope –

might say also to you,

the sick,

the elderly in the home for the aged,

the hospital patients,

you that live in shacks and shantytowns,

you coffee harvesters trying to garner your only wage

for the whole year,

you that are tortured:

God’s eternal purpose has thought of all of you.

He loves you,

and, like Mary,

incarnates that thought in his womb.

Oscar Romero

Peace on Earth

God’s will finds its simplest expression in the words: “Peace on earth.” God wants peace. The kingdom of God is constantly working towards this one goal: peace on earth!
God’s peace, however, is different from what we understand. In times of war we groan: “Oh, if only there were peace again!” Yet we are only wishing things to be as they were before. The peace of God goes much deeper. God wants to do away with all the strife and misery. Human contention is but a sign that our hearts are not at peace. Moreover, the entire creation also yearns for peace. The prophets, whenever they speak of peace, include the whole created order – the animals shall also find peace, and the plants, and all living things shall be brought together so that there may truly be peace on earth.
For this reason, our longing for peace should extend far beyond the time when guns are silent and we cease to kill each other. There is much, much more at stake. Human peace, in which the nations give up war “for a while,” is never enough. The peace of Christ is greater than all our understanding and cultural achievements; for even where we work hard for harmony, strife among us and in our families breaks out far too easily. What we need is deep-rooted reconciliation in Jesus Christ – God’s peace for us all, changing this earth into heaven.

Christoph Blumhardt

A Father's Risk and a Mother's Love

In a short devotional for Christian Standard magazine, Paul Williams writes about an unusually bumpy flight he once had from Philadelphia to Long Island. Being a frequent flyer, Williams wasn't all that concerned as the plane was batted around in the sky. Others, however, were grabbing onto their armrests or steadying themselves on the seat back in front of them. While observing the reactions of his fellow passengers, Williams took notice of one young mother caring for her baby. He watched as she "wrapped her arms around her infant and pulled the child very close to her breast. Then she dropped her chin, rested it on the back of the child's head, and began to sing ever so quietly, 'Hush, Little Baby.'" The moment caused him to reflect on Christmas, of all things. He writes:
Helpless fragility is the lot of the infant. Those early days leave a lasting impression on the human psyche we never really resolve. That vulnerability stays with us all of our days, reminding us of the seemingly capricious nature of things—a bitter world that does not care if we exist.
But then God came—as an infant, unable to reach out and steady himself on the seat back in front of him, fully trusting a human, fallible mother to pull him close to her breast through the pitching, shaking nature of things.
What an extraordinary risk, to trust the infant of God to a frightened young girl.
But then again—watching that new mother sing to her child all the way through the turbulent skies to the welcoming runway—I realized God knew good and well what he was doing. The power of love trumps fear, rewards risk, and brings meaning and life to an otherwise frightening world. Over and over again.
For a God who would become powerless for love, and to a mother who sings softly in her infant's ear, I give my heart for Christmas, wholly amazed at the wonder of it all.

A Story Told To The Annual Pennsylvania Community Bankers Association by Charlie "T" Jones

I've never written and only rarely tell of my first banker experience.
It happened in 1936. I was nine years old and the depression was still in full force. We came from Alabama and settled in Lancaster County in a little row home, which my father managed to rent. It was getting near Christmas and my dear dad had nothing to spend for Christmas for his five children ages 1-9. In desperation, he went to the bank to try to persuade them that he was a safe risk for a small loan. He explained his predicament, no job, no collateral, and 5 small children with Christmas approaching. As he should have known, the banker would have to decline his request, but he had an alternative offer for my dad to consider. He explained that if my dad could postpone celebrating Christmas a day or two, the children wouldn't know it and everything would be reduced in the stores, and he would only need half the amount he was requesting. He said if this was agreeable he would approve the loan for a smaller amount. Of course my dad gratefully accepted his offer. I have experienced many Christmas's but this was the one I remember the best. Christmas Eve after we were all tucked in bed, the downstairs front door slammed open. There was a lot of noise and footsteps and my father rushed down the stairs to see what was happening.
I followed a few minutes later, and saw him sitting on the bottom step with his head in his hands. I couldn't understand why he was weeping. When I reached the bottom step, I could see no one in the hallway, but the hall was lined with boxes. There were boxes of food, clothing and candy. There was a riding fire engine and a four-foot folding white paneled dollhouse. We never had a Christmas like that and we never knew who or why they did it. We didn't belong to a church and the friends we had were as poor as we were. My dad returned to the bank to repay the loan. The banker surprised my dad by telling him that there was no record of his loan.
I only understood that Christmas experience years later when Jesus became my Lord and Saviour. How blessed some of us are to see God’s love working in and through His children. John 3:16 is where it begins but those unknown servants were practicing 1st John 3:16. "Hereby perceive we the love of God, how He laid down his life for us: so we ought to lay down our lives for others."

source unknown

Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown

The animated classic A Charlie Brown Christmas airs on one of the major television networks every holiday season. Two producers working closely with Charlie Brown creator Charles Schulz remember their desperate efforts to first convince a network to show the special. All the major networks were hesitant. Finally, one agreed, and the great cartoonist got to work.
A memorable part of the animated tale occurs when Linus answers Charlie Brown's plaintive cry, "Isn't there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?" Linus walks to centre stage, requests a spot light, then recites from Luke 2 the biblical account of Jesus' birth. "That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown," he concludes.
While the program was in development, the producers cautioned Schulz about putting the scene in the special. They were convinced the religious message wouldn't go over well with the network. Undeterred, Schulz faced both producers and said, "If not us, then who's going to do it?"

Source: ABC News

God Delights to Give His Children Gifts

In his book Pure Pleasure, Gary Thomas reminds us that the Heavenly Father we meet in and through Jesus Christ loves to give his children gifts:

Once, while walking through a McDonald's restaurant, I saw eight ten-year-old girls celebrating a birthday. The warmth of sheer, unadulterated happiness permeated the gathering.
It was as if a light had been turned on and I could see God's delight. God felt happy that these girls were happy. Their delight, their joy, even their giddiness, gave God great pleasure. Have you ever thought about that—that you can give God great pleasure by enjoying yourself?
If you're a parent, imagine Christmas morning as the young kids tear into presents. Does anything make you happier? Don't moments like these break into the dull routines of life and give us a glimpse of heaven?
The fact that we are children of God—and that Jesus urges us to become like children—speaks of a certain demeanour, a certain delight, a certain trust in God's goodness and favour toward us. While God's servants are not merely his children (he also calls us to sacrificial and mature service), we never become less than his children.

Gary Thomas, "Let's Play," Men of Integrity (January/February 2011)