Two Opposing Goals

Again and again, what it amounts to is a clash between two opposing goals: One goal is to seek the person of high position, the great person, the spiritual person, the clever person, the fine person, the person who because of his natural talents represents a high peak, as it were, in the mountain range of humanity. The other goal is to seek the lowly people, the minorities, the disabled, the prisoners: the valleys of the lowly between the heights of the great. They are the degraded, the enslaved, the exploited, the weak and poor, the poorest of the poor.
The first goal aims to exalt the individual, by virtue of his natural gifts, to a state approaching the divine. In the end he is made a god. The other goal seeks the wonder and mystery of God becoming man, God seeking the lowest place among men. Two completely opposite directions. One is the self-glorifying upward thrust. The other is the downward movement to become human. One is the way of self-love and self-exaltation. The other is the way of God’s love and love of one’s neighbour.

Eberhard Arnold

The Wonderful Certainty

This is all I have known for certain, that God is love. Even if I have been mistaken about this or that point, God is nevertheless love. If I have made a mistake it will be plain enough; so I repent – and God is love. He is love – not he was love, nor he will be love, oh no, even that future is too slow for me – he is love.
Oh, how wonderful! Sometimes, perhaps, my repentance does not come at once, and so there is a future. But God keeps no person waiting, for he is love. Like spring-water which keeps the same temperature summer and winter – so is God’s love. His love is a spring that never runs dry.
Oh, marvelous omnipotence of love! But God who creates out of nothing, who almightily takes from nothing and says, “Be,” lovingly adjoins, “Be something even in opposition to me.” Marvelous love, even his omnipotence is under the sway of love.

Søren Kierkegaard

Gospel

See to it that you do not treat the Gospel only as history, for that is only transient; neither regard it only as an example, for it is of no value without faith. Rather, see to it that you make this birth your own and that Christ be born in you. This will be the case if you believe; then you will repose in the lap of the virgin Mary and be her dear child. But you must exercise this faith and pray while you live; you cannot establish it too firmly. This is our foundation and inheritance, upon which good works must be built.
The Gospel does not merely teach about the history of Christ. No, it enables all who believe it to receive it as their own, which is the way the Gospel operates. Of what benefit would it be to me if Christ had been born a thousand times, and it would daily be sung into my ears in a most lovely manner, if I were never to hear that he was born for me and was to be my very own? If the voice gives forth this pleasant sound, even if it be in homely phrase, my heart listens with joy, for it is a lovely sound which penetrates the soul.

Martin Luther

Seeing God

All of us have a natural, inborn desire to see God. But God is infinite and incomprehensible. No one can see God without being of the same infinite nature as God. We are finite, and so we cannot see God. But God is love. He is also the source of our craving to know and love him.
Out of this love God took on a form that is comprehensible to us mortal beings. Through this act of love we can now share in the joy of the angels by seeing and knowing God directly. This is why Jesus said: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”
God knows well your inner state – every person’s inner state – and reveals himself to each heart in accordance with its needs. There is no better way for a person to enter true spiritual life than by encountering God directly. God became man and dwelt among us so that we might not fear him as something terrible and foreign, but instead see that God is love.

Sadhu Sundar Singh

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

Awaiting the New

Our world is shaking, about to erupt. Demonic powers are storming the church, like autumn storms sweeping through the woods. We live in a time when people everywhere are agitated; the masses are confused as to what is true and what is false; and yet they are waiting for what is ultimately to come. And it shall come!
The more the false prophets of today are proven wrong, the more expectation will mount. It is a good thing, then, if through hardship and suffering everything is cleared away that is opposed to God’s authority. Christ is seeking a people where he alone rules – in the church and in the world.
Therefore, let us lift up our heads and look up! Deliverance is approaching. We live in the midst of tyranny, encircled on all sides, seemingly unfree. But let us lift our heads high; the hour of our liberation is drawing near. Now we must be strong in the hope that God will reveal his redemption; he who is coming will take away everything that is part of our fallen nature.

Eberhard Arnold

Preparing for Christmas

Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care…Even the angels long to look into these things (1 Peter 1:10, 12).

How would Christ want us to prepare for Christmas? In what way might he want us to remember his birth?

Obviously, Christians around the world celebrate Christmas differently. Traditions, customs, rituals, and symbols are as varied as the people who engage them. As meaningful as these expressions are, they bear little importance if Christ himself is not born again in our midst. Celebration is a distraction if not accompanied by conversion; remembering is futile if we fail to experience redemption.

Christmas is indeed something to anticipate – the very wonder of Advent. It is a season of joy for good reason: it is the news of a Saviour being born, of light breaking into darkness, of God’s peace and goodwill to all. But joy is more than merriment. For those who only want to have a good time or a feeling of togetherness, Christmas brings little more than a temporary feeling of cheer. Afterwards, life goes on as before. But for the one who feels bankrupt, without really meaning or hope – either for themselves or for the world – for the one who senses that something is terribly wrong with the ways things are, Christmas can be genuinely life changing.

Advent is a time of preparation, to meet Christ anew. It should point us to the fact that the God of the universe finds himself most at home in people who feel their need and are personally ready to come to the manger. Christmas is glad tidings indeed, but only for those who are starkly honest with themselves and recognise that life must change.

Charles Moore, When the Time Was Fulfilled

Advent Thought

When the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons (Galatians 4:4-5).

Paul writes that when the time had fully come, God sent his son, born of woman. We must not take this to mean some specific hour, like midday. God’s time comes under the influence of the spirit. under God’s direction something matures – and then the time comes. If Israel had been more faithful, the time would have been fulfilled much earlier; it could even have been in Isaiah’s time. But God does not send his son if there is no one who prepared for him. Where would he go?

For this reason God’s time depends partly on us. If we follow God’s word faithfully, if we understand the ways of God and hold firmly to the goal, the last days will come. Thus we should not think that Christ’s birth was connected with the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire did not have the slightest significance for the kingdom of God. But whether a Simeon was there or not, or a Mary, or other people who expected God’s kingdom – that was significant. Then the time could come, as it actually did. When the Word of God becomes true through faith, something is made ready in the hearts of people.

This is our hope too. Our faith is that the Saviour will come soon. I am often asked, “How do you know that?” I answer bluntly, “Because I want the Saviour to come soon. That is why he is near – there is no other reason!” The cause of Christ must be fulfilled wherever there are people who are waiting for it. There it will be, there it will come! That is why the time was close at hand for the apostles. And today, something toward the Day of Christ can happen if we surrender ourselves for this. Preparations for this can begin already. When it matures in our hearts, it will spread rapidly throughout the world; then the Last Day will come, the last, great Christmas!

Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt, When the Time Was Fulfilled

Living in an Age of Faux Friendships

In an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education, William Deresiewicz examines the new forms of friendship that have emerged in the age of Facebook. While social media has allowed us the opportunity to be connected to everyone, it more often than not comes at the expense of deep, meaningful, shaping friendship. Deresiewicz writes:

[Concerning] the moral content of classical friendship, its commitment to virtue and mutual improvement, that … has been lost. We have ceased to believe that a friend's highest purpose is to summon us to the good by offering moral advice and correction. We practice, instead, the nonjudgmental friendship of unconditional acceptance and support—"therapeutic" friendship, [to quote] Robert N. Bellah's scornful term. We seem to be terribly fragile now. A friend fulfills her duty, we suppose, by taking our side—validating our feelings, supporting our decisions, helping us to feel good about ourselves. We tell white lies, make excuses when a friend does something wrong, do what we can to keep the boat steady. We're busy people; we want our friendships fun and friction-free ….

With the social-networking sites of the new century—Friendster and MySpace were launched in 2003, Facebook in 2004—the friendship circle has expanded to engulf the whole of the social world, and in so doing, destroyed both its own nature and that of the individual friendship itself. Facebook's very premise—and promise—is that it makes our friendship circles visible. There they are, my friends, all in the same place. Except, of course, they're not in the same place, or, rather, they're not my friends. They're a [superficial likeness or semblance] of my friends—little dehydrated packets of images and information, no more my friends than a set of baseball cards is the New York Mets ….

Deresiewicz concludes: "Friendship is devolving, in other words, from a relationship to a feeling—from something people share to something each of us hugs privately to ourselves in the loneliness of our electronic caves."

William Deresiewicz, "Faux Friendship," The Chronicle of Higher Education

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.

Spending Habits in the World of Virtual Games

Many use Facebook as a way to keep in touch with friends and acquaintances, but others use it to play games that involve virtual farms, virtual pets, and virtual mob wars. What's fascinating is that in some of these games, a person can buy virtual goods—fertilizer or additional pets or guns. But these items don't actually exist, of course. They are just little computer pictures from little pixilated stores. Nonetheless, if a person wants to have these virtual guns or virtual tools for their virtual farms or virtual pets, they actually pay real money! A player sends real, hard-earned money through a credit card account to a company like Playfish, whose website says, "You can now get Playfish Cash Cards in retail stores near you! Cash cards are exchanged for Playfish Cash that can be spent in all our supported games."
Newsweek magazine's Daniel Lyons wrote about this bizarre phenomenon in a column titled, "Money for Nothing." When researching virtual games, he discovered that the total U.S. market for virtual goods was worth just over $1 billion in 2009—twice what it was the year before. Kristian Segerstrale, a Finnish economist who has studied this phenomenon, says, “You can learn a lot about human behaviour and how people inter-operate in an economic environment. There are a lot of valuable lessons.” One of those lessons, of course, is that people will spend real money for something that isn't really there at all.

source: Daniel Lyons, "Money for Nothing," Newsweek magazine (3-29-10), p.22

Winning a Son's Heart

In his book The Masculine Mandate, pastor and author Richard D. Phillips writes of his meaningful relationship with his father. In 1972, Phillips was just 12-years-old when his father was sent to Vietnam. The only way he and his father could communicate was through letters. He writes:

One of the most powerful memories is the thrill of the letter I would receive from my father almost every week …. Recalling my personal letters from Dad practically brings me to tears even now. He would simply begin by telling me about his life. Not big military issues, but "neat stuff" that happened or that he saw. Then he would talk to me about my life, writing things like this: "Dear Ricky, I heard you had a great baseball game and made a great catch. Your mother told me how exciting it was when you won. How I wish I could have been there, but I can see you making that catch in my mind." …

Do you see what [my dad] was doing? My dad was telling me that I was his boy and that his heart was fully engaged with me, even from halfway around the world …. In the midst of a life-and-death war zone, with all the weighty responsibilities of a senior Army officer, my father was truly absorbed in my life. And I knew it. So when he said to me, in effect, "My son, give me your heart," he had already given every bit of his heart to me, his boy. I couldn't possibly help giving my heart back to him.

Richard D. Phillips, The Masculine Mandate (Reformation Trust, 2010), pp. 97-98

What Do You Do When Everyone Is Cheating?

In their book The Baseball Codes, authors Jason Turbow and Michael Duca share a story from the world of baseball that shows how widely-accepted cheating has become in America's favourite pastime. They write:

[One day in 1987], New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was watching his team play the California Angels on television, and was shocked when the camera zoomed in to show close-ups of what appeared to be a small bandage on the palm of the left hand of Angels pitcher Don Sutton. The Yankees television broadcasters brought it up whenever the pitcher appeared to grind the ball into his palm between pitches. It was, they said, probably why Sutton's pitches possessed such extraordinary movement that day. He was in all likelihood scuffing the baseball.

Outraged, Steinbrenner called the visitors' dugout at Anaheim Stadium and lit into [the Yankees' manager at the time], Lou Piniella. Was he aware, asked the owner, that Sutton was cheating? "Our television announcers are aware of it," yelled Steinbrenner. "I'm sure the Angels are aware of it. You're probably the only guy there who doesn't know it. Now, I want you to go out there and make the umpires check Don Sutton!"

This wasn't exactly breaking news about Sutton. He had been thrown out of a game in 1978 for scuffing. By 1987, he was among the most discussed ball-doctors in the game.

"George," Piniella responded, "do you know who taught him how to cheat?" Steinbrenner confessed that he did not. "The guy who taught Don Sutton everything he knows about cheating is the guy pitching for us tonight," Piniella said. "Do you want me to go out there and get Tommy John thrown out, too?"

So what do we do when it seems like everyone else is cheating? And not just in baseball. Do we we give up and give in, joining the ranks in doing whatever it takes to get ahead? Or do we trust God, take a stand for honesty, and do what's right even if it costs us?

source unknown

Advent Transformation

If we want advent to transform us – our homes and hearts, and even nations – then the great question for us is whether we will come out of the convulsions of our time with this determination: Yes, arise! It is time to awaken from sleep. A waking up must begin somewhere. It is time to put things back where God intended them. It is time for each of us to go to work – certain that the Lord will come – to set our life in God’s order wherever we can. Where God’s word is heard, he will not cheat us of the truth; where our life rebels he will reprimand it.
We need people who are moved by the horrific calamities and emerge from them with the knowledge that those who look to the Lord will be preserved by him, even if they are hounded from the earth.
The advent message comes out of our encounter with God, with the gospel. It is thus the message that shakes– so that in the end the entire world shall be shaken. The fact that the son of man shall come again is more than a historic prophecy; it is also a decree that God’s coming and the shaking up of humanity are somehow connected.
The great question to us is whether we are still capable of being truly shocked – or whether we will continue to see thousands of things that we know should not be and must not be and yet remain hardened to them. In how many ways have we become indifferent and used to things that ought not to be?

Alfred Delp