“A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes – and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas).

Jesus didn’t come all the way to earth merely to tell us to be nicer to each other.

He didn’t travel the cosmos only to tell us to be more tolerant and accepting.

He came to set us free.

If Jesus was only a good teacher and a moral human being, then His death was pointless and we are all still dead in our sins, without hope, and to be pitied above all others.

But Jesus was (and is) God in the flesh who took on our humanity, bore our sins, and gave us His perfection that we who were dead might live.

Advent is the anticipation of all that. Advent is the eager awaiting of the fulfillment of all of God’s promises in Jesus.

We wait, but we wait with hope and certainty. Even so, come Lord Jesus.

First of all, I miss Rich Mullins. I miss his unique voice set in the midst of a Christian music industry where there is a lot of sameness. What he says here is spot on.

I still believe that Church isn’t a place you go on Sunday. It’s not a brick and mortar building. It’s God made visible, made up of living stones like you and me. It’s the people of God doing the work of God in the power of God for the glory of God.

But even so, I don’t do Sunday church services because I’ve got it all together. At least that’s not the way it should be. I may act all high and mighty and superior on Sunday because I show up, but if I’m honest, I know I need help. I know I need other believers to hold me accountable and to encourage me and to challenge me out of my comfort zone.

If I really had my life together, I might as well stay home. But I don’t. So I heed the verse from Hebrews about not neglecting the gathering together of the saints because we need each other. We’re stronger together than we are apart.

That’s why I go to church.

For real, though. Some of us need our spicy chicken sammiches.

I can’t guarantee that what follows isn’t a repeat of something I’ve posted before, but if so, it’s worth reading again.

“Lord Jesus, Master of both the light and the darkness, send your Holy Spirit upon our preparations for Christmas. We who have so much to do seek quiet spaces to hear your voice each day. We who are anxious over many things look forward to your coming among us. We who are blessed in so many ways long for the complete joy of your kingdom. We whose hearts are heavy seek the joy of your presence. We are your people, walking in darkness, yet seeking the light. To you we say, ‘Come Lord Jesus!'” (Henri Nouwen).

As I am learning this Advent season, this is a time to celebrate the Once and Future King. It is a time not only for looking back in fondness to the Christ child in the manger but for looking forward in faith to the returning and conquering Messiah.

May we not forget the real reason for the season, the joy that so often gets lost and buried beneath all the activities and events and mad holiday rush. May we all make room and time to reflect that the infinite God became small and helpless so that we could become sons and daughters of God.

I stumbled across these words while looking over my Facebook memories. I can think of absolutely nothing to add.

“IT WAS THOUSANDS of years ago and thousands of miles away, but it is a visit that for all our madness and cynicism and indifference and despair we have never quite forgotten. The oxen in their stalls. The smell of hay. The shepherds standing around. That child and that place are somehow the closest of all close encounters, the one we are closest to, the one that brings us closest to something that cannot be told in any other way. This story that faith tells in the fairytale language of faith is not just that God is, which God knows is a lot to swallow in itself much of the time, but that God comes. Comes here. ‘In great humility.’ There is nothing much humbler than being born: naked, totally helpless, not much bigger than a loaf of bread. But with righteousness and faithfulness the girdle of his loins. And to us came. For us came. Is it true—not just the way fairytales are true but as the truest of all truths? Almighty God, are you true?

When you are standing up to your neck in darkness, how do you say yes to that question? You say yes, I suppose, the only way faith can ever say it if it is honest with itself. You say yes with your fingers crossed. You say it with your heart in your mouth. Maybe that way we can say yes. He visited us.

The world has never been quite the same since. It is still a very dark world, in some ways darker than ever before, but the darkness is different because he keeps getting born into it. The threat of holocaust. The threat of poisoning the earth and sea and air. The threat of our own deaths. The broken marriage. The child in pain. The lost chance. Anyone who has ever known him has known him perhaps better in the dark than anywhere else because it is in the dark where he seems to visit most often” (Frederick Buechner, The Clown in the Belfry).

“We often pray to be delivered from calamities; we even trust that we shall be; but we do not pray to be made what we should be, in the very presence of the calamities; to live amid them, as long as they last, in the consciousness that we are, held and sheltered by the Lord, and can therefore remain in the midst of them, so long as they continue, without any hurt.

For forty days and nights, the Saviour was kept in the presence of Satan in the wilderness, and that, under circumstances of special trial, His human nature being weakened by want of food and rest. The furnace was heated seven times more than it was wont to be heated, but the three Hebrew children were kept a season amid its flames as calm and composed in the presence of the tyrant’s last appliances of torture, as they were in the presence of himself before their time of deliverance came. And the livelong night did Daniel sit among the lions, and when he was taken up out of the den, ‘no manner of hurt was found upon him, because he believed in his God.’

They dwelt in the presence of the enemy, because they dwelt in the presence of God” (Streams in the Desert).

Sometimes, God heals His children, but sometimes God allows His children to suffer so that they may know the special sweetness of the presence of God in those dark days.

Sometimes, God delivers us from trials, but mostly He walks with us through those trials so that we may know how much His strength is perfected in the middle of our weakness.

God never promised us a way out of tribulations and hardships, but He did promise a way through. He promised to be near to the broken-hearted and crushed in spirit. He promised to be with us and never leave us or forsake us, even in the worst of circumstances.

“Our waiting is always shaped by alertness to the Word. It is waiting in the knowledge that someone wants to address us. The question is, are we home? Are we at our address, ready to respond to the doorbell? We need to wait together, to keep each other at home spiritually, so that when the Word comes it can become flesh in us. That is why the Book of God is always in the midst of those who gather. We read the Word so that the Word can become flesh and have a whole new life in us” (Henri Nouwen).

Tomorrow, how will you not only hear the Word but obey it? How will you be transformed by it and weave it into the daily fabric of your lives?

Lord, help us not to be hearers only who go away unchanged but doers who are radically transformed by the same power that raised Jesus the Incarnate Word from the dead.

Amen.

The Christmas season for me is always a time of reflection. For some reason, this time of year brings to mind all those I love who are no longer with me (including the grumpy little feline pictured above).

There’s a hint of sadness, but there’s also a fair amount of gratitude that I was able to know these people and pets and be blessed by them. There’s a little regret that I didn’t make more time for them, but there’s also a peaceful assurance that I will see them again one day.

As surely as death is inevitable for everyone, I know that one day God in Jesus will wipe away every tear from all our eyes. What awaits is worth any loss or sacrifice or sorrow we’ve ever known.

Christmas is a reminder that at the darkest time of the year, hope is born again.

Well, it’s really Thanksgiving. But somehow that has turned into National Stuff Your Face with Turkey Day. We’ve lost sight about what this holiday is really about.

It really is about gratitude. It all started with those pilgrims who were thankful to still be alive after a treacherous journey across the sea and a brutal winter that followed. They were shell-shocked and grieving for all those they had lost, but grateful to God that they weren’t all dead.

So Happy Gratitude Day. May we be known as a thankful people as opposed to an entitled people or a complaining people. Give thanks on this day of all days for the incredible gift of life.

I think that is what is referred to as a 2X4 truth– the kind that smacks you upside the head.

How many days do I complain and whine and forget my blessings? How many times have I become so caught up in my first world problems that I lose sight that so many have it way worse than I do.

I didn’t wake up hungry– I had at least one good meal yesterday. I’m not in any danger of dying from hunger or malnutrition like so many around the world are.

I didn’t wake up in the middle of a war zone like much of the world’s population.

I didn’t have to practice my faith in secret, afraid that someone might snitch on me and get me arrested for my beliefs. I don’t live in a place where Christianity is illegal and proclaiming my faith could cost me my life.

My bad days are better than a lot of people’s good days. In fact, there are lots of people who dream about having a day as good as one of my “bad” days because they get clean water, food, shelter, clothing, security, and life.

Gratitude helps me see my life as the gift it is and not the burden I think it is when my thinking gets skewed. Giving thanks takes what I have and makes it more than enough.