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Welcome to Christmas Vignettes 2020, a short daily reflection on Christmas and its meaning for Christians If Christmas is about God the divine coming into the world through Jesus Christ the Son of God, there’s a basic question that floats through the air. The question is, “With what purpose does he come to our midst?” What is he here to do? Does he come in peace or does he bring a sword?  Peace on earth and mercy mild God and sinners reconciled! There’s an old saying, I can’t remember exactly how it goes. But it’s something like, “When the pastor comes to the dinner party, the dinner table falls silent”. I really don’t think it’s true anymore, because these days no one cares what the pastor thinks of them. That’s fine, I’m not salty about that or anything. But the principle is, when someone truly great comes by, your awe can quickly turn into fear. “Will I make a fool of myself if I open my mouth? What will they think of me? If only they knew my secrets, I would be sunk!” Would you...

Welcome to Christmas Vignettes 2020, a short daily reflection on Christmas and its meaning for Christians How can the infinite touch the finite? How can the eternal break into the here and now? The Creator of everything, the one who sustains all of life, makes it rain, waters the fields and makes plants grow, the King of heaven and earth made his dwelling place among humankind. Can our minds even handle such a thing?  Veiled in fresh the Godhead see Hail the incarnate Deity One of the central mysteries of the Christian faith is that of the incarnation. How can it be that God became human? Well here’s another question. What would a living relationship with a transcendent God look like without the incarnation? What kind of relationship can an ant have with a human? And yet both ants and humans, theologically speaking, are in the same category of being: they are both creatures. But imagine being the God of the universe, transcendent in every manner, wholly separate and unlike anything...

Imagine that. Observing Christmas after a year that the world’s just had. Getting excited about a birth in a year when we’ve seen so much death. Celebrating life and light in a world plunged in darkness. And in despair I bowed my head There is no peace on earth I said For hate is strong and mocks the song Of peace on earth, good will to men What can I write to get convince you about the sorrow of the world? Should I point to the stats and data of global Covid deaths? Do I wax poetic about the rise of authoritarianism in countries across the world? Or is this completely unnecessary, like convincing a fish that water is wet? What might be better is for you to think about what ways that death and pain has touched you personally this year. How have you suffered? Advent is a time of longing and anticipation. Christmas is a time of longing fulfilled. It’s about the light breaking into the darkness, the dawn coming over the horizon, late rains pouring over an arid and thirsty land. It’s a tim...

Welcome to Christmas Vignettes 2020, a short daily reflection on Christmas and its meaning for Christians Evil is not a real thing the way Good is. I’m not saying that Evil is not real at all, I mean that it doesn’t have substance or meaning quite in the same way that Good does. Evil has no substance on its own, it’s the perversion of the actual thing. So for example, lies are a perversion of truth, adultery is a perversion of holy matrimony, and death is the perversion or undoing of life itself.  If this is the case, then it tells us something about the concepts of vengeance and justice. Vengeance is justice perverted. It is justice tainted with wrath, bloodlust, and brutality.  Human vengeance is the opposite of God’s justice. God’s justice is final, but vengeance is perpetual and endless. God’s justice is fair, it renders each their due, but human vengeance is unbalanced and disproportionate. A while ago, I read an article about an Albanian teenager who has spent his entire...

Welcome to Christmas Vignettes 2020, a short daily reflection on Christmas and its meaning for Christians Can I ask you an honest question? And do you promise to think about it and answer it for yourself? My question is, do you ache in your heart to be heard? Do you need someone to listen to you? And not just any old someone, but someone significant?  Within me I have a hunger, a longing so strong that it’s like a pain I feel within the deepest part of myself. It’s the longing not to live anonymously, as if I were a ghost that temporarily haunts the earth and then disappears forever like a morning mist. I want to be real. I don’t want to just be , I want to be, meaningfully . And the only way that I can be such is by being known by someone that truly matters. I need to be present to someone else, someone that will be with me. How does that saying go... If a tree falls in the forest, but no one is there to hear it… If I exist, but only in isolation, do I even exist at all? Can you u...

  O come, O come, Emmanuel And ransom captive Israel That mourns in lonely exile here Until the Son of God appear If there was a hymn that deserves the title of black sheep song for the Christmas season, it would be O Come O Come Emmanuel . Almost every other Christmas song is sung in a cheery positive key, and then there’s this bummer of a song; slow, draggy, depressing, dismal.  It’s the perfect Advent song. A couple of things you might like to know. Prior to Jesus’ arrival the region of Israel had a long and aching history of conquest and subjugation. Poor, tiny, backwater Israel, built geopolitically speaking on an active volcano. Tucked away on a narrow strip of land between perennial powerhouse empires: The mighty Egyptian nation to the south, and whatever people was latest in power along the Fertile Crescent (modern-day Iraq), be they the Babylonians, the Assyrians, or the Persians. They could never sleep soundly, mighty kingdoms were always at their doorstep, waiting ...

(Welcome to Christmas Vignettes 2020, a short daily reflection on Christmas and its meaning for Christians) There are parts of the Bible that are just quotable, perhaps because they are beautiful or inspire confidence. “God so loved the world that he gave his only son”. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want”. And there are parts of the Bible that we will read and think to ourselves, “mm, yes… that is God’s inspired Word. I know that in theory, but when I read it, I don’t necessarily feel very inspired.” I think one such passage would be the genealogy of Jesus Christ.  This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham: Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar… (Matthew 1.1-17) It goes on exactly like that for a while. A genealogy is a list of your ancestors. The Christmas story as told in the Gospel of Matthew starts off ...