Immanuel means ‘God with us.’ And not in the sense that God just showed up or arrived on the scene. A thousand times no. In spite of the fact it changed everything, the birth of Jesus didn’t technically create a new reality for God or us; rather, it was simply and...
Once in our world, a stable had something in it that was bigger than our whole world.
If Christmas is about being happy, jolly, and untroubled and therefore able to celebrate, few can participate. But Advent is about broken people in a broken world, yearning for a long-promised redemption.
Love came down at Christmas,love all lovely, love divine;love was born at Christmas--star and angels gave the sign. Worship we the Godhead,love incarnate, love divine;worship we our Jesus--but wherewith for sacred sign? Love shall be our token,love be yours and love...
The intensity and strain that many of us bring to Christmas must suggest to some onlookers that, on the whole, Christians do not seem to have gotten the point of it. Probably few of us have the faith or the nerve to tamper with hallowed Christmas traditions on a large...
When we celebrate Christmas we are celebrating that amazing time when the Word that shouted all the the galaxies into being, limited all power, and for love of us came to us in the powerless body of a human baby. My faith is based on this incredible act of love, and...
My favorite lines about Christ's "Second Coming" are in the story "A Christmas Memory," by Truman Capote. In this autobiographical piece of great delicacy, the author describes his last Christmas with the woman who brought him up. The author is seven at the time; she...
Basically, you can translate “the kingdom” as “the Big Picture,”… The kingdom of God, or reign of God, is how things objectively, truly and finally are. Jesus is always inviting us to live in the final and full picture, and not to get lost in momentary dramas, hurts...
Kingdom people are history makers. They break through the small kingdoms of this world to an alternative and much larger world, God’s full creation. People who are still living in the false self are history stoppers. They use God and religion to protect their own...
Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comesWherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,The bird of dawning singeth all night long,And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to...