This week is going to be one of those weeks to be sure. Yesterday I received a phone call from my dad letting me know that my grandma (the one I call Omi) has started to walk down the road that will ultimately lead her into Jesus’ arms. It could be days. It could be weeks. It could even be months. There’s only one person who knows and he’s the reason we can fear no more.
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As we journey closer to that joy-filled morning, we pause and reflect on what this new family went through to give us something to celebrate. This week’s Music Monday is another favorite of many and has undoubtedly been sung in churches around the world as part of their Christmas celebrations. But what do the words mean? Where was Jesus born and why was he born there?
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It seems I find an author and stick with them for a bit, and this week’s book review is no different. This week we take a look at Francis Chan’s book Crazy Love. This book as been around for several years but is definitely worth the read. As I’ve explained the premise of Crazy Love and other selections of his to several people recently, his books have become a punch in the gut for the comfortable and complacent, Christian church in North America.
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Why do we celebrate Christmas? Why do we gather around a tree with our family and give each other gifts? Why is it ok for a large man in a red suit to invite children to sit on his lap and no one finds that wrong? Why is it that we tend to fill our churches on Christmas more than on the Sunday after Christmas? This week in our Adventually series we address the idea of love by asking the question why.
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As children we focused on getting presents! And it really was all about the presents and the bows and the stockings and the fun new toys. But as I got older, I started to act like Christmas was still about the presents. Just in a little different way. I started to treat Christmas like it was all about how much I could give to my family and friends at Christmas time. But that’s not the point either.
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This week we take on another one of those old favorites for our Music Monday. Sung in churches around the world is the hymn O Come, O Come Emmanuel. The focus of our song this week is to help us see the waiting that takes place inside all of us as Christmas draws ever closer.
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Forgotten God is written by Francis Chan and although I’ve had this book on my shelf for years I just made time to finish it. And I don’t know why I waited so long! Chan has a way of just being straight about his faith. He’s not trying to make you believe something you don’t. He’s not trying to win people to Jesus with this book. As a matter of fact, if you’re not a Jesus follower, then I probably wouldn’t pick this one up as your first connection to the church world!
Continue readingThis year as we journey toward Christmas we are looking at Christmas from different angles. Our theme is It’s all about the presence. Yes I know. It’s a fun play on words. But it should get us thinking a bit. We live in a world that thinks Christmas is all about the presents when in actuality they’re just a few letters off! So if Christmas is all about the presence, can we have Christmas without all of the normal stuff?
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In the start of the Gospel of John, we read a peculiar little account. But before we dig into the meaning of the first few verses of this book, let’s take a quick glance at why this book exists in the first place. In the New Testament of the Bible there are four letters known as Gospels. These four books account for the life of Jesus from different perspectives. They certainly say the same thing just with different thrusts. Matthew is writing to Jewish people who were expecting a king so he writes mostly about what Jesus said. Mark is writing to Roman people who saw Jesus do some pretty amazing things, so he’ll focus on what Jesus did. Luke writes to a guy named Theophilus, and he’ll spend his account focusing on what Jesus felt. And not to be left out, John writes to anyone and everyone, and he’ll focus on who Jesus was.
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It’s that time of year again! We can’t stop it if we try, so we may as well jump on the Christmas preparation train and see where it leads. This week for our Music Monday time we’ll pick up an old familiar hymn. This hymn was first written as a poem and later put into song form about fourteen years later. The poem turned song was intended to help the Christian to understand teh power of the reality of Christmas. It demonstrates one of the core truths of the Christian faith – the incarnation.
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