It's been a tough year for a lot of us. My dad had a pacemaker put in, then had complications. Several of my friends have
Showing posts with label meaning of Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label meaning of Christmas. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
What Now?
Christmas is a time of tremendous joy for the McCulleys, as we look at the Son of God, who took on human flesh (that's the Incarnation) to join us to God and give us eternal life. Sharing that joy with others is our main focus during this time. But, we just finished putting away all the Christmas decorations and took the tree out to be turned into compost. So, what now? Mild depression? Back to business-as-usual?
What now? What is our response to the great gift of God for us, his only Son, Jesus the Christ? There should be only one response, if we consider carefully: to live out, in every possible way, our true being and purpose in life as God has revealed it. Here's a prayer from the journal of Susanna Wesley, mother of John and Charles Wesley, who grounded them in God in their youth: "Help me, Lord, to remember that religion is not to be confined to the church, or [prayer] closet, nor exercised only in prayer and meditation, but that everywhere I am in Thy presence. So may my every word and action have a moral content...May all the happenings of my life prove useful and beneficial to me. May all things instruct me and afford me an opportunity of exercising some virtue and daily learning and growing toward Thy likeness...Amen." (Quoted by Richard Foster in Streams of Living Water, from Donald L. Kline's book, Susanna Wesley: God's Catalyst for Revival.)
What now? God has called us with a holy calling as his dear children (Eph 1:4) and is blessing us spiritually (Eph. 1:3). He is everywhere, at every second, so we know God is in every moment of our lives. We don't have to "bring God along" as we go somewhere; he is already with us. But if we're not aware of God's presence and power, we end up stumbling around in life, being aware only of our own strength, and tripped up by our weaknesses.
Let me suggest a simple prayer to remind us of God's presence in every second of our daily living: "Lord God, help me see you in everything and hear your direction for me. Let your love fill me so I can love everyone in your name. Amen." That's a place to begin.
What now? Live every moment of every day being fully aware of God's love and purpose for you.
What now? What is our response to the great gift of God for us, his only Son, Jesus the Christ? There should be only one response, if we consider carefully: to live out, in every possible way, our true being and purpose in life as God has revealed it. Here's a prayer from the journal of Susanna Wesley, mother of John and Charles Wesley, who grounded them in God in their youth: "Help me, Lord, to remember that religion is not to be confined to the church, or [prayer] closet, nor exercised only in prayer and meditation, but that everywhere I am in Thy presence. So may my every word and action have a moral content...May all the happenings of my life prove useful and beneficial to me. May all things instruct me and afford me an opportunity of exercising some virtue and daily learning and growing toward Thy likeness...Amen." (Quoted by Richard Foster in Streams of Living Water, from Donald L. Kline's book, Susanna Wesley: God's Catalyst for Revival.)
What now? God has called us with a holy calling as his dear children (Eph 1:4) and is blessing us spiritually (Eph. 1:3). He is everywhere, at every second, so we know God is in every moment of our lives. We don't have to "bring God along" as we go somewhere; he is already with us. But if we're not aware of God's presence and power, we end up stumbling around in life, being aware only of our own strength, and tripped up by our weaknesses.
Let me suggest a simple prayer to remind us of God's presence in every second of our daily living: "Lord God, help me see you in everything and hear your direction for me. Let your love fill me so I can love everyone in your name. Amen." That's a place to begin.
What now? Live every moment of every day being fully aware of God's love and purpose for you.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Christmas Bonus
Some companies give out a Christmas bonus (for the PC, a holiday bonus), or if they're technically driven, a performance bonus. So here's something all of us can enjoy; one more point about the miracle of Christmas -- a 'Christmas bonus' if you will.
To paraphrase Max Lucado, God went through all this just for you. If you were the only human on earth, the eternal Son of God would have come into human flesh with you, to be Immanuel, bringing humanity back into unity with God. He would have died to pay for all your sins by his perfect, sinless sacrifice. The hundreds of your sins would all be washed away by his sinless blood, and his rising from the dead on the first day of the week would have been your confidence of eternal resurrection.
Even if it was only for you. God loves that much!
Want some scriptures to read about this? John 3:16, 1 John 3:16, 1 John 4:8, Romans 3:21-28, 6:23, 5:6-10, Eph. 1:3-5, for starters.
How's that for a Christmas bonus? This is one you can spend over, and over, and over...
To paraphrase Max Lucado, God went through all this just for you. If you were the only human on earth, the eternal Son of God would have come into human flesh with you, to be Immanuel, bringing humanity back into unity with God. He would have died to pay for all your sins by his perfect, sinless sacrifice. The hundreds of your sins would all be washed away by his sinless blood, and his rising from the dead on the first day of the week would have been your confidence of eternal resurrection.
Even if it was only for you. God loves that much!
Want some scriptures to read about this? John 3:16, 1 John 3:16, 1 John 4:8, Romans 3:21-28, 6:23, 5:6-10, Eph. 1:3-5, for starters.
How's that for a Christmas bonus? This is one you can spend over, and over, and over...
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
The Gospel -- A Scandal from the First
He was conceived by an unwed mother in a comparatively poor family. The scandal in her small town probably shamed her entire clan. Her fiance nearly broke off their engagement in shame. She didn't get a baby shower, because all her well-behaved friends deserted her. When the time came to deliver her baby, there was no midwife, no adoring friends to fight over who got to hold the new baby first, nobody to bring in meals for the new mother. Jesus' first look at our world took in the inside of a barn, which might even have been a cave hollowed out in the soft limestone, thick with cobwebs, dust and lamp smoke -- even worse than the kind of place Bob Vila sees on "This Old House."
Angels told people about this newborn king. But they didn't give their good news to the city fathers, or the local judges or priests or teachers, whose reputations could have generated welcome and notoriety for the newborn. Instead, the heavenly messengers gave the word to shepherds, who were not only smelly, but generally seen by the good townfolk as just barely on the right side of the law, not to be trusted. So even the first witnesses to the Messiah's birth were outcasts. What a scandal!
So it shouldn't have been any surprise, when Jesus started preaching, that he spent time with prostitutes, tax collectors, fishermen, and other disreputable types. When Jesus told the parable of the wedding banquet in Matthew 22, all the 'good and bad' of the town were invited to the party, because all people need the Father's love. He took heat from the religious establishment for getting too close to sinners. They accused him of the same kind of sins as those he was around, but they had it wrong. He was there to show all of them -- the religious posers and the honest sinners -- that Father God loved them, and the best way to do that was to spend time with them so they'd see as well as hear his message. And he said, plainly, in Luke 19:10 that he came "to seek and to save the lost." That was a scandal to the religious leaders, who assumed that good religious people should only be around other good religious people.
Why all this? Because if Jesus, the Son of God, had been born to a princess in a king's palace with royal attendants and gifts from Nordstrom's, and a scholarship to the best rabbinical school, then we could assume that he came only for the powerful and religious. But grace, by nature, is scandalous! God has adopted -- given complete forgiveness and acceptance into his own circle of love, without reservation -- to everyday sinners and losers like me and like you, through Jesus, freely. If you don't understand that scandalous grace, can we talk?
God's scandal of grace was made plain in Jesus. Now, most people don't believe God could possibly love somebody as messed up as them. I was in the front of the line on that one. But Jesus proved God loves us, by a humble birth in uncomfortable circumstances, and by scandalously accepting with open arms all the broken, messed-up people he could find. He already loves you, right where you are.
And that's the real meaning of Christmas.
Angels told people about this newborn king. But they didn't give their good news to the city fathers, or the local judges or priests or teachers, whose reputations could have generated welcome and notoriety for the newborn. Instead, the heavenly messengers gave the word to shepherds, who were not only smelly, but generally seen by the good townfolk as just barely on the right side of the law, not to be trusted. So even the first witnesses to the Messiah's birth were outcasts. What a scandal!
So it shouldn't have been any surprise, when Jesus started preaching, that he spent time with prostitutes, tax collectors, fishermen, and other disreputable types. When Jesus told the parable of the wedding banquet in Matthew 22, all the 'good and bad' of the town were invited to the party, because all people need the Father's love. He took heat from the religious establishment for getting too close to sinners. They accused him of the same kind of sins as those he was around, but they had it wrong. He was there to show all of them -- the religious posers and the honest sinners -- that Father God loved them, and the best way to do that was to spend time with them so they'd see as well as hear his message. And he said, plainly, in Luke 19:10 that he came "to seek and to save the lost." That was a scandal to the religious leaders, who assumed that good religious people should only be around other good religious people.
Why all this? Because if Jesus, the Son of God, had been born to a princess in a king's palace with royal attendants and gifts from Nordstrom's, and a scholarship to the best rabbinical school, then we could assume that he came only for the powerful and religious. But grace, by nature, is scandalous! God has adopted -- given complete forgiveness and acceptance into his own circle of love, without reservation -- to everyday sinners and losers like me and like you, through Jesus, freely. If you don't understand that scandalous grace, can we talk?
God's scandal of grace was made plain in Jesus. Now, most people don't believe God could possibly love somebody as messed up as them. I was in the front of the line on that one. But Jesus proved God loves us, by a humble birth in uncomfortable circumstances, and by scandalously accepting with open arms all the broken, messed-up people he could find. He already loves you, right where you are.
And that's the real meaning of Christmas.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
He's still talking to us
In Genesis 1, the Bible talks about God speaking the universe into existence. God spoke and it happened (verses 3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26). Then God spoke to the humans (verses 28 and 29) and gave instruction. He continues to speak in chapter 2, particularly verses 16 and 18. Now, it seems that the humans listened at first, and as long as they did, all was well. It was when they listened to the serpent, and believed him instead of God, that things went south.
And so it has gone, ever since. As I've written before, God talked to people like Noah, Abraham, and the prophet Moses, as well as kings and prophets after them. He has never really left us without knowing His will. But to make the speaking perfect, the Father sent the Son to be with us and show us the Father's heart. We can read in Hebrews 1:1-2, "Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets. And now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son."
How did the Father speak to us through the Son? In the Incarcation (God made flesh), we see many ways, verbal and non-verbal. For instance, the Son was born as a baby, expressing solidarity with humans in our weakness and helplessness and poverty. He was baptized to identify with our need for cleansing and to make our baptism perfectly valid. As a human, Jesus had to learn the scriptures; and as God, he taught the will of the Father that stands under and behind all the written word. Jesus gave up his life as a perfect sacrifice for our sins, in order to clear the way for our adoption by the Father; and was resurrected to show the Father's desire for us to join him in eternal happiness and peace.
The infant in the manger speaks to us. The young man in the Temple speaks to us. So do the Teacher and the Lamb and the risen Son. He's still talking to us through scripture and the Spirit's voice. It's all the one and same God speaking -- not one mysterious short-tempered God in the Old Testament and a new, nice and sweet Jesus in the New. It's the same will of God, the same love of God for his children, and the same faithfulness of God to his promises, that have spoken to us from Creation to now -- revealed, finally and fully, in the incarnate Son.
The Christmas season, for Christians, is not a time of spending money we don't have, to buy stuff we feel obligated to buy, for people we don't like, so they can take it all and exchange it on Monday for stuff they'd rather have anyway. Christmas teaches us to recognize the voice of God in the Son of God made flesh for us and with us. It teaches us that, by entering his creation, God has united his creation -- including all of us -- with himself forever. And that, we can celebrate with great joy!
And so it has gone, ever since. As I've written before, God talked to people like Noah, Abraham, and the prophet Moses, as well as kings and prophets after them. He has never really left us without knowing His will. But to make the speaking perfect, the Father sent the Son to be with us and show us the Father's heart. We can read in Hebrews 1:1-2, "Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets. And now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son."
How did the Father speak to us through the Son? In the Incarcation (God made flesh), we see many ways, verbal and non-verbal. For instance, the Son was born as a baby, expressing solidarity with humans in our weakness and helplessness and poverty. He was baptized to identify with our need for cleansing and to make our baptism perfectly valid. As a human, Jesus had to learn the scriptures; and as God, he taught the will of the Father that stands under and behind all the written word. Jesus gave up his life as a perfect sacrifice for our sins, in order to clear the way for our adoption by the Father; and was resurrected to show the Father's desire for us to join him in eternal happiness and peace.
The infant in the manger speaks to us. The young man in the Temple speaks to us. So do the Teacher and the Lamb and the risen Son. He's still talking to us through scripture and the Spirit's voice. It's all the one and same God speaking -- not one mysterious short-tempered God in the Old Testament and a new, nice and sweet Jesus in the New. It's the same will of God, the same love of God for his children, and the same faithfulness of God to his promises, that have spoken to us from Creation to now -- revealed, finally and fully, in the incarnate Son.
The Christmas season, for Christians, is not a time of spending money we don't have, to buy stuff we feel obligated to buy, for people we don't like, so they can take it all and exchange it on Monday for stuff they'd rather have anyway. Christmas teaches us to recognize the voice of God in the Son of God made flesh for us and with us. It teaches us that, by entering his creation, God has united his creation -- including all of us -- with himself forever. And that, we can celebrate with great joy!
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