"Herbert suddenly realized he would need to update his Facebook status."
Mary was a pregnant teen out of wedlock. Her betrothal to Joseph was not the same as a legitimate marriage. When Mary became pregnant with Jesus and made her pregnancy known to Joseph, he was rightly shocked and wanted to break the betrothal for he was known as “a righteous man.” Mary’s virtue certainly would be questioned and scorned; she and the child would be poor and dependent as beggars. Joseph’s reputation would be defiled, and the son born to Mary would be considered illegitimate (a back-handed insult thrown at Jesus by the Pharisees in John 8:41). Faced with Joseph’s disappointment, with her culture’s insults and rejection, and her son’s future as illegitimate and, therefore, very limited in society, Mary says to Gabriel after his announcements to her, “I am the Lord’s servant…. May it be to be as you have said.” Or, as a teen might say today, “Bring it on!”
Gutsy, obedient, surrendered, undoubtedly anxious, Mary takes her place in the Christmas story. God’s plan meant public disgrace for her and for Joseph. Matthew writes that the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph to encourage Joseph to stay committed to Mary in the face of the societal rejection to come. Joseph meets his own crisis of faith and he, too, surrenders to God’s plan. Yes, a lowly carpenter becomes (step)father to the King of Kings.
Knowing this, I find my heart welling up to shout “Ave, Maria!” You go, girl! And “Ave, Joseph!” You da man! For it is by your tough obedience in the face of your society’s scorn that Jesus (“Yahweh saves!”) was brought into being and raised as an obedient son. I imagine that Jesus often looked lovingly at Mary, thanking the Father for her gritty perseverance in birthing and raising Jesus. I imagine Jesus working next to Joseph and thinking that this man lost his standing in the community in order for me to have a life among my people. “Ave, Jesus!” Hail, Jesus, you come from a very good family.
I've been meditating on the words to one of the best loved Christmas hymns: Charles Wesley's "Hark, The Herald Angels Sing." There is an entire course in Biblical Theology, a summary of Bible truth, in the words to this Carol.
Is the Pro-Life side winning in America?"In "The Abortion Distortion -- Just How Pro-choice is America, Really?," writer Jennifer Senior offers an incredibly insightful and important essay on the moral status of abortion in the American mind. Senior is clearly writing to a New York readership -- expected to be overwhelmingly pro-choice and settled in a posture of abortion advocacy."After quoting from and discussing Senior's article, Mohler concludes:
"She also understands the great generational shift taking place on the issue. She recognizes that the current generation of younger voters "is the most pro-life to come along since the generation born during the Great Depression." Why? This same generation is the first to grow up with ultrasound images taped to the refrigerator door. Their understanding of the fetus is dramatically different from those who never had to face those images. Furthermore, Senior also raises the fascinating insight that the big technological advance experienced by this generation was IVF -- a technology that allowed having babies rather than not having them. This generation of adolescents and young adults understand the issue in terms of infant human life. They do not see a mere fetus, they recognize a baby. Nancy Keenan of NARAL is cited as saying that the biggest defenders of abortion are now a "menopausal militia."Now more than ever, we should keep praying for a shift of the American public and corporate conscience on the issue of abortion. Progress has been made: let's press on to complete victory.
Senior also deals with the troubled moral conscience of the pro-choice movement and abortion providers with remarkable candor. She reports that abortion counselors "will also tell you that the stigma attached to the procedure is worse than it's been in years." She cites Charlotte Taft, operator of a Dallas abortion clinic, who had knowledge to a reporter that "women knew abortion is a kind of killing." Jeannie Ludlow is cited for her uncomfortable at the in seeing repeat-abortion patients. The horror and reality of late-term abortions is documented -- even as the continued "right" right to such procedures is advocated.
By any measure, Jennifer Senior has written one of the most honest, revealing, insightful, and important articles on abortion to appear in recent history. At the same time, it is one of the most troubling...."
If you love to sing or listen to the Hallelujah Chorus at Christmas time, read Ben Witherington's Handel's Messiah--- the Story behind the Classic “Some think of the gospel as so slender it does nothing more than get us into the kingdom. After that the real work of transformation begins. But a biblically-faithful understanding of the gospel shows that gospel to be rich, powerful, the wisdom of God and the power of God, all we need in Christ. It is the gospel that saves us, transforms us, conforms us to Christ, prepares us for the new heaven and the new earth, establishes our relations with fellow-believers, teaches us how to work and serve so as to bring glory to God, calls forth and edifies the church, and so forth. This gospel saves — and ’salvation’ means more than just ‘getting in,’ but transformed wholeness.”
- D. A. Carson, “Four Questions with D. A. Carson“
Hat Tip: The Gospel that Saves « Of First Importance
"I’ve learned by experience that many Christians cannot distinguish the promptings of the Holy Spirit from the accusations of Satan. The difference is this: The Holy Spirit convicts us for sins that we have been unwilling to face in God’s presence; Satan makes us feel guilty for sins that are already under the blood of Christ — that is, for sins that we have already confessed. The Holy Spirit reminds us of our sins before we are cleansed; Satan continues to remind us of them after we are cleansed."
~Erwin Lutzer in the December 5, 2009 devotional reading from Our Journey
Quoted at: Voices in My Head: Discernment « Thinking Out Loud
“If we are deeply moved by the sight of his love for us, it detaches our hearts from other would-be saviors. We stop trying to redeem ourselves through our pursuits and relationships, because we are already redeemed. We stop trying to make others into saviors, because we have a Savior.”- Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods (New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2009), 45.
"Christian theology traditionally sees 'eschatology' as a subdivision of systematics dealing with the return of Jesus, judgement, heaven, and hell. It is typically set aside in a box of its own, separate from the theology concerned with the story of Jesus' first coming.
Advent, by bringing the first and second advents into doxological communion, warns us against hermetically sealing off eschatology in such a way. I think that Greg Beale was spot-on in his essay 'The Eschatological Conception of New Testament Theology' (1997) when he observed that the whole of NT theology is eschatology.
Advent alerts us to what I yesterday called the two-phase eschatology of the NT (in fact, I think that this is over simplistic as the place of AD 70 also need factoring in along with the fall of Rome, etc.). It makes us recognize that the coming of God-in-Christ is an eschatological event from first to last. It teaches us that we need to see Christmas as an end-time event in the story of God's engagement with creation.
Christmas-as-eschatology.
I wonder what light that might shed?"
"Much of the impotence of American churches is tied to a profound ignorance and apathy about justification. Our people live in a fog of guilt. Or just as bad, they think being a better person is all God requires. Even a cursory look at church history in the past few hundred years shows that the church is at its best and most vibrant when justification through faith alone is heard from her pulpits and clearly articulated by her most prominent spokesmen.Me too!
After so much time and so many controversies, there are still plenty of Protestants – be they Lutheran, Presbyterian, Baptist, Anglican, or Pentecostal – who still believe justification is the doctrine on which the church stands or falls. I guess I'm one of them."
Another great Luther quote:“When I preach I regard neither doctors nor magistrates, of whom I have above forty in my congregation; I have all my eyes on the servant maids and on the children. And if the learned men are not well pleased with what they hear, well, the door is open.”
"It's the supreme art of the devil that he can make the law out of the gospel. If I can hold on to the distinction between law and gospel, I can say to him any and every time that he should kiss my backside. . . . Once I debate about what I have done and left undone, I am finished. But if I reply on the basis of the gospel, 'The forgiveness of sins covers it all,' I have won."
-- Martin Luther
“To the extent that we remains pilgrims in this life, the gospel will remain strange even to us. Until the day we die, we will struggle to believe the bad news and Good News that God announces to us. We do not just naturally think that we are born in sin, spiritually dead, helpless, and unable to lift a finger to save ourselves or impress a holy God. As a result, it does not just occur to us that our greatest need is to be redeemed, justified, regenerated, sanctified, and glorified by God’s saving work in his Son and by his Spirit.
If the ‘Good News’ that we proclaim is determined by what we already know—or think we know—it isn’t really news. Limited to whatever we already think is relevant, practical, and useful, the message will never be surprising, disorienting, and troubling. It can never throw us off balance or cause us reevaluate our priorities and interpretations of reality.”
—Michael Horton, The Gospel-Driven Life (Grand Rapids, MI; Baker Books, 2009), 19
Did you know that books are the perfect Christmas gifts? This list of reasons why books are the best gifts is from CROSS-eyed: 5 Reasons to Give Books for Christmas:"1. Good books tend to be gifts that last a long time. People don't throw away good books. They pass them on to their children, grandchildren, and church libraries. Sweaters, ties, and fruitcakes are relatively short-lived.Anybody listening. Hint, hint. I mean, just in case you might want to give me a meaningful and lasting Christmas gift. A link to my Amazon Wish list is prominently located on this blog site.
2. Good books are used by God to change people's lives. I have never heard of someone's life being changed by an ornament, an atomic clock, or a gift card to the GAP.
3. Think of the cumulative effect of giving books for presents. If you give a certain person a book every year for 50 years, you help them build a library.
4. Good books communicate care for a person. In giving someone a book you like, you are communicating something of how that book has helped you.
5. Good books tend to open conversations about spiritual things easily."
My friend Elysa at Musings from Graceland has written a thoughtful and moving discussion on World Aids Day, and how the Lord changed her heart about AIDS victims through here missionary connections in Swaziland, Africa She served as a missionary there in the 80's, her daughter went there on a mission trip last summer, and the family has maintained connections there.Swaziland had been flooded with disease and death as a result of HIV/AIDS. When I had lived there in the 1980's, no one talked about HIV/AIDS. Well, almost no one. I remember one missionary doctor telling my brother that the HIV/AIDS rate among the general population was the same as the rate of infection among the prostitutes. I stored that fact away in my brain somewhere but it didn't seem real as I didn't personally know of anyone affected. And at that time, the rate was still relatively low. But fast forward nearly 20 years and Swaziland had become the nation with the highest HIV/AIDS rate and the lowest life expectancy in the world...and as a result, a rapidly growing orphan population as parents began, as described by a Swazi pastor, "dropping like flies".
Estimates of the infection rate range from 1/4 to nearly 1/2 of the population. 1/3 seems like a safe bet. One out of three!
That hit me hard. I realized that the preschool children I had sang silly songs with and the youth girls that I had hosted sleepovers for at my house were among these
infected. And because so few are being adequately treated, most of them are
dying horrific deaths. My babies. My students. My fellow church members. My
neighbors. Dying, dying, dying.
"You can love your theology all you like but your theology will never love you(A good thing for Theology geeks like me to remember)
back. "
Robin Parry at Theological Scribbles: Thought for the Day: putting theology in its place
"Keller is on a promotional tour for Counterfeit Gods. Over the phone, in a car on the way to the St. Louis airport, he’s unpacking the Redeemer theology for me. His belief system is not the fundamentalist strain running through many of the Bible Belt megachurches—the “saved” us versus the “heathen” them. Nor is it the new-school “be a winner, praise the Lord,” Christian self-esteem-building ideology of Joel Osteen. Keller advocates something of a third option. He wants to call people’s attention to the emptiness of a way of living that overvalues worldly achievement and to help them see the spiritual benefits of accepting Jesus Christ, and all he stands for, as their savior. But Keller wants to do that in a way that’s not intellectually insulting or morally hectoring. What he refers to as “idols,” he says, are the things we’re so wrapped up in, it’s as if we worship them as gods, in place of the one true God. Traditional vices like sex and drink can be idols, he says, but more insidious can be traditional virtues like hard work and family—“good” things that we can mistake for “ultimate” ones. “The way you can tell your love for something has turned idolatrous is that you basically destroy the thing you love,” he says. “Overwork often leads to destruction—people who overreach and cheat or have health breakdowns. If you put too much on your children, your kids can be crushed by your expectations for their happiness and success.”"
It’s a Sunday evening at Redeemer Presbyterian Church, and the pews are full. Redeemer is a conservative Evangelical Christian congregation, but the parishioners don’t fit the easy Bible Belt stereotypes. They are a cross-section of yuppie Manhattanites—doctors, bankers, lawyers, artists, actors, and designers, some of them older, most of them in their twenties or thirties. The peppy Christian-pop anthems, performed by Broadway-caliber singers and working jazz professionals, seem to go by in double time, the faster the better to get to the main event, the weekly sermon, delivered by pastor Tim Keller.Keller is a 59-year-old bald, large-framed man, dressed today in a blue blazer and gray slacks. For those expecting hellfire and brimstone, the first surprise is the voice. Keller doesn’t speak in theatrical, over-the-top tones but in a soft, conversational manner, as if he’s sharing a confidence with a friend. For today’s sermon on a passage from the Old Testament Book of Habakkuk, in which a minor Jewish prophet rails about the misery brought on by the Babylonians in the seventh century B.C., Keller jumps to the recession and what he sees as shameful finger-pointing by both liberals and conservatives. “The Bible doesn’t let you do that,” Keller intones from the pulpit. “The Bible is nowhere near as simplistic, dare I say it, as either the New York Times’ or The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page. You can write that down. Put it on your blog, I don’t care.”
