Not Of This World

"But after he had considered this, an angel  of the Lord appeared to him in a dream  and said, 'Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.  She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.'   All this took place to fulfill  what the Lord had said through the prophet: ' The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel'  (which means 'God with us')." (Matthew 1: 20-23) Today is Christmas! The day we celebrate the birth of Jesus. Whenever a baby is born, there is often a lot of talk about their name. And so, today I will write about some of the names ascribed to Jesus.  Messiah.  "Messiah" means annointed one  in Hebrew. In Jewish culture, an annointed one could refer to a king, high priest, or prophet. In Jewish tradition, the Messiah was expected t...

If someone put Charles Dickens and Christmas together in the same sentence, most of us would assume that they're talking about A Christmas Carol , one of the most iconic of Christmas stories. But Sinclair Ferguson in his book Child in the Manger  suggests that Dickens wrote another piece that better represents Christmas: the first line of A Tale of Two Cities : "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."* Normally, advent reflections are about joy, or wonder, or faith, or hope. But today I am going to talk about sorrow. Today I will talk about how Christmas is sometimes the worst of times.  I've heard people say that the ER is busiest on Christmas. That suicide attempts are the most frequent at the holidays. Up here in the Northern hemisphere, the lack of sunlight wreaks havoc on emotions. But, on a deeper level, the holidays have a very good flair for making people feel lonely. When you are surrounded by family, sometimes the people who are missing sta...

Lately, every year, around this time, we start seeing people post angry rants on social media about a so-called "War on Christmas." This is especially ironic, considering that, on the first Christmas, angels appeared to the shepherds proclaiming peace ( Luke 2:8-20 ), celebrating the birth of the one who was called the Prince of Peace ( Isaiah 9:6-7 ). A friend of mine shared on facebook a month or so ago an article on The Guardian , chronicling the backlash against a British grocery chain's Christmas ads. One of the issues people had with the commercial was their portrayal of a Muslim family celebrating Christmas. At first, I have to admit, I did think it was a bit odd... and I started to wonder why  it didn't seem incongruous to everyone to have people of one faith celebrating a holiday from another faith, when I realized something. Christmas is really three different holidays that have all got mixed up. I don't mean Hanukkah and Kwanzaa; I mean three differ...

My mom still asks me every year if I want an advent calendar, and, of course, I say yes. Who would turn down chocolate? Especially since she's taken to buying me the Lindor advent calendars, the last few years! But advent is more than an excuse to eat chocolate each day. Advent is a celebration of the anticipation of the coming of Christ, both His first coming (as a baby, at the first Christmas), and His foretold second coming, which is yet to come.  And, honestly, that's my favourite part of Christmas. The anticipation!  The gifts and the family traditions are nice in and of themselves, but they are that much sweeter because of the time I have spent looking forward to them, remembering and reveling in the feelings of Christmases past, and looking forward to celebrating again.  The first Christmas, too, was greatly anticipated. There are prophecies all throughout the Old Testament, all recorded centuries earlier (one non-exhaustive list can be found here...

Why do I try so hard sometimes to convince people of what I believe? God is certainly able to defend Himself, if He is who I think He is. And, in fact, He didn't even always try to do so... In John 6 , Jesus gives a teaching that His disciples find a little hard to swallow. When some of the disciples left Him, He did not run after them or beg the rest to stay. Instead, He turned to those that remained and asked, "You do not want to leave too, do you?" (John 6: 67).  In Luke 15 , Jesus tells the famous parable of the prodigal son. When they tell this story, most people focus on how the father, who represents God, welcomes back his long-lost son with open arms. Not many people pay attention to the beginning, when the son asks his father for his inheritance early--basically saying that all he wanted from his father was his money, and that he wished his father were dead--and the father freely gives it to him and lets his son go. Although he wishes his son would stay--as ...

I've been taking swing dance lessons the last few years, and one thing I've learned is about the mechanics of lead-follow dances. In a dance, the lead "suggests," they guide, they build up momentum to make it natural, easy, for you to go in a certain way. But you don't have to follow their suggestions. In fact, sometimes (oftentimes even) there's miscommunications. As a spectator, you might not even be able to tell when there was a miscommunication and the follower did something unexpected. If the lead is good, even the follower might not know, because a good lead matches their follow, and meets them where they are. There's an ongoing debate in theological thinking between   predestination --the idea that God has set out your path for you already--and   free will. The predestination camp is bolstered by Bible verses like the following: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them,  and I will raise them up at the last day."  (Joh...

Have you ever heard a debate where the two sides seem to be talking past each other? Each side presents their argument, and although everyone thinks they're arguing about the same thing, something doesn't quite connect. I saw this in a set of papers we were required to read for the Analysis and Argumentation course (nicknamed A&A) in our department .  These papers were part of an ongoing conversation, and included specific replies to each others' arguments. But one of the most surprising parts of these papers is how much trouble they had finding common ground. One of the things we talked about while discussing these papers in class was that they couldn't come to a consensus because they never realized that they were working with different underlying assumptions. One of the authors assumed language worked a certain way, while the other assumed it worked another way, but neither one came right out and explained what they were assuming. It was only by reading betwe...

Read Part 1  here . This past week was the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, when Martin Luther famously posted his 95 theses , a list of topics of debate that had been bothering him. He was not expecting to start a new denomination of churches, he just wanted to start a conversation about some problematic aspects of the Medieval Catholic Church. I wonder if he would have still posted them if he knew that this one act would splinter the Church and result in the loss of millions* of lives? Luther posted those theses because he saw a need for reform in the Catholic church, and he was not alone--other contemporaries of his, such as Erasmus, were also calling for reformation within the Church. Eventually even the leadership of the Catholic church recognized a need for reform, and initiated a Counter-Reformation, beginning with the Council of Trent in 1545. But it was too late. The Church had already splintered. Pandora's Box had been opened. The  documentary series ...