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 to be

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 ).