two thoughts on christmas

the last two days i've read the christmas story from matthew and luke.  there were two things that struck me particularly.

[one]

i was really trying to get a good feel for the anticipation of the Christ.  i tried to imagine myself as a pre-Christ Jew.  God has been silent for 400 years.  i know that the Christ is supposed to be coming.  i've been trying to live in obedience to the Law.  i imagined that the excitement and anticipation in Israel must have been palpable.  

but then i then i thought about today.  i thought about how we still are expecting the second arrival of Christ.  i thought about how we have been waiting 2000! years.  i thought about how i have the holy spirit and yet i still don't always feel like God has spoken to me in a long time.  i thought of how i don't anticipate the second coming of Christ that much at all on a regular basis.

i realized that maybe the excitement wasn't there.

i realized that there were many religious people who were just going on with their normal lives as God was sending His Word to become flesh.

no wonder Jesus was born in a manger with only a couple of shepherds and gentiles as his visitors.

but, then there is simeon.

this is what the scriptures say about him:

"[he] was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him.  And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ."

this is a man who was longing for the Kingdom.  he was daily anticipating the arrival of the Christ.  and when He came he was ready!

oh, how i pray that we would be like simeon...daily anticipating the second coming of Christ.

[two]

as protestants, we have done a great disservice to mary.  in an effort to correct the near deification of mary by the roman catholics, i think we have overlooked her significance.

this is what was said about mary:

_an angel calls her "favored one" and then says, "you have found favor with God!"

_elizabeth says, "blessed are you among women"

mary herself has a brilliant poem called the magnificat:

"my soul magnifies the Lord,

and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

for he has looked on the

humble estate of his servant.

For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;

for he who is mighty has done great things for me,

and holy is his name.

And his mercy is for those who fear him

from generation to generation.

He has shown strength with his arm;

he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;

he has brought down the mighty from their thrones

and exalted those of humble estate;

he has filled the hungry with good things,

and the rich he has sent empty away.

He has helped his servant Israel,

in remembrance of his mercy,

as he spoke to our fathers,

to Abraham and to his offspring forever."

for me, the most significant piece is that out of all the women in the world God chose mary.  she was the one in whom God found favor.  she is the one considered worthy to bear the Christ child and rear him.

mary, mother of Jesus.

mother

of

Jesus

let those words sink in.

mary was the mother of the one we call savior.

she doesn't need to be worshipped, but we shouldn't negate her significance simply because others choose to do so.

as we celebrate jesus today, let us not overlook the sweet fact that God has chosen us, even in our humble estate, to play our part in the story of redemptive history and that one woman was found favored enough to carry Christ in her womb.

bride

"For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin." - 2 Cor 11:2 -

Being the bride of Christ has always been a tough metaphor for me to truly grasp. I mean, as a man, to be called a bride...its just always been kinda hard for me. I'm supposed to be the husband. I am supposed to be the MAN. I've never rejected being the bride, I've just always had a hard time grasping the truth of it and fully celebrating being the bride.

Maybe I'll never fully understand it, but I did get to experience a bit of it a few years ago when I was the best man in one of my best friends' wedding. It was the first time ever being best man and it was such a blessing. I'd been a groomsmen in a couple different weddings and it has its benefits*, but often times you are so far down the line that you don't get a great view of the ceremony. If the guy in front of you, lets call him Number 3, gets tired of leaning forward, he leans back, blocking your once good view and causing you to lean forward and therefore being blocked out by Number 2. Its a futile, but neccessary, battle that must be fought all ceremony.

So, in having this unobstructed view of Jeremy's wedding, I got to see something I'd never seen before. As the doors in the back of the sanctuary opened up and Karina walked down the aisle, I got the pleasure of watching Jeremy's face.

His bride. Adorned in white. Beautiful. Walking towards him. To choose him. To spend the rest of their lives together.

I don't even think I watched Karina walk down the aisle that day. I was transfixed by the look of love on Jeremy's face. And then it hit me...



That is how Christ feels towards us.



He is filled with pure joy when His bride is adorned in white. When we, the church, are holy.
He is filled with so much love that He would lay down His life for His bride.
He is filled with pleasure when His bride chooses Him and submits herself to Him.

We bring joy to Christ!

I love the imagary of being the bride. No matter how many times I dress in a gown (uh, I mean, I've only done it once...for this, uh, picture...I promise), it is still hard to imagine myself as a bride. But being able to watch Jeremy's love for Karina helped me to have a better idea of what a beautiful metaphor it is and how much more Jesus truly loves us.

In 20 days I'll be the best man in another wedding. I look forward to getting a better grasp of what it means to be the bride of Christ as I stand beside Jared and watch him as Jordan walks down the aisle.


*In being the best man (and single), you get all the face time (for all the single ladies out there), but you have all the responsibility. I thought that being best man would be the best way to meet cute girls, but in fact, it is the worst. You have to make sure the wedding is going smoothly, make sure the car is decorated, make sure the honeymoon room is taken care of, collect all the tuxes, help pack up the presents, and the countless other details of a wedding. Basically, you do all the work, so there is no time for the ladies. The groomsman is a far superior role in the girl department. You get face time, but you have no responsibility after the ceremony. The reception is free for getting your mac on...

white.

I love snow.

I love the silence of a city after a snowfall...the way the snow mutes out sound.

I love sitting in my warm apartment watching the snow fall outside.

I love how fresh snow can transform an average town into a beautiful hamlet.

I love how snow can be different. I love how sometimes you can make perfect snowballs with it and others it will barely stick. I love how sometimes you can barely see reflection off of it and how other times it looks like glitter.

I love how white snow is.

Have you noticed how perfectly white snow is? Snow is really white. When I think of perfect whiteness I think of snow...untouched snow. It is amazing.

Have you noticed how dirty snow can get...quickly?



We were created in His image, white, perfect, blameless, like freshly fallen snow. But, so quickly and so easily, we dirty that snow. We turn it brown and nasty. Unfit to be in the presence of a holy and perfect God.

*wash me, and I will be whiter than snow*

But, if we cry out to him, God cleanses us whiter (!) than snow.

Just as quickly as we dirty ourselves, God washes us and makes us whiter than snow.

And we dirty ourselves again...

and He cleanses us...

dirty.

clean.

dirty.

clean.

But at the heart of it, God desiring us to be like him...to be holy. We dirty ourselves and He cleanses us.

When King David cries out to God in Psalm 51 to "wash me, and I will be whiter than snow", David has just been confronted by Nathan about his adultery with Bathsheba. I don't think we fully comprehend what happened. We know all of the great things that David did. We know that he was called, "a man after God's own heart." We have this impression of David as this "holy man".

BUT, David committed adultery and had Bathsheba's husband killed! What if this controversy hit our church. What if your pastor did that? How would we respond? After all of this why is David still regarded so highly by us...by God?

I'm convinced that the reason God calls David a man after His own heart is because of his repentant heart.

Read Psalm 51.

Read 2 Samuel 24:10

David makes some HUGE errors. But his immediate response is to repent. He falls at the feet of God asking for forgiveness.

And God responds...

He makes him white.

izaiaš 41,10

Neboj se, nebo já jsem s tebou; nestrachuj se, nebo já jsem Bůh tvúj.

Every New Year's Eve our church has a service to welcome in the new year. As a part of that service everyone receives a verse for the year. These verses are printed onto little bookmarks, prayed over and then, like the casting of lots, everyone draws one of these bookmarks and that is their verse for the year.

Last year I was in Prague for New Year's Eve, so I didn't get a verse. I wandered through most of 2006 purposeless...without vision...

This year I was in the States.

But, in a brilliant stroke of foresight and genius, I asked Lucka's dad to get a verse for me. One year of aimless wandering was one year too much for me.

So, Lucka brought the verse to me yesterday.

Isaiah 41:10 - Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God.

On the surface this may not be that "powerful" of a verse...or may not seem so significant, but it is for two reasons:

1. I can read it in Czech.

2. I had a post entitled "songs for when i want to throw myself from a window" about a month ago. It was in response to a really tough time I was having, specifically ministry related. During one night of sleeplessness I was reading Isaiah 40 to help ground me and remind myself who God is, but I ended up continuing through to chapter 41. There was one verse that stuck out to me. No, not verse 10, but verse 13. "For I the Lord your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, 'Fear not, I am the one who helps you.'"

What I loved about that verse was the idea of God holding my hand. There is something intimate about holding hands. There is something comforting about holding hands. I began to think of God on an entire different plane that night.

The God of the universe holds my hand when I am hurting.

He comes along side of me in my fear.

He grabs me by the hand.

He says to me, "Fear not, I am the one who helps you."

So, I have to admit I was a little skeptical about the whole casting of lots for a verse-for-the-year thing. But as I read the verse this morning and realized that it is a couple verses away from the verse the Lord had led me too on that late night a month ago I became a believer.

fear not.

i am with you.

be not dismayed.

i am your God.

Immigration and Burritos

I love burritos. I miss not being able to eat them. Every once and a while someone finds a new Mexican restaurant here in the Czech. Everybody is excited, we go, it sucks. Really. I have yet to have good Mexican food here. It's sad.

But, I'm not writing about burritos. I was listening to a Rob Bell sermon a while back and he said something that really shed some great light on the whole immigration issue. As far as I know, the US news is onto some new big story and no one cares anymore, but I still felt compelled to share.

Rob (yeah, we're on a first name basis) was talking about how we are completely unworthy of anything that we have and how only the Lion of Judah is worthy (Rev 5). He shared about how in our human nature we naturally feel like life should be fair and that we feel like we are owed something. He then started talking about how God called the nation of Israel to care for those who couldn't care for themselves; those with whom life hadn't been fair. Those who had suffered a tough life (the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner). He focused specifically on Deuteronomy 24:17-22.

In this passage God commands the nation of Israel to "not pervert the justice" due to the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner. God says that when harvesting their field that they are to leave anything that they forget to take. That when beating their olive tree, they are only to go over it once and leave the remainder. And finally, when they gather grapes that they are to go once and leave what they don't gather the first time. In all of these instances the remainder was for the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner. All of this was because they were to "remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there". God had redeemed his people. He had showed immesurable grace on His people and He was calling them to do the same to those who couldn't care for themselves.

As a Jew, I'm thinking, "What the heck? I work my butt off all year so that I can harvest my field/beat my olive tree/harvest my grapes. I'm not going to leave some for people who aren't doing anything; who aren't earning it. They need to work for themselves. They can't just come into my land and take what I have worked hard for. They aren't even Jews..."

Get the point.

It seems like the default argument for kicking the Mexicans out (notice they never talk about building a wall on the Canadian border) is that they are stealing from us. We work hard to make a living and they come in and "take from our fields". I can understand this from someone who hasn't receieved God's immesurable grace poured out on them. But as Christians, as men and women who have received an inheritence in God's Kingdom for free, for no reason other than that God poured out His grace upon us, shouldn't we be more gracious? Shouldn't we be caring for those that cannot care for themselves? As Americans we are born into amazing wealth...shouldn't we be more willing to leave our "fields" open for the widows, the orphans, and the Mexicans...burritos or no?

Camel, Ostrich, and Crocodile

I am reading through the Bible in a year and this morning I was reading Leviticus 11 (I'm a little behind!) and I was surprised by what I read.

Two weeks ago I was in Kenya visiting Marisa. One night we went to a restaurant called Carnivore. It is the epitome of tourist dining. In a country of all blacks, 95% of the restaurant was white. Everyone who I know that has been to Kenya has been to this restaurant. It really is a novelty. They serve all sorts of exotic meats including, camel, ostrich, crocodile, etc. I love to try new things, so I never hesitated to partake in this exquisite cuisine. Camel was my favorite, but ostrich was a close second. Crocodile wasn't as fishy as you might thing and was also quite good.

Then this morning I came across these verses:

Lev 11:4 - "Nevertheless, you are not to eat of these, among those which chew the cud, or among those which divide the hoof; the camel, for though it chews cud, it does not divide the hoof, it is unclean to you."

Lev 11:13,16 - "These, moreover, you shall detest among the birds; they are abhorrent, not to be eaten: the eagle and the vulture and the buzzard...and the ostrich and the owl and the sea gull and the hawk in its kind."

Lev 11:29-30 - "Now these are to you the unclean things among the swarming things which swarm on the earth: the mole, and the mouse, and the great lizard in its kinds, and the gecko, and the crocodile, and the lizard, and the sand reptile, and the chameleon."

I couldn't believe it! All three of the exotic animals that I had eaten were included in the list of unclean animals. For a brief moment I felt conviction. But then I began to rejoice because,

"...and he saw the sky opened up, and an object like a great sheet coming down, lowered by four corners to the ground, and there were in it all kinds of four-footed animals (camels, maybe) and crawling creatures of the earth (crocodiles, maybe) and birds of the air (not ostriches, cause they don't fly, but...). A voice came to him, 'Get up, Peter, kill and eat!' But Peter said, 'By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything unholy and unclean.' Again a voice came to him a second time, 'What God has cleaned, no longer consider unholy.'"

Thank you, God, that you have made these animals clean and that we are no longer bound to your Law!

Worshiping Images

I am reading Knowing God by J.I. Packer and I came across an interesting comment about worshipping images of the Godhead.

Commenting on the Second Commandment in Ex 20:4-5 he says, "In its Christian application, this means that we are not to make use of visual or pictorial representations of the triune God, or of any person of the Trinity, for the purposes of Christian worship. The commandment thus deals not with the object of our worship, but with the manner of it; what it tells us is that statues and pictures of the One whom we worship are not to be used as an aid to worshipping him." He goes on to say that this outlaws any pictorial representation of Christ and even may rule out any pictorial aids for teaching.

I'm not quite sure I agree with him. I have some ideas why, but I am more interested in hearing what others have to say. Let me know what you think.