It’s the week of Christmas. It’s the week we celebrate the culmination of anticipation of that first Advent; the incarnate Christ coming to earth to rescue the world from itself. Jesus, made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness to show us the “posture” of Christmas is always about giving, rather than receiving. Others-focused rather than navel gazing.
I wanted to pass on along two great blog entries on the “postures” of Christmas from a couple of friends. The first comes from my pastor, Darrin Patrick. Here is a snippet:
As we head into the craziness of Christmas week I have been thinking a lot about what people are trying to get “out” of Christmas. We all bring all of our expectations of what something should be into anything in which we participate. We do this with movies, restaurants, jobs, new puppies, and new relationships.
And, we do this “expectation importation” with Christmas. I think there are two main things that people would love to experience at Christmas. Two expectations that the human heart profoundly desires…
Continue reading “What You Really Want For Christmas” by Darrin Patrick.
The second entry comes from my new friend, Mark Powell, pastor of Third Baptist Church in Granite City, IL. His daughter, Joy, director of the Theatre Department at MBU, and I work together. Mark and I will hopefully be getting together on a regular basis after the new year for a mentoring type of relationship. I’m looking forward to it.
Mark writes on what we have to offer this Christmas. Here’s a piece of his entry:
…the god of America has always been wealth. We overly reward the athlete, the tycoon, even the government official with both wealth and honor for their service, often relegating altruism to an asterisk. This means that wealth equals success. And, I should quickly add that people on the Jesus-way are not immune from this notion of wealth and conspicuous consumption as the fulfillment of the American Dream. No, the seduction of possessions and high-rolling credit hits both the lifestyles of the rich and famous and the saved and faithful.
But, with the economic crash this idea has been called into question. Put differently, since the god of mammon has fallen on hard-times, one might well ask, where do we go from here?
Perhaps it is in difficult times that we can return to the core of who we are, to our deepest values. For the follower of the Christ, in the midst of these steep struggles — as we face layoffs and unemployment and falling wages and shrinking retirements — what do we have to offer the Savior this year? Perhaps it may be the most precious gift of all…
Continue reading “A Christmas Message from the Pastor” by Mark Powell.
I came across this from the Desiring God Blog today. It was posted last Friday [Good Friday] but I just got to it today. Ah the tyranny of Feedreader…
