Tag: Christmas

Digging in Deeper: Genesis 3:15

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“I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter)

Brokenness was never supposed to be the state of things. When God designed the world and everything in it, to a certain extent it all reflected His image. It was all good. All of it. So good. As Moses describes God creating one thing after another, you can almost hear Him whistling while He worked He was so tickled at the goodness of it all. It’s like you felt when you were working on a big project and every single detail was falling exactly into place only on a much, much grander scale. It was all so good. And then it wasn’t. But brokenness was never supposed to be the state of things.

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A Good Story

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The season of Advent is finally here! For the next month followers of Jesus around the world will be setting aside some time to give special attention to preparing for the arrival of Jesus. Our celebration is not simply for His birth, though, but for His return when He will make all things new. With that in mind, I want to help you get ready for the arrival of Jesus into your lives. Each Monday will bring a new sermon exploring the story of His arrival through a different lens. Each other week day will bring a new reflection on the Advent season that I hope will set your season in the right terms. Blessings to you as you preparing for the coming King!

A Good Story

That was a moment right there, wasn’t it?  I don’t know about you, but that song is one of my favorites.  There is power in this proclamation, “it is well!”  There is strength in being able to declare that though sin or storm or suffering may loom dauntingly large in front of us, nonetheless, “it is well with my soul.”  Maybe you are in a season when that declaration is little more than a faint whisper, but nonetheless, to stand…perhaps to sit…maybe even to simply fall to your knees and with even a mustard seed-sized faith in the God who alone has the power to push back the darkness and, with defiance in your spirit, breath out, “it is well with my soul,” can have the effect of throwing on a floodlight in a dark room. 

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Digging in Deeper: Luke 2:7

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“And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”‬‬ (ESV – Read the chapter) 

Have you ever had anything not go the way you were expecting? Perhaps the better question is whether or not you’ve had that happen yet today. We regularly make plans only to have to throw those plans in the trash when they bump up against the walls of reality. The real question we need to face here is not whether or not we’ve faced this disruption of intent, but what we did about it when it happened. 

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When Life Turns Left

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In this final part of our Christmas series, The Characters of Christmas, we look at Joseph, Jesus’ earthly father. What can we learn to him? How about what to do when life takes a sudden left turn on us? Joseph’s perfect plans were thrown into chaos by the news of Mary’s unexpected pregnancy. How did he handle it? Keep reading to find out.

When Life Turns Left

Don’t you love a good plot twist?  I sure do.  The best movies and TV shows always have that moment that leaves you going, “Whoa!  I did not see that coming!”  When I was in high school and college, one of the directors who was the very best at creating those kinds of moment was M. Night Shyamalan.  Two films in particular do this better than just about any other show I’ve seen (and I think I can talk about these because they’ve been out long enough you’ve either seen them or you’re not going to see them).  The first was The Sixth Sense with Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment.  Osment plays a young boy with the ability to see and interact with people who have died.  Willis plays a therapist who is trying to help him work through the fear and emotions of his unique ability.  The movie is filled with moments of heart-stopping suspense as Osment’s character navigates his frightening world.  But the real “whoa” moment comes right at the end, after Willis helps Osment figure out that the various dead people are coming to him to help them resolve some unresolved tension from before their death, and that with his help they can find peace and leave him alone.  The climax comes as we realize that Willis was one of these dead people all along who had come to Osment for help.  The moment is so jarring that people still talk about it almost 20 years later.

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The Life of a Servant

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What does it mean to serve the Lord?  Have you ever really thought about that?  Followers of Jesus are told we are to serve Him, but we don’t often think about the details.  As we continue our series, The Characters of Christmas, Mary’s story gives us a pretty comprehensive picture.  Check this out to see what the picture of serving the Lord looks like.  

The Life of a Servant

So, last week we looked at the story of Gabriel’s announcement to Zechariah that his barren wife would conceive and give birth to a son.  In this, we saw that God’s promises are not fulfilled solely by the boldly miraculous or the faith superheroes, but instead, are made manifest when God moves in the lives of people very much like you and me. I have to think that the story of Zechariah’s encounter with Gabriel in the Temple would have spread pretty quickly. I mean, as far as we know, God had not spoken in a public way to His people in about 400 years at that point. Let’s be honest: We have trouble imagining 400 years period.  Four hundred years is just about how long there have been permanent, successful colonies of Europeans in North America.  Jamestown isn’t that far from here.  You can go up to Williamsburg and see the remnants of that very first settlement in 1607.  It’s a pretty neat museum and recreation. 

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