"He is not here..."

Some years ago, when a family in his community had suffered a terrible loss, a Lutheran pastor preached an Easter Vigil sermon:

.... For almost two thousand years, humans have heard this story and for almost two thousand years we have been coming up with reasons not to believe it. Perhaps Jesus' body was stolen, it is argued, and the appearances to his disciples were the work of an imposter. Perhaps the appearances were a mass hallucination by the disciples, unresolved grief expressing itself as a sort of denial that he was even dead. Maybe the empty tomb is a later addition to this story. Maybe the whole thing is a metaphor for the power of Jesus' teaching. Maybe it is an echo of the stories of the pagan gods of the ancient near east, who go to the underworld for a season and then come back, bringing spring with them. The sun will come up tomorrow and life will renew itself.

These arguments are, briefly, all balderdash. Yes, the stories are strange and filled with mystery. No, they do not create one consistent picture of that morning and the days that follow. But the doubt and confusion are written into the story from the start. This is not a confidence game or a fraud or a metaphor. The stories would look totally different if they were. The people who were there believed this had happened. What and how, exactly, they couldn't say. But it was unbearably, unbelievably real to them. ....

Yet there it was, and there it is: a tomb with no corpse. A door opening to a possibility we may not even want to entertain. That there is something beyond the grave—not in our warm, rose-tinged memories, not in some distant shore where the souls of the righteous congregate, not in the recurring cycle of nature, spring following winter and day following night, not in our plucky human desire to go on living despite it all—but in the love shown to a broken body as it is knitted back together. In the care shown to a dead body as it is revived to life. In the promise of salvation and in-gathering of all the peoples that is initiated by this one lonely empty tomb. In a new age that begins now, in the devil being cast out from this one cranny of earth, hell being crushed under this one foot, death being deprived of its spoils in this one corpse. .... (more)

Benjamin Dueholm, "Preaching the Easter Vigil," The Parish Bulletin, April 17, 2025.

The day in-between

From "Sitting, Waiting, and Hoping in the Tomb of Jesus" by A.J. Swoboda:

.... Martin Luther said himself that Saturday was the day that God himself lay cold in the grave. Friday was death, Sunday was hope, but Saturday was that seemingly ignored middle day between them when God occupied a dirty grave in a little garden outside Jerusalem. Saturday is about waiting, about uncertainty, about not knowing what’ll happen. ....

So much of Christian faith is Saturday faith. ....

A medieval theologian, Anselm, once described the kind of faith that comes with Saturday—fides quaerens intellectum: “faith seeking understanding.” By that, he meant that faith isn’t something that arises after moments of understanding. Rather, faith is something that you cling to when understanding and reason lay dead. We don’t believe once we understand it—we believe in order to understand it. Saturday’s like that: offering a day of waiting, a day of ambiguity, a day when God is sovereign even if our ideas and theologies and expectations about him are not. It is the day that our ignorance is our witness and our proclamation. Truth is, our intellect will always be one step behind in our love of God. We don’t love God once we understand him; we love God in order to understand him. ....

At times, we are all like the two disciples on their way to Emmaus who were really close to Jesus but didn’t always know it. In Luke 24, two disciples walked away from Jerusalem, where they’d just seen their Lord and Master die on the cross. Leaving, dejected, upset, hopeless, and broken, to find the next stage in their lives and careers. Unbeknownst to them, Jesus had been resurrected and was actually walking alongside them on their way to Emmaus. The hope of Sunday hadn’t dawned on them yet. The Gospels tell us that, on their way to Emmaus, the disciples were “downcast.”

That experience is the kind of experience Saturday is all about. .... (more)

This is from A.J. Swoboda's A Glorious Dark: Finding Hope in the Tension between Belief and Experience, excerpted in Christianity Today.

Sitting, Waiting, and Hoping in the Tomb of Jesus | Christianity Today

Good Friday

Kevin Williamson:

This week, Christians around the world will observe Good Friday, the most somber day on the liturgical calendar. The word good in Good Friday expresses an older sense of the adjective: holy, rather than desirable or positive. .... Good Friday is not an observance for the sort of person who insists he has “no regrets.” I don’t know what you do with somebody like that. But for people who understand, even if it is only at some instinctive level, the necessity of penance and reconciliation, Good Friday can be useful and purpose-giving, if not joyous. It isn’t only the joyous things that we need.

Kevin D. Williamson, "The Indictment and the Problem of Discretion," The Dispatch, April 3, 2023.

"Love one another"

Kevin DeYoung:

.... If you've never heard the term, it's not Monday-Thursday (which always confused me as a kid), but Maundy Thursday, as in Mandatum Thursday. Mandatum is the Latin word for "command" or "mandate", and the day is called Maundy Thursday because on the night before his death Jesus gave his disciples a new command. "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another" (John 13:34).

At first it seems strange that Christ would call this a new command. After all, the Old Testament instructed God's people to love their neighbors and Christ himself summarized the law as love for God and love for others. So what's new about love? What makes the command new is that because of Jesus' passion there is a new standard, a new examplar of love.

There was never any love like the dying love of Jesus. It is tender and sweet (John 13:33). It serves (John 13:2-17). It loves even unto death (John 13:1). Jesus had nothing to gain from us by loving us. There was nothing in us to draw us to him. But he loved us still, while we were yet sinners. ....

"Every Holy Week thereafter..."

Dorothy L. Sayers and C.S. Lewis were friends. CSL wrote about their relationship: "She was the first person of importance who ever wrote me a fan letter. I liked her, originally, because she liked me; later, for the extraordinary zest and edge of her conversation—as I like a high wind. She was a friend, not an ally." Lewis approved of The Man Born to be King, a series of radio plays she had written for the BBC.

Lewis read the radio plays when her book was first published and then every Holy Week thereafter. This is the first letter he wrote her, on May 30, 1943:

Dear Miss Sayers— I’ve finished The Man Born to be King and think it a complete success. (Christie the H.M. of Westminster told me that the actual performances over the air left his 2 small daughters with “open and silent mouths” for several minutes). I shed real tears (hot ones) in places: since Mauriac’s Vie de Jesus nothing has moved me so much. I’m not absolutely sure whether Judas for me “comes off”—i.e. whether I shd. have got him without your off-stage analysis. But this may be due to merely reading what was meant to be heard. He’s quite a possible conception, no doubt: I’m only uncertain of the execution. But that is the only point I’m doubtful on. I expect to read it times without number again…. Yours sincerely C.S. Lewis (Collected Letters, II, 577f)

The Man Born to Be King is available at Amazon.

The Truth sent from Above

Ralph Vaughan Williams, "Herefordshire Carol":

This is the truth sent from above, The truth of God, the God of love; Therefore don’t turn me from your door,    But hearken all both rich and poor.	And at that season of the year Our blest Redeemer did appear; He here did live, and here did preach, And may thousands he did teach.
The first thing which I do relate Is that God did man create; The next thing which to you I’ll tell Woman was made with man to dwell.	Thus He in love to us behaved, To show us how we must be saved; And if you want to know the way, Be pleased to hear what He did say.
And we were heirs to endless woes, Till God the Lord did interpose; And so a promise soon did run That He would redeem us by his Son.

There are more verses, including:

"Go preach the Gospel," now He said,
"To all the nations that are made!
And he that does believe on me,
From all his sins I'll set him free."

O seek! O seek of God above
That saving faith that works by love!
And, if He's pleased to grant thee this,
Thou'rt sure to have eternal bliss.

God grant to all within this place
True saving faith, that special grace
Which to His people doth belong:
And thus I close my Christmas song.

Someone came to find us

Advent began this past weekend. Walter Russell Mead reflected on the meaning of Advent in "The Coming":

.... If there is no Christmas, there is no Cross, no answer to the problems of sin, separation, failure and pain. Advent is a time to think about what life would be like if we didn’t have faith in a Redeemer, a Savior who was ready, willing and able to complete the broken arc of our lives, forgive what is past and walk with us step by step to help us build something better in the time that is left.

Advent is a time to remember that we need something more than what we can summon with our own resources to make our lives work. It’s a time to remember how lost we would be if Someone hadn’t come to find us. .... The preparation for Christmas begins by reflecting on what kind of world this would be, and what kind of lives we would have, if Christmas had never come.

There are worse ways to start your preparation for Christmas than by using this prayer from the old Episcopal Church Book of Common Prayer:

ALMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.

The Coming | Via Meadia

Pagan, or not?

I put out my Christmas wreath this weekend. I've known Christians who choose not to celebrate Christmas. Kevin DeYoung explains why at least some of the oft-cited reasons don't stand up. From "Is Christmas a Pagan Rip-off?":

We’ve heard it so many times that it’s practically part of the Christmas story itself.

The Romans celebrated their seven-day winter festival, Saturnalia, starting on December 17. It was a thoroughly pagan affair full of debauchery and the worship of the god Saturn. To mark the end of the winter solstice, the Roman emperor established December 25 as a feast to Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun). Wanting to make Christianity more palatable to the Romans and more popular with the people, the church co-opted these pagan festivals and put the celebration of the birth of their Savior on December 25. For whatever the Christmas holiday has become today, it started as a copycat of well-established pagan holidays. If you like Christmas, you have Saturnalia and Sol Invictus to thank.

That’s the story, and everyone from liberal Christians to conservative Christians to non-Christians seem to agree that it’s true.

Except that it isn’t. ....

...[T]here is good evidence that December 25 was not chosen because of any pagan winter holidays. This is the argument Andrew McGowan, of Yale Divinity School, makes in his article “How December 25 Became Christmas” (first published in Bible Review in 2002). Let me try to distill McGowan’s fine historical work by addressing three questions.

The three questions:

• When did Christians first start celebrating the birth of Jesus on December 25?
• When was it first suggested that Christmas grew out of pagan origins?
• Why do we celebrate Christmas on December 25?

The answers.

Kevin DeYoung, "Is Christmas a Pagan Rip-off?," Gospel Coalition, December 15, 2020.

All Saints

From a few years ago, a few thoughts about the significance of All Saints' Day:

For over a thousand years, many Christians have celebrated November 1 as All Saints’ Day. In America, the day is best known for the preceding day: All Hallows’ Eve or Halloween. On Halloween we try to scare each other and dress up as what we are not. On All Saints’ Day, we encourage each other by remembering who we are. ....

Like any holiday, All Saints’ Day means various things to various people. Holidays are like that. They carry many meanings. As I see it, All Saints’ Day has three themes: (1) the union of all Christians, living and dead, in one organism, the body of Christ, (2) the inspiring example of other Christians, especially those who have died, and (3) remembering those who are no longer physically with us. ....

For me, there are two essentials for worship on All Saints’: the collect (or opening prayer) for All Saints’ Day and singing six or more stanzas (to Ralph Vaughn Williams’s tune) of William How’s hymn “For All the Saints.” ....

Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

.... All Saints’ Day is a day when we remember that we are by God’s grace one body in Christ Jesus, united with Christians around the world and in heaven in praising and serving God. .... (more)

David Bains, "All Saints’ Day: Three Themes," Samford University, Oct. 28, 2020.

The great cloud of witnesses

October 31st is Reformation Day and the day following is All Saints' Day: 

Reformation Day is the anniversary of Martin Luther's challenge to debate his 95 theses—not the beginning of the Reformation but an important point in it. Halloween is All Hallows Eve, the evening before All Saints’ Day. Days were thought of as evening to evening so the eve was the beginning of the next day—think New Year’s Eve or Christmas Eve. Although today most approach it as a secular holiday that wasn’t its origin and for Protestants, all believers are “saints” and All Saints’ Day is when we acknowledge “the great cloud of witnesses” who have passed on. So on Halloween, we can celebrate both the Protestant Reformation and all those believers who have gone before.

Therefore being justified by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:
By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand,
and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

Romans 5:1-2 [KJV]

And He shall reign for ever and ever!

Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

For the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.

Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

The kingdom of this world is become

the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and of His Christ;

and He shall reign for ever and ever

King of Kings,

for ever and ever. Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

and Lord of Lords,

for ever and ever. Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

And He shall reign for ever and ever,

for ever and ever,

King of Kings,

and Lord of Lords,

King of Kings,

and Lord of Lords,

and He shall reign for ever and ever

Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

A Saturday kind of faith

From "Sitting, Waiting, and Hoping in the Tomb of Jesus" by A.J. Swoboda:

.... Martin Luther said himself that Saturday was the day that God himself lay cold in the grave. Friday was death, Sunday was hope, but Saturday was that seemingly ignored middle day between them when God occupied a dirty grave in a little garden outside Jerusalem. Saturday is about waiting, about uncertainty, about not knowing what’ll happen. ....

So much of Christian faith is Saturday faith. ....

A medieval theologian, Anselm, once described the kind of faith that comes with Saturday—fides quaerens intellectum: “faith seeking understanding.” By that, he meant that faith isn’t something that arises after moments of understanding. Rather, faith is something that you cling to when understanding and reason lay dead. We don’t believe once we understand it—we believe in order to understand it. Saturday’s like that: offering a day of waiting, a day of ambiguity, a day when God is sovereign even if our ideas and theologies and expectations about him are not. It is the day that our ignorance is our witness and our proclamation. Truth is, our intellect will always be one step behind in our love of God. We don’t love God once we understand him; we love God in order to understand him. ....

At times, we are all like the two disciples on their way to Emmaus who were really close to Jesus but didn’t always know it. In Luke 24, two disciples walked away from Jerusalem, where they’d just seen their Lord and Master die on the cross. Leaving, dejected, upset, hopeless, and broken, to find the next stage in their lives and careers. Unbeknownst to them, Jesus had been resurrected and was actually walking alongside them on their way to Emmaus. The hope of Sunday hadn’t dawned on them yet. The Gospels tell us that, on their way to Emmaus, the disciples were “downcast.”

That experience is the kind of experience Saturday is all about. .... (more)

This is from A.J. Swoboda's A Glorious Dark: Finding Hope in the Tension between Belief and Experience, excerpted in Christianity Today.

Sitting, Waiting, and Hoping in the Tomb of Jesus | Christianity Today

"Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

O Saviour of the world, who by Thy cross and precious blood hast redeemed us, Save us and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord. Amen.

Thomas Tallis, 1575

You can run, but you can’t hide

ALMIGHTY God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love Thee, and worthily magnify Thy holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Philip Jenkins on that prayer:

In its present form, it goes back to the brilliant English scholar Alcuin, who worked with Charlemagne in the late eighth century to create a Christian civilization in Western Europe. Let’s say around 790. There is some doubt as to whether the prayer has older origins, perhaps back to Gregory the Great, around 600. ....

In the 1540s, Anglican reformer Thomas Cranmer took this Collect – as he did so much else from the medieval service books – and incorporated it into the regular liturgy of Common Prayer....

Several things come to mind about this collect, but above all the sense of rigorous and absolutely honest self-examination. It comes close to creating the mood of final judgment: whatever fronts or false faces you put up, God sees behind them. Or if you like melodrama, you can run, but you can’t hide. ....

It is a near-perfect prayer for any and all Christian denominations. That is partly because it is so rooted in the Biblical tradition, and specifically the Psalms. See Psalm 139:

You have searched me, Lord,

   and you know me.

You know when I sit and when I rise;

   you perceive my thoughts from afar…

Psalm 51 has also left its echoes. ....

Jenkins on how the prayer illustrates the usefulness of liturgy: 

• Like the best parts of any liturgy, the Collect takes essential points about the Christian approach to life, and puts them in simple and memorable form.
• It says these things better, more comprehensively, and more concisely than we could ever do ourselves.
• By saying the words repeatedly, week by week, we learn and internalize them, and learn how to approach our own mental processes. ....
• And as we say the words, we are aware of a tradition that takes us back well over a millennium, and perhaps far longer. We say them together with Thomas Cranmer and Alcuin.
• We see and understand the chain of continuity, and place ourselves within that continuity.

Philip Jenkins, "From You No Secrets Are Hid," Anxious Bench, March 5, 2024.

At the beginning of Lent

A good hymn for Ash Wednesday:  "Come, Ye Sinners, Poor and Needy" (Joseph Hart, 1759):

Come, ye sinners, poor and needy, Weak and wounded, sick and sore; Jesus ready stands to save you, Full of pity, love and power. Refrain	View Him prostrate in the garden; On the ground your Maker lies. On the bloody tree behold Him; Sinner, will this not suffice? Refrain
I will arise and go to Jesus, He will embrace me in His arms; In the arms of my dear Savior, O there are ten thousand charms.	Lo! th’incarnate God ascended, Pleads the merit of His blood: Venture on Him, venture wholly, Let no other trust intrude. Refrain
Come, ye thirsty, come, and welcome, God’s free bounty glorify; True belief and true repentance, Every grace that brings you nigh. Refrain	Let not conscience make you linger, Not of fitness fondly dream; All the fitness He requireth Is to feel your need of Him. Refrain
Come, ye weary, heavy laden, Lost and ruined by the fall; If you tarry till you’re better, You will never come at all. Refrain

A variation on the hymn by the Missouri All State Choir:

"Herod the king, in his raging..."

The carol mourns the death of the baby boys of Bethlehem when King Herod, having caught wind that one of them was destined to take over his job as king of the Jews, ordered their murder. The song itself was crafted for a medieval mystery play, performed annually in the city of Coventry from the late 12^th century until Protestants shut down such rituals in the late 16^th century. ....

...[T]he massacre of the babies of Bethlehem is commemorated each year as the Feast of the Holy Innocents. The feast is held every Christmastide on December 28 — today. The Innocents are venerated as the first Christian martyrs, for, in the words of St. Augustine, “they are the first buds of the Church killed by the frost of persecution; they died not only for Christ, but in his stead.”

Kayla Bartsch, "The Bloody Tale behind the Coventry Carol," National Review, December 28, 2023.

Awake!

Almighty God, give us grace, that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life, (in the which Thy son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility;) that in the last day when He shall come again in His glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through Him who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost now and ever. Amen. (Thomas Cranmer)

Owe no man anything, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof. (Romans 8)

That day, when sent in glory by the Father,
The Prince of Life His blest elect shall gather;
Millions of angels about Him flying,
While all the kindreds of the earth are crying,
And He, enthroned above the clouds, shall give
His last just sentence, who must die, who live.
(Henry Vaughan)

"Lo, He comes..."

Advent is a time about the "already but not yet": the time between the coming of Messiah and the time when He comes again. Three prayers composed for this season:

ALMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which Thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when He shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through Him who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.

O LORD, raise up, we pray Thee, Thy power, and come among us, and with great might succour us; that whereas, through our sins and wickedness, we are sore let and hindered in running the race that is set before us, Thy bountiful grace and mercy may speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with Thee and the Holy Ghost, be honour and glory, world without end. Amen.

ALMIGHTY God, we beseech Thee, grant unto Thy people grace that they may wait with vigilance for the advent of Thy Son our Lord, that when He shall arise from Thy right hand to visit the earth in righteousness and Thy people with salvation, He may not find us sleeping in sin, but diligent in Thy service, and rejoicing in Thy praises, that so we may enter in with Him unto the marriage of the Lamb; through His merits, who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

St Nicholas Day

Today was St. Nicholas Day. Kevin DeYoung on "Who Was St. Nicholas?":

The unsatisfying answer to the title of this post is that we don’t know as much as we would like. We know that a bishop named Nicholas existed, that he had a great influence on his homeland, and that he probably died on December 6. While we should be careful to separate fact from fiction, there are elements of the Nicholas story we can know—and what can be known is worth retelling.

According to the best estimates, Nicholas was born around AD 280 in Patara, in Asia Minor. He later became bishop of Myra in modern-day Turkey. Nicholas, it seems, died about 343 on or near December 6. ....

The most famous story involved three girls who were so destitute that they were going to be forced into a life of prostitution. But Nicholas threw three bags of gold through the window as dowries for the young women.

Over time, Saint Nicholas became the patron saint of nations like Russia and Greece, cities like Fribourg and Moscow, and of children, sailors, unmarried girls, merchants, and pawnbrokers (the three gold balls hung outside pawn shops are symbolic of the three bags of gold). ....

.... Luther rejected the saints’ days, believing they were built upon legends and superstitions (and a virulent strain of moralism we might add). In Germany, Luther replaced Saint Nicholas’ Day with a different holiday, Christ Child, or Christkindl. Ironically, Kriss Kringle which derived from Luther’s Christ Child holiday, has become just another name for St. Nicholas.

The cult of St. Nicholas virtually disappeared in Protestant Europe, with the exception of one country: the Netherlands. If you love Christmas with all the trappings of Santa Claus and stockings and presents, thank the Dutch. If you despise all that, try to ignore my last name for the time being. The Puritans had done away with St. Nicholas and banned Christmas altogether. But the Dutch held on to their tradition and brought it with them to the New World. In the Netherlands Sint Nicolaas was contracted to Sinterklaas. ....

At any rate, it is easy to see how Sinterklaas evolved in America to Santa Claus. Santa Claus became the Santa we know in the United States only after the poem “Twas the Night Before Christmas” was written in 1823. Possibly the best known verses ever written by an American, the poem has greatly influenced the tradition of Santa in the English speaking world and beyond.

How should Christians relate to the traditions of Santa Claus? C.S. Lewis embraced them and so included Father Christmas in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Other Christians, fearing syncretism, stay clear of Santa, reindeer, and a tree full of presents. I’ll leave it to you and your family to form you opinions on observing the Christmas holiday (see Rom. 14:1, 5-6). ....

But if you have a lot of Santa Claus around, why not use him to your benefit and talk about the real St. Nicholas. We don’t know a lot about him, but we know he lived and was revered. According to legend—one of those stories that probably isn’t true, but should be—when Nicholas was little boy he would get up early in the morning to go to church and pray. One morning, the aging priest had a vision that the first one to enter the church in the morning should be the new bishop of Myra. When Nicholas was the first to enter, the old priest, obeying the vision, made the young boy bishop right on the spot. But before he consecrated Nicholas a bishop, the priest asked him a question. “Who are you, my son?” According to tradition, the child whose legend would one day become Santa Claus replied, “Nicholas the sinner.” Not bad for a little boy. .... (more)

Kevin DeYoung,"Who Was St. Nicholas? Clearly Reformed, December 6, 2023.

Advent

The Christian season of Advent begins this weekend. Advent is about waiting — waiting with anticipation. The waiting that anticipated the coming of Messiah and the waiting that anticipates His coming again. From "Why Celebrate Advent?" by Timothy Paul Jones:

.... Advent links our hearts with those of ancient prophets who pined for a long-promised Messiah but passed long before his arrival.

In the process, Advent reminds us that we, too, are waiting.....

“The whole creation,” the apostle Paul declared, “has been groaning together for redemption.”

In Advent, Christians embrace the groaning and recognize it not as hopeless whimpering over the paucity of the present moment but as expectant yearning for a divine banquet that Jesus is preparing for us even now. In Advent, the church admits, as poet R.S. Thomas has put it, that “the meaning is in the waiting.” And what we await is a final Advent that is yet to come. Just as the ancient Israelites waited for the coming of the Messiah in flesh, we await the consummation of the good news through the Messiah’s return in glory. In Advent, believers confess that the infant who drew his first ragged breath between a virgin’s knees has yet to speak his final word. ....

Journalist Malcolm Muggeridge once suggested that “all happenings, great and small, are parables by which God speaks. The art of life is to get the message.” Advent reminds us to listen for the message that God is speaking, even in the waiting.

Timothy Paul Jones, "Why Celebrate Advent?," TGC Worship, December 1, 2015.