“Whereas you have been forsaken and hated, with no one passing through,
I will make you majestic forever, a joy from age to age.
You shall suck the milk of nations; you shall nurse at the breast of kings;
and you shall know that I, the LORD, am your Savior
and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.“Instead of bronze I will bring gold, and instead of iron I will bring silver;
instead of wood, bronze, instead of stones, iron.
I will make your overseers peace and your taskmasters righteousness.
Violence shall no more be heard in your land,
devastation or destruction within your borders;
you shall call your walls Salvation, and your gates Praise. “The sun shall be no more your light by day,
nor for brightness shall the moon give you light;
but the LORD will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory.
Your sun shall no more go down, nor your moon withdraw itself;
for the LORD will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning shall be ended.
Your people shall all be righteous; they shall possess the land forever,
the branch of my planting, the work of my hands,
that I might be glorified.
The least one shall become a clan, and the smallest one a mighty nation;
I am the LORD;
in its time I will hasten it.”The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor;
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
to grant to those who mourn in Zion—
to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit;
that they may be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified.
They shall build up the ancient ruins; they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.
Strangers shall stand and tend your flocks;
foreigners shall be your plowmen and vinedressers;
but you shall be called the priests of the LORD;
they shall speak of you as the ministers of our God;
you shall eat the wealth of the nations, and in their glory you shall boast.—Isaiah 60:15-61:6 (ESV)And [Jesus] came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll
and found the place where it was written,“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.
And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”—Luke 4:16-21 (ESV)When Nazi Germany fired the first shots of World War II in 1939, their enemies were ill-prepared for the assault, and by 1942 Germany and its allies controlled most of Europe, including a large chunk of Russia, and almost all of North Africa. By the spring of 1943, however, the tide of war had turned; the Nazis had been driven out of Africa and had lost much of their ground in Russia. That summer, the Allies invaded Italy, and by September of 1943 Italy had surrendered. Most of northern Italy remained Nazi-controlled after that, however, and the Italian mountains prevented the Allies from gaining much ground there. It was clear that an invasion of France was necessary.On June 6, 1944, D-Day, the Allies invaded northern France, in the region known as Normandy. Planning for the assault assigned five different landing zones. American troops hit Utah and Omaha Beaches; the British took Gold and Sword Beaches; and Canadian infantry and armor were assigned to Juno Beach. The troops at Utah Beach landed in the wrong area, and their mistake meant that they met little resistance and thus had great success; Omaha Beach, by contrast, was quite strongly defended, and the invaders there took heavy casualties before finally establishing a small beachhead. The situation of the Brits and Canadians was somewhere in between, as they faced hard fighting but succeeded in driving several miles inland. The Germans’ only real hope of fending off the invasion had been to drive the Allies back off the beach, and they had failed. From this point, the Allies made steady gains, and by September 15, 1944, they had reached the borders of Germany itself. The Nazis did launch one last offensive that December, sparking a battle which would become known as the Battle of the Bulge, but the offensive failed, and on May 7, 1945, Nazi Germany formally surrendered; in Europe, World War II was over. But though the fighting in Europe didn’t end until that day in May, which was quickly dubbed V-E Day, that wasn’t when the war was won; to all intents and purposes, the war ended on D-Day, when the Allied invasion of Normandy succeeded, because Germany’s last real hope of avoiding defeat depended on keeping those armies from securing that beachhead. Once they failed there, the rest of the war was nothing more than a formality, for all the suffering and death it brought; Hitler might just as well have sued for peace on June 7, 1944, for all the good fighting was going to do him. On that day, while the Allies had not yet defeated Germany, they had already won; their victory was already assured, it just was not yet fully realized, because the enemy refused to accept their defeat. As a consequence, they had to keep waiting, and suffering, and working, in order to bring about the victory they had already earned. As Christians, we’re in much the same position. On the one hand, when we look at the description Isaiah gives us of the kingdom of God, we see a beautiful and glorious picture of God’s reign, a staggering promise of what he will do in the future—but something which is clearly not the world as we know it. “No longer will violence be heard in your land.” “The sun will no more be your light by day,” nor will the moon light the night, “for the Lord will be your everlasting light . . . and your days of sorrow will end. Your people will all be righteous . . .” Good news to the oppressed, healing for the brokenhearted, liberty to the captives, release for the prisoners, comfort for all who mourn; the day of the Lord’s favor on those who seek him, and his vengeance on the wicked. The devastations of the ages repaired, and the erosion of centuries undone. This is a long way from the reality we find in the morning paper. And yet, granted that undeniable fact, there’s something else that needs to be said as well. In one of his very first public appearances, Jesus read from the heart of this passage, and then proclaimed, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” At other times he said the same thing in different ways, declaring, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the good news.” This great promise, this future which Jesus taught was coming, he also declares to have already come. The kingdom of God is not yet here, it still remains to be realized, but in Jesus Christ and his Holy Spirit it’s already here among us. You can see this clearly in the way Jesus uses Isaiah 61. He reads the promise of verse 1, declares that he has come to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor—and then stops. He doesn’t go on to announce “the day of vengeance of our God,” he stops. Jesus in his first coming—and ultimately, on the cross—began this process, but he didn’t finish it; he inaugurated the kingdom of God on earth, but he didn’t bring it fully into being. That’s left to his second coming, which is still in the future. That’s why Scripture says repeatedly that we are in the last days; the dramatic stuff that Revelation talks about hasn’t happened yet—or at least not for the last time—but that could be right around the corner. In every way that matters, we have been in the last days for two thousand years, ever since Christ came, because that was D-Day. The war which has been raging on earth ever since our ultimate grandparents first disobeyed God has already been won; the only question remaining is how much more fighting there will be. Which means that the work Christ began is still going on—in us. We as Christians live between the times, between D-Day and V-E Day; we live in two realities at once. We live in the present reality that Jesus brought the kingdom of God to earth, brought us into his kingdom by his death and resurrection, and sealed us to himself by giving us his Holy Spirit; and so we look back and we celebrate his first coming at Christmas. At the same time, we do not live in his perfected kingdom, but in a fallen, sin-soaked, pain-haunted, temptation-riddled, death-scarred world, and we cling to the hope of what God has promised us; and so we look forward in anticipation of Christ’s second coming, when all will be made more right than we can now imagine. As Christians, we look forward and backward at once, because we live between the times, citizens of two worlds at the same time. We live as the representatives of a future that is not only coming, but incoming; there is a new world breaking in to this one, and we’re the thin point of the wedge, the point of contact. This has profound implications for our understanding of our earthly allegiances. Yes, we serve others in this world—our family, our friends, our communities, the organizations which employ us, our nation—but we don’t belong to them. We don’t truly work for this world, we work for Christ, and Christ alone. We live backwards to the rest of the world—we live from the future to the present, and our ultimate allegiance is to a kingdom which has not yet fully come. We are, right now, the kingdom of God on this earth; we are the incoming kingdom, which will fully come when Christ returns in glory, and we are called to live in the light of his coming, according to his agenda, not this world’s, and not our own. We’ve been given a message for the world—now is the acceptable time, now is the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of his vengeance has been put on hold to give as many people as possible a chance to respond—and we need to share it with as many people as we can. We’ve been given the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and we need to shine that light wherever we go, in every conversation we have and on every issue we face. Sometimes that will square with what this world recognizes as good, and we’ll be praised for it; sometimes it will bring us into conflict with the powers that be and with the ruling assumptions of our culture, and we’ll be criticized. Whichever it is, we need to follow Christ as faithfully as we’re able, regardless of what anyone else thinks of us. This is the work God has given us to do while we wait.(Excerpted, edited, from “The Incoming Kingdom”)
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Christmas meditation
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him; nothing that has been made was made without him. In him was life, and the life was the light of all people.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.—John 1:1-5
Have you ever wondered why Jesus was born at night? We sing about it in any number of our carols—“Silent Night”; “It Came upon the Midnight Clear”; “O Holy Night”; “Lo! How a Rose E’er Blooming,”; “O Little Town of Bethlehem”; “Away in a Manger”; and of course, the various references to the shepherds watching their flocks by night. Above Bethlehem’s “deep and dreamless sleep,” “the stars in the sky looked down where he lay”—where, if you believe the carols, he lay sleeping peacefully next to his mother, then woke up without crying, which would make him a most implausible newborn. (We like to imagine it that way, but somehow, after three kids of my own, I don’t buy it.) But in any case, we have this mental picture—still, quiet night; sweet hay, contented animals; quiet, happy baby, radiant mother; and the stars shining serenely down on this beautiful scene—have you ever asked why it should be that way? There’s no particular reason Jesus couldn’t have been born at 3 in the afternoon or 10 in the morning, after all; why was he born at night?Some might say the question’s meaningless, that there was no reason, but I don’t believe that—God doesn’t waste anything, and he doesn’t do anything without a reason. Granted, we can’t know for sure what that reason was, but I think it’s a question worth asking, and trying to answer. You might argue it was because of the star—so that the star could shine, and be seen, from the moment of his birth; there’s probably truth to that, but for my part, I think there’s something bigger going on here. I think, just as with God’s command to Hosea to go marry a woman who would be unfaithful to him, what we have here is a parable brought to life. Jesus wasn’t born when the world was bright and sunny, he was born in the darkest part of the night, when there was little light by which to see. He was born at the time when the rhythms and the energy of human life are lowest, when we are most vulnerable—physically, emotionally, spiritually—when it’s hardest to think clearly and easiest to make mistakes. I don’t think that’s just a physical fact—I think it’s a metaphor, and one to which we need to pay close attention.Now, you might think this is just me, but it isn’t. Here’s another question: have you ever wondered why we celebrate Christmas in late December? No, it’s not because he was born in December; I know we have carols like “In the Bleak Midwinter” and “Do You Hear What I Hear?” with their images of “snow on snow on snow” as the baby Jesus “shivers in the cold,” but he wasn’t born in December; rather, he was born in March or April. That’s why the shepherds were out in the fields with their flocks—it was lambing season. But when the early church was formalizing everything, the date for the Christ Mass was set in late December, not early April, for two very good reasons. One, having Easter and Christmas about the same time would have left the spring calendar way too crowded—not an insignificant point. More importantly, though, they wanted the symbolism of celebrating the birth of Christ during the darkest part of the year, the time when the night is longest and coldest. The early church picked up the image of the Light of the World coming in the dark of the night, and they set Christmas at a time which would emphasize it, just past the longest night of the year.This is an important thing for us to remember when we think about Christmas. After all, if you stop and think about your images of this season, you probably think of Christmas trees, gifts, ornaments, stockings . . . and lights. Lots of lights. Lights on Christmas trees, on houses, on businesses; light-up wire deer in people’s yards, and flashing lights spelling out “Season’s Greetings” over the garage door of a house; icicle lights, strings of white lights, blue lights, colored lights; during our vacation in Arizona a couple years ago, we even saw people stringing the cacti in their front yards with Christmas lights. No evergreens? No problem—just put the lights on whatever you have. We can go without a real pine or fir tree, but it seems we can’t celebrate Christmas, we can’t even imagine it, without lights everywhere and everywhere.Which is good, and as it should be, because Christmas is about light, as John shows us—it’s about the Light of the World, born as one of us. But if we only focus on the light, we miss half the story, because the Light didn’t come into a world full of light; the star didn’t shine at high noon of midsummer. No, the Light came in the darkness of the night, to a world in desperate need. It’s all too easy to forget that, when things are going well, when we have family and friends around us; it’s easy, when we have food on the table, money to pay the bills, and lots of love and joy in our lives, to wrap ourselves in a little bubble of light and let ourselves forget the darkness. It’s easy to forget that there are those in darkness who need the light.That’s a sad thing, because there are many for whom this world is dark indeed. Those who are lonely, those who feel unloved or rejected, know well the darkness of the world; so do those who are struggling to keep their marriage together, or who are trying as hard as they can to help someone they love get free of an addiction to drugs or alcohol, or to do so themselves. For those among us who have recently had someone they love die, who have lost the light they knew in that person’s life, the world can be very dark, and it can be very hard to see any light at all. There are a lot of hurting people in this world, a lot of people for whom life is very dark; and unfortunately, for many, the way the world celebrates Christmas only makes matters worse, which is why depression rates worsen significantly at this time of the year. After all, if you’re unhappy, what help is it to hear the constant message, “Don’t be sad! ’Tis the season to be jolly”? To quote the singer/songwriter/worship leader Dwight Beal, “it’s like seeing a great party and not having an invitation.”This is why, as much as we emphasize the light, we need to take our cue from John and remember the darkness, too. “Light” is one of John’s favorite words, popping up all over his gospel, but he never forgot where the light shines—it shines in the darkness. And note that present tense—not “shone,” but “shines.” God said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” and that light hasn’t stopped shining yet. The light of the Word, who is the Light of the World, shone into the darkness at the beginning of creation, lighting everything as the world was spun out of nothing; the light continued to shine on, and in, the first human beings; after their fall into sin, it continued to shine through the darkness of our fallen world; it shone most brightly of all in Jesus, when the Word was born as a fellow human being; and it continues to shine through his teaching, and—however imperfectly—through us, the church he left behind him, who are his body. In the darkness, the light shines. The darkness tried to put out the light, nailing Jesus to a cross, but even there, it failed, for the light only shone far brighter when he rose again from the grave. The light shines, and the darkness did not overcome it, for it cannot. Though battles may still rage, the war is over; the victory is won. Jesus has won.These are the “tidings of comfort and joy” which we bring at Christmas—not just “be happy because everybody else is happy,” but “be happy because no matter how dark things get, the light still shines.” As the carol has it, “Let nothing you dismay; remember, Christ our savior was born upon this day to save us all from Satan’s power when we had gone astray.” To celebrate Christmas by pretending for a while that the darkness isn’t there is to miss the point entirely; the message of Christmas is that God knows the darkness in this world—including the darkness you face, whatever it may be, however deep it may be—and that Jesus is his answer to it. Jesus came because of the darkness, to light up the darkness—and ultimately dispel it.
British atheist declares, “Africa needs God.”
And amazingly, his reasons are not merely practical, nor rooted in some sort of dismissive idea that “primitive people need religion”; they are, if I may say so, theological, and quite respectful. It’s a remarkable article, and I encourage you to read it.HT: Hot Air
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night
Here’s hoping all of you have a glorious Christmas full of the love of God and the wonder of the Incarnation.
Weather and computers don’t mix
Why the power outages would come a couple days after the ice storm I have no idea, but so it has been; and why the ISP our church uses should have their DSL down I don’t know either, but so also it has been. As such, this is a very low-connectivity period for us; I’m hoping that will change very soon, as it’s quite irritating and more than a little limiting.
Seasonal frustration
I’ve heard a lot of people complain about having Christmas decorations and Christmas music in all the stores starting the day after Thanksgiving, and I get where they’re coming from, but I don’t exactly agree; in particular, even if it is properly Advent, Christmas music at least has the potential to be far better than the normal run of store music. No, what I really object to is the kind of so-called “Christmas” music we usually get these days: to wit, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “Jingle Bells,” “Jingle Bell Rock,” “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” and this year, what might be the worst song Paul McCartney ever wrote (something called “Wonderful Christmastime”), spiced with the occasional Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby tune, in seemingly unending rotation, courtesy of various singers and bands. (The other day I heard a version of “Jingle Bell Rock” that was so awful and so over the top I broke out laughing; I think it’s the only positive experience I’ve ever had of that song, which I loathe to the very core of my being.)For crying out loud, if they’re going to play Christmas music at all, would it kill them to play music that’s actually about, you know, Christmas?
Arab leaders to Israel: “Take the shot!”
OK, now this is interesting: apparently, Israel is being encouraged to target and kill the leaders of Hamas—encouraged not by the West, but by Arab leaders. According to a report posted on Power Line,
Israel’s Maariv reports unnamed heads of Arab states that have passed diplomatic messages to Jerusalem encouraging Israel to kill Iranian funded and trained Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip in response to Hamas’ firing of scores of rockets against Southern Israel during the current “cease fire”.What some Middle East policy analysts and diplomats in Washington may not realize with respect to increasingly optimistic Western assessments of Hamas as a diplomatic partner is that today’s news report in Israel reflects more the rule in Arab capitals than the exception. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak expressed his concern to the Arab press that “Egypt shares a border with Iran following Hamas’ May 2008 rocket assault on the Israeli city of Ashkelon with Iranian manufactured grad rockets.Earlier this month Egyptian Foreign Minister Egypt’s Ahmed Abul Gheit warned that Cairo would never accept an “Islamic emirate” in Gaza—a key stated goal of Hamas. Mohammad Abdallah Al Zulfa, member of The Saudi Shoura Council said yesterday on the Arab network’s Alhurra news program that “Iran is the big threat in today’s world, supporting all the terrorists from Hamas to Hezbollah to some other terrorists that we don’t know their names yet”. “Iran destabilized the region by supporting all the illegal activities and activists such as Hamas. . . .”
Sounds to me like the leaders of Israel’s Arab neighbors have figured out they’re next on the hit list and are hoping to use Israel as a proxy to do what they themselves dare not (because of the PR fallout, and the chance of Iranian retaliation).
Avery Cardinal Dulles, RIP
I’m not sure how I missed this, though part of it is that I had gone a week or two without checking the First Things website; his death last Friday wasn’t surprising, given that he was 90 years old and in poor health, but it’s still a loss for the church. As Joseph Bottum summarized his career,
Created cardinal for his theological work by John Paul II, Avery Dulles was one of the great figures of the twentieth century: a theologian, an intellectual, a teacher, a writer, a lecturer, and a kind and gentle man.In his long life, he wrote more than 700 articles and twenty-two books, and it is hard to imagine how anyone today can fill the roles he played in the Catholic world and American public life. As the disease that took his life progressed, his final months were a trial that took away his powers to speak, write, and move. But he seemed, in those months, to live even more serenely, more spiritually, and more beautifully. May God welcome him home.
Bottum’s obituary of Cardinal Dulles expands this, and tells in brief the story of a remarkable life. It is a strange thing that the great-grandson of one Secretary of State (John Watson Foster), great-nephew of a second (Robert Lansing), son of a third (John Foster Dulles), and nephew of a Director of Central Intelligence (Allen Dulles) should become known not as a government official but as a Catholic theologian, but such was the mystery of God. A profound thinker and a man of grace both in his theology and in his life, he, like the pope who ordained him cardinal, represented the Roman church at its very best. Requiescat in pace, Avery Robert Dulles.
An ice day
It’s definitely high winter in the Midwest. The heaviest weight of this storm fell north of us, but we got a respectable amount of ice last night, though the temperature did rise above freezing and start melting some of that this afternoon; it will be interesting to see what the weekend brings. Anyway, I thought I’d post a few pictures (the rest after the break), because as destructive as they can be, ice storms are beautiful, too.
That tree isn’t having a good year; it had one of its trunks (if that’s the right word for them) break off earlier this year, and now it’s lost another one to the ice:
There’s even a little green under the ice:
For Eli
I saw this in The Classic FM Pocket Book of Music, which I ran across at Dr. Kavanaugh’s house; this is the entry on the French horn:
A member of the brass family, if this instrument was uncoiled it would not only stretch for more than three metres, it would also give you something to do on a Sunday afternoon. Best not attempted during the quiet bit in a concert, though. Great composers for the horn include Mozart and Richard Strauss.
And just to be fair, here’s what they have to say about mine own instrument, the bassoon:
The bassoon is the lowest woodwind instrument of the orchestra. It looks something like a didgeridoo wearing too much jewellery, but with an espresso frother coming out of the side. In fact, just like espresso, it too comes in single and double varieties.