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Third Week in Advent – Day 5 – Unconditional Love
When people complain that they don’t understand someone, I sometimes respond with, “That’s nothing. I don’t understand myself.” If love is based on understanding, it is going to be almost non-existent. We all cry out for unconditional love; if it is conditional, it isn’t love, it is based on something we do to merit that…
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Third Week in Advent – Day 4 – Love, Action, Confidence
Ever present in John’s mind is the challenge posed by the secessionists. The secessionists have been suggesting that faith alone is necessary for salvation, without any corresponding deeds. The issue, as Raymond Brown notes, isn’t hypocrisy. The issue is the secessionists “taught that actions or deeds were not salvifically important since one already possessed eternal…
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Third Week in Advent – Day 3 – With Us in Trouble
November 7 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Matthew 5:4 God doesn’t leave me when times are tough. I may move away because I am hurt that HE allowed the circumstances. I may move away because my focus becomes me and my pain…
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Third Week in Advent – Day 2 – God’s Love Working in Us
But how should these points work themselves out into the lives of followers of Jesus? Let me suggest some ideas: Henry Neufeld, Not Ashamed of the Gospel, p. 32-33
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Third Week in Advent – Day 1 – The Christian Identity Card
According to John, as noted in a previous meditation, maybe more than any other New Testament document, breathes the atmosphere of the Old Testament. Even though a dualism between the flesh and the Spirit is pervasive in it, and it utilizes the Greek vocabulary with evident nuance and a broad understanding of its philosophical connotations,…
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Second Week in Advent – Day 5 – Peace to the Embattled
Significantly, Mark announces the beginning of the Good News (gospel) of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. This proclamation stands against any other declaration of good news. For example, Caesar claimed himself to be a “savior” who brought prosperity and peace to the world.Good news, transliterated later into the word “gospel”, comes from the Greek…
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Second Week in Advent – Day 4 – Conquering Conquest
While it’s difficult to let go of the old, the new beckons us. What is the old? It is what theologian Walter Wink called the Domination System — it’s the system of violence and oppression that enslaves the world.12 But in the death and resurrection of Jesus, that system — that world — has been…
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Second Week in Advent – Day 3 – Shaping Peace
In this entertaining book for all ages, Squareland enjoys a simple, uniform, conflict-free life of “perfect squares”—until expectations are stunningly upended by change. Suddenly Squares must deal with foreign creatures: Triangles, Rectangles, Circles, Ellipses, Parallelograms, Trapezoids, “Gons,” and such weirdoes. Each shape has its own natural personality and proclivities, so complications, cliques, tensions, and conflict threaten…
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Second Week in Advent – Day 2 – In What Do You Hope?
Threatened by Amaziah, Amos tells the priest the harsh truth that not only has the sanctuary lost the Spirit of God; it will eventually be destroyed as a result of its choice to serve the king rather than God. In the language of Paul Tillich, the only Ultimate that delivers is the one that stands…
