I have never been to a “last day of the year” party, but plan to have one this year.
Why?
This has been a hard year for the Reynolds’ family and it is worth celebrating the end of it. The New Year looks full of promise, but last year was a time of hard work, hopes deferred, and painful lessons learned.
Usually when we have had a hard year, there has been somethin...
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For the Dictionary of Christian Spirituality, I wrote a short essay about fundamentalism. It's interesting that a spirituality reference work would include an entry on this topic; the normal associations of the term "fundamentalist" tend to be doctrinal or cultural, but not spiritual. Put another way, spirituality is a soft word, fundamentalist a hard word. But the wise editor...
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Phoebe Age Nine imagines Sauron, the Lidless and Unblinking Eye of Mordor, in his great lust for the One Ring. Here he is supported by worker Orcs:
Cowering at the bottom, barely visible, is Gollum, pitifully protesting, "it is my prechus golem golem." We can't even tell if he's a line drawing or something more complex. "NO, ITS MINE" thunders Sauron, looking down imperi...
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Here's a large and definitive reference work from Zondervan in 2011, the Dictionary of Christian Spirituality. It's a brick of a hardcover, but with such an ambitious title, it's surprising to find it weighing in at just over 800 pages. The editors (Glen Scorgie, Simon Chan, Gordon Smith, and James D. Smith III) seem to be trying for that magical sweet spot for a reference work...
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This Christmas, a friend gave me an old book. It's a pocket-sized catechism printed in 1818. Its original cover is missing, but somebody has lovingly hand-stitched a decorative long-grain paper cover to it. It measures 3.5 x 6 inches, and is 75 pages long.
It is The Evangelical Primer, compiled by Rev. Joseph Emerson. Here's a look at some interior pages:
Those little i...
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This is not just true on Black Friday, but on the First Christmas. The Christmas story would have been very different if Augustus had not decided that the world should be taxed. Was there a specific decree? Perhaps, but most important was the change in Roman policy.
The Roman world was going to be an Imperial world and everybody was going to acknowledge Caesar’s Lordship b...
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Advent is Not Christmas
You know Dasher and Dancer, but do you know the dates of Christmas?
Today I asked a group of students when Christmas began and ended. Answers ranged from when Santa came off the sleigh at the Macy’s Day Parade to the first day of December. The church calendar did not decide when the feast began, but various secular or family events.
Of cou...
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It is the first day of Christmas, the first day of the Kingdom of God on Earth.
It is December 25: not the shortest day of the year. Most symbolically would have had the Son rise on December 21 (or the equivalent) the shortest day of the year. The church had Him born just the other side of the solstice.
Jesus isn’t the Sun God, but the Sun anticipates His coming symboli...
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It’s not leftovers, it Scriptorium Classic! Reposted from Dec 25, 2007.
And I Joseph was walking, and was not walking; and I looked up into the sky, and saw the sky astonished; and I looked up to the pole of the heavens, and saw it standing, and the birds of the air keeping still. ... And I saw the sheep walking, and the sheep stood still; and the shepherd raised his han...
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Christmas almost is, but not quite yet. All the Twelve days are before me unspent, but today is not a holiday. We are still in the fasting time of Advent.
Is there any better way to describe the time in which we live?
Something is about to happen. In a different era we would be seeing portents in the Heavens or in the entrails of animals, but in our age anticipation of So...
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Featured Essay
As I write this, you are teaching our youngest Algebra at the dining room table. The Advent wreath you made is at the center of that table and we had the banana bread you baked for breakfast.
You are beautiful.
I know that sometimes you feel your job, being a mother and a teacher, consumes everybody’s ideas about you. We reduce you to your role and even though it is a j...
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One of my favorite books from last year was Kelly Kapic & Justin Borger's God So Loved He Gave: Entering the Movement of Divine Generosity (Zondervan, 2010). It's a meditation on divine generosity, and it reaches from the very nature of God (that high!) all the way down to financial decisions in daily life (that low!). This book puts giving into perspective, situating it in th...
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