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Earlier today, I received an excerpt from a Christmas sermon by Thomas 'a Kempis, the fifteenth-century author who penned the devotional classic The Imitation of Christ, from Worship Quote of the Week.  It's definately a gift worth sharing this Christmas. Take some time to read through the sermon (or some of the other links given at the end of the post) with your family and friends . . .

During Advent our attention fixes not only upon the first coming of Christ, but also on the second coming and the new creation.  The other day, a posting of Peterson's The Message translation of Romans 8:22-25 caused me [Tom] to stop and ask whether a woman (particularly one who has experienced pregancy) would have worked this text out in the same manner.  I enjoy Peterson's work and I seldom ask about masculine influence on textual translation, but I couldn't help but wonder when I read these words: 

waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us.  But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy. 

More helpful thoughts regarding Confession from my friend Miller. 

My friend Miller's helpful thoughts on confessing to one another.

Below is an email from Miller on the Hebrews 11 and the Nature of Evil which I thought would be of value to share. A seminary friend of his commented:

I couldn’t improve on this. Remarks about evil are illuminating. Yes, the path of faith is to heed God’s word even when there is no evidence, or when the apparent evidence is on the other side. That’s the thrust of Eve’s temptation in Gen. 3, and basically all the decisions, good and bad, made by people through the biblical history.

So here's the comment, for your prayerful consideration as we celebrate the incarnation of the Logos, the appearance of the Light of Christ which illuminates (and dispels the darkness from) our hearts, minds, souls, and actions. Come, Lord Jesus come.  We long for the day when every knee will bow, tongue will confess that you are Lord over all of creation, and presence of evil will be banished to the outer darkness!

As I did the other day, I'm recycling some thoughts posted on another blog. The topic under consideration was Legalism, both ethical and doctrinal, distorting spirituality. I think what is below largely stands on its own, but if you'd like to place it into its context, go to Divine Embrace 5.

I spent a fair amount of time collating the below comment for Christmas Words: “Light”, so I thought I'd share the wealth.

Yes, the Logos being Light! Hopefully, I’ve not become too caught up in the Platonic imitiation of divine life through meditating upon Jaroslav Pelikan’s The Light of the World: A Basic Image in Early Christian Thought (New York, NY: Harper & Brothers, 1962). But I have found the piece extremely helpful. Pelikan points out the use of Light in describing the Son as vital to the apologetic of the Son being in eternal relationship with the Father, as light has no beginning (i.e., the Son is eternal radiance of the Father). As followers of Christ we participate in the image of God as we were intended to be. Our gaze is returned to God, away from the narcissicism which we embraced in the fall (and human beings including myself continue to confront in daily life).

The other day a student shared with me the desire to arrange a chapter by chapter Chronological Bible for the focus of their devotions in the coming year.  I thought there had to be such a resource already available, so I went searching and found a number of helpful on-line resources at Back to the Bible.

The lamented The End of Advent is not occurring in our local congregation this morning. But I'd encourage you to join me in prayer for this wider question in our culture, in particular how we break in with the Light of Christ into dark places in our lives, families, neighborhoods, wider communities/networks, world.

Christmas has devoured Advent, gobbled it up with the turkey giblets and the goblets of seasonal ale. Every secularized holiday, of course, tends to lose the context it had in the liturgical year. Across the nation, even in many churches, Easter has hopped across Lent, Halloween has frightened away All Saints, and New Year’s has drunk up Epiphany. . . .

Of course, even in the liturgical calendar, the season points ahead to Christmas. Advent genuinely is adventual—a time before, a looking forward—and it lacks meaning without Christmas. But maybe Christmas, in turn, lacks meaning without Advent. All those daily readings from Isaiah, filled with visions of things yet to be, a constant barrage of the future tense: And it shall come to pass . . . And there shall come forth . . . A kind of longing pervades the Old Testament selections read in church over the weeks before Christmas—an anxious, almost sorrowful litany of hope only in what has not yet come. Zephaniah. Judges. Malachi. Numbers. I shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, but not nigh: There shall come a star out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel.

What Advent is, really, is a discipline: a way of forming anticipation and channeling it toward its goal. There’s a flicker of rose on the third Sunday— Gaudete!, that day’s Mass begins: Rejoice!—but then it’s back to the dark purple that is the mark of the season in liturgical churches. And what those somber vestments symbolize is the deeply penitential design of Advent. Nothing we can do earns us the gift of Christmas, any more than Lent earns us Easter. But a season of contrition and sacrifice prepares us to understand and feel something about just how great the gift is when at last the day itself arrives.

More than any other holiday, Christmas seems to need its setting in the church year, for without it we have a diminishment of language, a diminishment of culture, and a diminishment of imagination. The Jesse trees and the Advent calendars, St. Martin’s Fast and St. Nicholas’ Feast, Gaudete Sunday, the childless crèches, the candle wreaths, the vigil of Christmas Eve: They give a shape to the anticipation of the season. They discipline the ideas and emotions that otherwise would shake themselves to pieces, like a flywheel wobbling wilder and wilder till it finally snaps off its axle. . . .

It is this that Advent, rightly kept, would prevent—the thing, in fact, it is designed to halt. Through all the preparatory readings, through all the genealogical Jesse trees, the somber candles on the wreaths, the vigils, and the hymns, Advent keeps Christmas on Christmas Day: a fulfillment, a perfection, of what had gone before. I shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, but not nigh. -- The End of Advent by Joseph Bottum. Copyright (c) 2007 First Things (December 2007).