Category: Christ

Beyond Our Imagining

Approaching Christmas, and the turn of the year, many of our thoughts go back, like, to a year ago. What were you thinking, hoping, dreaming then? You may find that they are the same things as now. The things you wanted to do, the things you wished were different, all that you wanted to change–maybe it’s the same. This time can be depressing for some. Maybe you’ve even gone through this cycle so often that you can’t imagine how things can ever be any better for you.

This is actually an opportune time to tap into a power that will help you imagine things differently, so differently that, instead of how things can ever get any better, what you can’t imagine is how great things will be.

Mary’s song (Luke 1:46-55) celebrates a God who has acted in the past, and will continue to act, to raise up the disenfranchised and downhearted. Mary–this is critical–can celebrate this God who has acted in and through her as both Lord of history and nature. That is, Mary is a key character in God’s acting in history at this specific time, and as Lord of nature in bringing about her remarkable pregnancy with this oh-so remarkable life in her. Most arguments about the existence of God focus on God as Creator, but Biblical faith celebrates God as Creator as an expression of experiencing him as sustainer and redeemer, a God who acts in a way that brings everything together: history, nature; it’s all one to him. In this way her song is, as is often pointed out, an echo of the Song of Moses and Miriam in Exodus 15, when God had acted in history and nature to deliver his people through the Red Sea.

The point is this: If God is experienced as sustainer and redeemer–as “re-creator” of life, bringing hope and new opportunity, it’s a no-brainer that he is also the creator in and behind it all.

This is the God who comes in Christ and through the power of the Holy Spirit into the very centre of our lives, at the intersection of our history and nature. The God of all power has acted in a personal way to make all possibilities open to you and me.

Your story matters. He wants to enter your life to give it new meaning and power and possibility, wherever you are in that story right now. You can’t imagine where that can lead.

It’s Not About Us

Praise God that we are offered rescue from sin and death through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ!

Many Easter messages will miss just how big this news is. They will miss that our personal salvation is part of an even larger picture. God is bringing about a whole new creation, His new creation, populated with His new creatures. The resurrected Christ is the first born of this new creation, and in him we are part of it, even now (2 Corinthians 5:17). Our present world is not merely a waiting room; we are to live it now.

Extra Ordinary

Outline of message prepared for Sunday, December 22, 2013 at Fallingbrook Presbyterian Church, Toronto (the service was cancelled due to ice storm). Scripture: Matthew 1:18-25.

One implication of Christmas is that the timeless can be born in the very timely circumstances of our life. What is extraordinary (meaning outside of the ordinary, not just unusual or special) can transform our ‘ordinary’ experience.

1. a) The circumstances of Christ’s birth were in some ways quite ordinary, even less than than ordinary. b) Other aspects of Christ’s birth were well outside of the ordinary (the meaning of his name, conceived by the Holy Spirit). c) The extra ordinary invaded the ordinary to bring about his birth.

2. a) Much our essence is “ordinary” or less: the reality of sin as descendants of Adam. b) God causes us to be extra ordinary because Christ also can be born in us through the same Holy Spirit by whom he was conceived in Mary’s womb. c) We can allow what is eternal and timelss to invade our “ordinary” experience with its needs and challenges by allowing Christ to be born in us.

 

The Privileged Many

Summary of message at Fallingbrook Presbyterian Church, Sunday, December 15 2013 (Advent 3). Scripture: Matthew 11:2-11.

It is often observed that this is a time of year when people who are down may feel even more down. There can be disillusionment – both with personal circumstances and from observation of the world. Where is the peace and joy of which Christmas speaks? It may seem any sort of success in life is for an elite, a privileged few. Christmas actually brings the message that we can be part of the privileged many – privileged to be part of God’s kingdom brought in Christ.

From Matthew’s telling at the beginning of chapter 11, it  seems John the Baptist may have been suffering some disillusionment. He who had been first to recognize and point to Jesus as Messiah was in prison, and did not see from  his vantage point how anything was different. He sent friends to ask of Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we wait for another?” Jesus replies by pointing to what is happening: massive healing, a sign of the kingdom’s breaking into the world in and through him. And he adds, as great a figure as John the Baptist is, having been foretold as the one to point to what is happening, the least in the kingdom is greater than he. This kingdom is both now and forever.

So what about us and our disillusionment? We need, like John, to see beyond our own circumstances to perceive the bigger picture of what God is doing in the world, and what he can do for us personally, especially as we accept the special fellowship that rest from our striving (end of chapter 11) can bring. We can handle pretty much anything with the right support.

Most importantly, our part in Christ’s kingdom gives us our true identity, which is not to be equated with our particular roles in life that can bring us disappointment and disillusionment. Our identity is wrapped up in Christ, who will not fail us. And we find we are already on what Isaiah celebrated as the highway of the redeemed (Isaiah 35:1-10). We are among the privileged many.

 

Closer to the Source

lakeshore_01

It is a holiday weekend. Many of us are flocking to places where we experience the meeting of the elements. We seem drawn to places where air, water and land come together. Such places tend to be refreshing, invigorating, and we get the sense of sharing something together. Many of our best memories are of times together in such places.

Maybe there is something else. May we recall something primal, elements of wind (or spirit in Biblical language), land, water, and place made for us and all living creatures. There, we are closer to the source.  For the Christian this may lead to a further connection, with heaven and earth coming together in Christ, the Word of creation (John 1). Maybe it’s a less obvious but powerful way in which we are drawn to him, and why he has the ability, as well as the will, to bring together the various elements of our life and make whole people of us.

Photo: Lake Ontario at Ajax, Ontario