Advent 2012 – Week 4: Know Peace

Surely you have seen the bumper sticker, if not the marquis sign outside a place of worship. It proclaims in a matter of pun: “No Jesus, No Peace. Know Jesus, Know Peace!” As trite as this kind of message seems to be, it brings to mind the message of Christmas “Peace on earth!”

This week as you gather with family or friends around a Christmas table loaded with decadent foods of all forms and fashions, or around a Christmas tree decked out in all the trimmings and loaded with brightly wrapped treasures just waiting to be torn into, take a moment to consider the Peace – the Prince of Peace – who made all this tradition part of your life.

This year as we celebrate Christmas, let our hearts resound with Peace, and let our voices lift with singing about the Prince of Peace.

 

Advent 2012 – Week 3: I’ve Got the Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy

As with all of the themes of Advent, we must reach beyond the surface to see them become active in our lives. Of course, we can always see evidence of Hope, Love, Joy, and Peace as they are played out daily in our lives. But to have the concepts become a reality in our lives goes beyond the surface. As they say, we have to get to the heart of the matter.

And so, if we are looking for Joy this Christmas season, the best place to start is not in the bright and cheery music played in malls and elevators (even when these songs turn our minds heavenward). Nor should we stop with the shiny smiles on little ones’ faces (although the smiles and laughter of the innocents warms our own attitudes). As the children’s song says, we must have the Joy “down in my heart.” Where’s your Joy this Christmas?

 

Advent 2012 – Week 2: More Love!

If there is one thing that there is no shortage on in this world it is love. Certainly, there are those who don’t experience or express love on a regular basis, but this is not for lack of the commodity. Love, as we understand it is one of those wonderful things that grows the more that you give it away. One of my favorite short quips is attributed to Oscar Hammerstein II:

“A bell’s not a bell ’til you ring it

 A song’s not a song ’til you sing it

 Love in your heart wasn’t put there to stay

 Love isn’t love ’til you give it away!”

With this reminder during the Christmas season, it becomes a challenge to those of us who know the Love that invaded our planet on Christmas Day to extend His love to everyone with whom we come in contact.

 

Advent 2012 – Week 1: Here’s Hope!

In the late 1980s Southern Baptists set aside the Fall (’89) and Spring (’90) for simultaneous revivals. The object was for churches to engage in these revival efforts in one fell swoop with the theme “Here’s Hope Jesus Cares for You”. The convention even partnered with her publishing arm (Holman Bible Publishers) to prepare themed New Testaments (NKJV) to be given out by the churches in the effort.

I do not know the full results of the revival effort, but I do know that the sentiment presented in the theme is one that bears remembrance during this Christmas Season—Jesus Christ is the Hope that is available to all mankind. Whether we find ourselves in distress or over-extended this Holiday, we can find all Hope in the One who cares most for us. He cares so much that He offered His own life in place of ours. That’s why He came on the very first Christmas, and why we can still say, “Here’s Hope! Jesus Cares for You!”

 

Advent 2011 – Week 4: Joy

Where Does My Joy Come From?

The Simplest answer to this question is the age-old Sunday school answer: “Jesus!”  As simple as that looks, sounds, and is, it is still the best answer that we have. Joy is an interesting commodity. We all want it—we seek it. If you look around, you will find that people all over are trying to find this simple little thing called joy. Some will call it “happiness” or “contentment” but we are all after joy.

In the search for this Joy, men and women have looked to careers, material possessions, outside stimulants, and even each others. In their search they have found all of these to be empty vessels, and that joy is something that needs to come outside the package marked “self-satisfaction.” The platitude that the church has latched onto in the last several years is “if you want joy—spell it: Jesus, Others, then You.”

Why the songs about joy at Christmas? Why the insistence that joy can be found during this season? It is because with the arrival of Christ on the scene, individuals can begin to understand the joy that has been so elusive for so long. With the Advent of Christ into the hearts of men and women, thoughts of seeking others’ needs before our own plant true Joy in the heart—where it comes from.

 

Advent 2011 – Week 3: Love

At Christmas time we think often about love. We “love” presents, we “love” potatoes and turkey, ham and dressing. We “love” time spent with our family. But if we are to truly understand love, it is best to look at the Manger. The 19^th century poet Christina Rossetti gave us these words to think about:

Love came down at Christmas
Love all lovely, love divine;
Love was born at Christmas
Star and angels gave the sign.

Worship we the Godhead
Love incarnate, love divine;
Worship we our Jesus
But wherewith for sacred sign?

Love shall be our token
Love shall be yours and love be mine
Love to God and to all men
Love for plea and gift and sign.

 

Advent 2011 – Week 2: Peace

The 1960s gave our nation a new look at peace. (Highlighted by sit-ins, love-ins, and the like heralded by this song.) Through the so-called hippie culture that you, your children or someone you know, might be familiar with has faced some of this influence. I am not predisposed to get into the politics of it here, but I am disturbed by a resurgent fascination with the object that has been called a “peace symbol.”

My problem with this icon stems back to the ‘sixties when it made its original appearance in the United States. The symbol itself took a traditional sign of Christianity (the Cross) and stood it on its head, then proceeded to demonstrate further contempt for Christianity by breaking the arms of the cross in defiance of the One who actually provided peace.

It is time for us to stand for peace, not in belligerence, but by living the peace known only through Jesus Christ daily. We must stop holding up two fingers (in a “vee”) and screaming peace—that symbolic gesture was originally coined by Winston Churchill to signify ‘victory’ and is a sign of battle triumph rather than peace on earth—and live our peace with our fellow man by showing the way to peace through faith in Christ instead.

At the risk of being trite and over-using a form of bumper sticker theology. This season, as we consider the message of the Angels – “Glory to God in the highest! And on earth peace, good will toward men!” – let’s ponder this thought:

No Christ, no peace . . . Know Christ, know peace!

 

Advent 2011 – Week 1: Hope

“I hope it snows this Christmas.”

“This gift was just what I was hoping for.”

“When the baby comes, I hope it’s a boy.”

There is something amiss in all of these statements, even though they are the kinds of things that we might say or typically hear in a giving situation. “What,” you may ask, “is wrong with them?” Thanks for asking (I was going to tell you anyway).

The problem is the use of the word “hope.” In our society, we have re-defined this word to express a wish or a desire. Something that we are willing to happen, if it could. I am not opposed to dreaming and wishing, but I think that it is time that we reclaimed this word “hope” for what it really means.

Hope is not an ethereal desire for something good but a concrete expectation for that which is. The reason that we have so much difficulty with hopes is that we equate them with dreams. This is probably related to the abstractness of this concrete.

Dreams and wishes are good because they are the things that may be which give us the drive to do what is necessary to make them come true. Hope, on the other hand, is the assurance of what already is/will be. It is the assurance of what we do not know, although we know it will be. Hope is the rock upon which faith can stand. This is why the writer of Hebrews can say with all confidence:

¹⁷[W]hen God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, ¹⁸so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. ¹⁹We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, ²⁰where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. (Hebrews 6, ESV)

So, this year as you contemplate the coming of the Christ Child, and you consider that He is the Hope for the world, understand that the Hope that He is is one that cannot be denied. His miraculous birth, sinless life, substitutionary death, and glorious resurrection are all part of the Hope that will be complete in His Second Coming. And that is the gift of Hope that makes His Advent Yours.

 

Advent 2008

Last year I double/triple posted a series on Advent. This year, rather than duplicate posting, I will simply link you to the original series. For those who would like to follow the Advent season with me, you may go to Mulberry Moments — a devotional site that I post on from time to time. New Posts will appear each week. Happiness to all during this our Christmas season.