I got YoYo Ma’s Christmas CD at Starbucks a few weeks ago and it was this song that most gripped me. The music is beautiful, the instrumentation is perfect and I love Allison Krauss’ voice. Her music is often rich with Christian thought. But the words to this carol caught me this morning:

Good people all, this Christmas time,
Consider well and bear in mind
What our good God for us has done,
In sending His beloved Son.
With Mary holy we should pray
To God with love this Christmas Day;
In Bethlehem upon that morn
There was a blest Messiah born.

Near Bethlehem did shepherds keep
Their flocks of lambs and feeding sheep;
To whom God’s angels did appear
Which put the shepherds in great fear.
“Prepare and go”, the angels said,
“To Bethlehem, be not afraid;
For there you’ll find, this happy morn,
A princely Babe, sweet Jesus born.”

With thankful heart and joyful mind,
The shepherds went this babe to find,
And as God’s angel has foretold,
They did our Savior Christ behold.
Within a manger He was laid,
And by His side the virgin maid
Attending on the Lord of Life,
Who came on earth to end all strife.

Merry Christmas. Wonder at the mystery of the incarnation of the Son of God.

This morning I was reflecting on some things that happened to me about 14 years ago and how unfair they were. I didn’t get what I was promised or what I deserved. I’d like to say that I’ve gotten past the sting but obviously if I’m still dwelling on them I have not. This morning I began to put them into the perspective of where I am now and the role those things played in getting me here. Yes, they were wrong, perhaps even sinful, but God allowed them at the right time in the right way to get me here now. I couldn’t have seen that at the time but with those things I probably wouldn’t have finished my under-grad degree nor would I have been involved in my last church at a critical time.

That began to give me confidence that God is in charge and is leading. I was able to serve my last church the way I did not because of my great skill but because of God’s mighty work. He is even able to accomplish his purposes though a goof like me. Then I looked forward. If he has done all that in my history, if he has written my story that way so far, then he probably has a purpose for me going forward as well. So I sat here with coffee cup in hand pondering this. I have little confidence in myself as a leader but I have great confidence in God’s ability to accomplish his purposes even with weak people. So going forward, I don’t have confidence in myself but I do have great confidence in God. How do I operate doubting myself but trusting him? What’s the linchpin that keeps those two things together?

My mind went to Solomon. I don’t know why, I haven’t been reading 1 or 2 Kings but I though of Solomon’s ascension to the throne of David. Listen to what Solomon says to God,

“And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of David my father, although I am but a little child. I do not know how to go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of your people whom you have chosen, a great people, too many to be numbered or counted for multitude. Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to govern this your great people?” – 1Ki 3:7-9

Solomon knew he wasn’t fit for the task of leading Israel. He didn’t have confidence in himself, but he knew what God had done through David and the promise (covenant) he’s made with his father. And so he asked God for what he didn’t have. He trusted God to give him what he needed to lead. The linchpin between my appropriate mistrust of my abilities and my confidence in God is prayer. “Lord, I can’t… but you can.” I need to pray more.

John Piper has blogged on the book Peace Like A River so a few things are sure to happen:

1. It will sell a bunch quickly.
2. Amazon reviews will greatly multiply.
3. Bloggers will review it to pieces and most will find it wonderful.
4. Someone (or a few someones) will give one away on their blog.

Such is the impact of a celebrity  theologian. :) Before the frenzy begins I just wanted make a few brief observations. Not so much about the book; all I’ve read is the preview available on Amazon. I trust Piper’s judgment on the rest of the book. From the little bit I have read, the author writes characters who live as though God were real. As though he were at work in the world. The God in Peace Like A River is not a deist god who you can talk to to make yourself feel better but can be safely assured that  he/she won’t actually doing anything. God in Peace is an active character. He does stuff. The people seem real, not like plastic dashboard saints.

This is the Christian worldview depicted in fiction that I was looking for in Fireproof. I wonder if Sherwood Pictures should be talking to Leif Enger (the author of Peace Like A River) about movie rights? At a minimum I think the writers at Sherwood should read and digest this book.

Let the blog frenzy begin now.

Trevin Wax is giving away and awesome set of books plus the Golden Fleece of all of 2008’s books, The ESV Study Bible.

Whatever you do, do NOT subscribe to his blog via RSS to be entered once for the drawing. Do NOT link to his blog on your blog to be entered a second time. And, most certainly do NOT create a blog post linking to the drawing for a third entry. Because that’s what I’ve done and I’d really like to win so I don’t want any more competition.

Thank you.

Time’s website has reprinted an article from Christmas time, 1940 about the Church in Germany under Hitler. Oh my goodness, if magazines wrote like this today! Even more important, if the Church had a reputation like this today!I recommend you read it carefully and reflect on it. I’d also recommend meditating on Matthew 5:13-16 in conjunction with reading the Time piece.

The Time piece mentions Martin Niemoller, a Lutheran pastor who stood up to the Nazi’s co-opting of the church in Germany. Deitrich Bonhoffer is the better known German Christian because of his excellent writings and the fact that he died in a concentration camp, but Niemoller was an important force also. He too went to a concentration camp but was liberated before his execution. He helped form the Confessing Church in Germany, a group of Protestant pastors who refused to recognize the Church as an organ of the state. This is what the article is referring to when it mentions “Confessional pastors.” You can find out more about Niemoller and the church under Hitler in Erwin Lutzer’s very good book Hitler’s Cross.

There are, however, a few things to keep in mind when reading the Time article. Early in the piece they report “More than 80% of the prisoners in the concentration camps are not Jews but Christian.” That may or may not be accurate. First, it was reported in 1940, early in the war before America’s involvement. Jews at that time may have been being rounded up in ghettos before the reich began large scale extermination in the camps. Also, information about the concentration camps was tightly guarded by the Nazi’s till the Allies liberated them at the end of the war. This number may be inaccurate because of the nature of the intelligence at that time.

In light of the recent presidential election here and some of the talk about how evangelicals would vote, I found this paragraph most instructive:

As exiled Nobel Prizeman Thomas Mann said last week: “There can be no real peace between the cross and the swastika. National socialism is essentially unchristian and antichristian. . . .” Though the conflict between Christianity and Naziism seems inevitable now, it did not seem so when Hitler came into power. Catholics and Protestants alike helped his coup d’état. Martin Niemoller himself supported him. And one of Hitler’s first acts as Chancellor was to declare: “In the two Christian creeds lie the most important factors for the preservation of the German people.” Only in secret did he tell his confidant Hermann Rauschning: “The parsons will be made to dig their own graves. They will betray their God to us. They will betray anything for the sake of their miserable little jobs and incomes. … I can guarantee that they will replace the cross with our swastika.”

What I hope we learn from this is the danger of hitching Christianity to any political power or agenda. Evangelicalism is not a political party or platform. There are times when we should be critical of any political party. In the face of the horror that Naziism was, it is easy to see the danger and folly. When facing the Republican or Democratic (or Libertarian for that matter) party, the danger might be harder to see.

(HT)