Christmas Links: Theology of Carols and more

It is December 21st. Four more days to Christmas. Are you ready?

Don’t Miss List: “Favorite” Heresies, Don’t Trust Your Heart, How to Reach the Suffering and More

This list has been a long time coming. Quite a bit of ground to cover, since I haven’t done this for awhile. I’ll start with the most timely subjects:

“This is the last spastic breath from the Religious Right before its overdue death” – Collin Hansen

I generally avoid political issues like the plague around here. I believe the gospel and the truth contained in God’s word matter more than politics ever could. However, this opinion piece by Collin Hansen of TGC speaks directly to Christians about the latest Trump scandal and, is, in my view an essential read. Read it even if you don’t love the headline (I didn’t like the headline) – a better one would have been from the end “Woe to the hypocrites.”

The passage I found most pertinent:

To the older evangelicals planning to vote for Trump: You can try to explain the difference in electing a president and hiring a 23-year-old college graduate to evangelize students. You can say we’re electing a commander in chief and not a Sunday school teacher. You can say that God often raises up pagan leaders to deliver his people from their enemies. But no one is fooled by your arguments.

They can see you will apparently excuse anything in a Republican nominee so long as the alternative is a manifestly unqualified Clinton. And they will conclude that they don’t really need to listen to you when it comes to “traditional, biblical ethics.”

Keep reading at The Washington Post

Story Behind the Song: I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day

Today a friend shared this post from Our Daily Bread, about the origin of the song, I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day by one of my favorite poets: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

When it hurts…

There are days when it just hurts. You get bad news and once the shock subsides the pain is raw. 

How to help the brokenhearted

Last week was a difficult one. I felt surrounded by broken hearts. Illness, breakups, loss, suffering. So much pain around me, and to a lesser extent I had my own pain to work through. I sympathized with those friends and my church family and pondered the fact that all of this is caused by the cancer of sin in this world. All of the tears and pain can be traced back to one rebellious act in the garden. This was weighing heavy on my mind Sunday.

Grace in disappointment

There are days when I throw my hands up and say, “Lord, I really don’t know what you’re doing with my life.” Thankfully, in those moments I still know that He knows what He’s doing. 

Thinking about the ‘God of all comfort”

This morning I awoke and when I checked my email I had a sad update from a friend sharing that her 10.5 week ultrasound showed no more baby. How heartbreaking!