In the reading for 12/30 in Watch for the Light, Phillip Yancey talks about the the discontinuity between the Christmas we celebrate and commemorate in art and on cards and what the gospel says. Jesus was not born in into a calm bucolic world. He was born into poverty, if not illegitmate at least of questionable parenthood, and grew up in a small backwater time. Who could have predicted that as Mary said rulers would fall as a result. This quote struck me, “As I read the birth stories about Jesus I cannot help but conclude that thought the world may be tilted toward the rich and powerful, God is tilted toward the underdog.”

Brendan Manning asks the question: “I wonder, if we were to stop people at random in the street on December 24 and ask them what they want most for Christmas, how many would say, ‘I want to see Jesus’?” (Walking in the LIght) page 200. I am sure I wouldn’t have. I might have said nothing, or perhaps peace on earth, or even that the hungry would be fed. But, I almost certainly would not have said that I want to see, or understand, or confront Jesus. Yet, that is what Christmas is really about—Jesus comes into the world and unless we “see” him, unless we understand as best we can that it is through him we are made free and can approach God, then Christmas means nothing.

http://www.extremeironing.com/

Now this is amusing. People going to extreme places with ironing boards. What will people do next?

“It’s tough to be on the receiving end of love, God’s or anyone else’s. It requires that we see our lives as not as our possessions, but as gifts. ‘Nothing is more repugnant to capable, reasonable people that grace,’ wrote John Wesley a long time ago.” William Willimon in Watch for the Light.

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
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Soren Kierkegaard