getting serious

I just wanted to say that today, Sunday, 1.24.2010, is the day that I get serious. No more luke warm… no more fence riding… no more laxidasical approaches to that which matters. Here we go…

Resurrection of Christ to hit the big screen in 2011

I personally cannot wait! I hope it is as good as Passion was.

via Resurrection of Christ to hit the big screen in 2011.

Anaya

Anaya was born on January 5, 2010. She was 6 lbs, 7 oz. She was early. She is beautiful.

God has surely blessed us with a wonderful gift… the gift of life, love, and possibilities. We thank the mother who gave her to us. It was not an easy decision, but one made out of love. We promise to love, cherish, and care for her as our own. We promise to raise her, demonstrating the love of Christ, striving to model our lives in His light so she will grow in character and beauty, allowing others to see Him in her.

We offer this poem…

Conceived in my heart I earnestly prayed,
But never imagined you’d come so arrayed.
Not flesh of my flesh, nor bone of my bone,
Not under my heart, but oh, so deep in it sown.
I knew from the start since the moment we met,
When my eyes gazed upon you, destiny was set,
To enter but a short journey as father and child,
With joy and sorrows, memories to be compiled,
A mosaic of beauty with many colors entwined,
The fabric so strong, with my Savior combined.
I love you sweet child, and in time you will see,
You’re much more than chosen, but precious to me,
For God planted this yearning in me long ago,
To bring Him forth fruit, that together we grow!

                                                  … Estelle

We love you Anaya!

Brit Hume vs. the world

On a recent Fox News Sunday, Brit Hume decided to let the world know that Christianity is better for redemption and repentance than buddhism is. Many of the media and observers are up-in-arms over the audacity of this man’s claim. Most are upset that he voiced this on national TV, but many are also upset that he dissed over a million buddhists in the world. Why?

I believe that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Light. Not “a” way, but “the” Way. And if I believe that, why wouldn’t I say it every chance I get? Don’t I care for my fellow man enough to let him in on the news? I would not get offended if a muslim, buddhist, hindu, etc… got on national television and claimed that their way was the only, true way. That is what they believe. Nobody except pseudo-believers like Oprah Winfrey and her crowd actually believe there are many ways to God. No true Muslim believes that and no true Christian believes that. So say it and let us stop being offended by these offerings.

The Christmas/pagan Myth

by Dr. Veith

In my column for the next WORLD, I show that contrary to what lots of people assume, Christmas did NOT have its origin in a pagan holiday. And I show how the date of December 25 was picked. (It had to do with the historical date of Easter.) Click “continue reading” to see what I had to say.

Why December 25?

The origin of Christmas had nothing to do with paganism | by Gene Edward Veith

According to conventional wisdom, Christmas had its origin in a pagan winter solstice festival, which the church co-opted to promote the new religion. In doing so, many of the old pagan customs crept into the Christian celebration. But this view is apparently a historical myth—like the stories of a church council debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, or that medieval folks believed the earth is flat—often repeated, even in classrooms, but not true.

William J. Tighe, a history professor at Muhlenberg College, gives a different account in his article “Calculating Christmas,” published in the December 2003 Touchstone Magazine. He points out that the ancient Roman religions had no winter solstice festival.

True, the Emperor Aurelian, in the five short years of his reign, tried to start one, “The Birth of the Unconquered Sun,” on Dec. 25, 274. This festival, marking the time of year when the length of daylight began to increase, was designed to breathe new life into a declining paganism. But Aurelian’s new festival was instituted after Christians had already been associating that day with the birth of Christ. According to Mr. Tighe, the Birth of the Unconquered Sun “was almost certainly an attempt to create a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance to Roman Christians.” Christians were not imitating the pagans. The pagans were imitating the Christians.

The early church tried to ascertain the actual time of Christ’s birth. It was all tied up with the second-century controversies over setting the date of Easter, the commemoration of Christ’s death and resurrection. That date should have been an easy one. Though Easter is also charged with having its origins in pagan equinox festivals, we know from Scripture that Christ’s death was at the time of the Jewish Passover. That time of year is known with precision.

But differences in the Jewish, Greek, and Latin calendars and the inconsistency between lunar and solar date-keeping caused intense debate over when to observe Easter. Another question was whether to fix one date for the Feast of the Resurrection no matter what day it fell on or to ensure that it always fell on Sunday, “the first day of the week,” as in the Gospels.

This discussion also had a bearing on fixing the day of Christ’s birth. Mr. Tighe, drawing on the in-depth research of Thomas J. Talley’s The Origins of the Liturgical Year, cites the ancient Jewish belief (not supported in Scripture) that God appointed for the great prophets an “integral age,” meaning that they died on the same day as either their birth or their conception.

Jesus was certainly considered a great prophet, so those church fathers who wanted a Christmas holiday reasoned that He must have been either born or conceived on the same date as the first Easter. There are hints that some Christians originally celebrated the birth of Christ in March or April. But then a consensus arose to celebrate Christ’s conception on March 25, as the Feast of the Annunciation, marking when the angel first appeared to Mary.

Note the pro-life point: According to both the ancient Jews and the early Christians, life begins at conception. So if Christ was conceived on March 25, nine months later, he would have been born on Dec. 25.

This celebrates Christ’s birth in the darkest time of the year. The Celtic and Germanic tribes, who would be evangelized later, did mark this time in their “Yule” festivals, a frightening season when only the light from the Yule log kept the darkness at bay. Christianity swallowed up that season of depression with the opposite message of joy: “The light [Jesus] shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).

Regardless of whether this was Christ’s actual birthday, the symbolism works. And Christ’s birth is inextricably linked to His resurrection.

•
Copyright © 2005 WORLD Magazine
December 10, 2005, Vol. 20, No. 48

Posted by Veith at December 2, 2005 09:54 AM

http://web.archive.org/web/20060323230120/http://cranach.worldmagblog.com/cranach/archives/2005/12/why_december_25.html

Waiting for Jesus to Show Up | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Waiting for Jesus to Show Up | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction.

Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, was a prolific writer. But apparently he didn’t like to write. As he put it, “I love having written.”

I admit that when it comes to Christian devotion, there are too many days when I say, “I love having prayed.” I think of myself as a committed Christian, but many days prayer is more duty than delight, certainly not something I bound out of bed and eagerly begin. But I do admit to often being happy once I have prayed. It seems I like the idea of prayer more than prayer itself.

I know this is true because of the mental battles I fight upon first waking up. I often hear the enticements of the Enemy: Why not just sleep in; you deserve it; you’ve been working hard. You’re not going to get much done if you’re tired all day.

Or: You really need to get that SoulWork column written; writing is a type of prayer, after all.

Or: Wouldn’t it be more loving, more Christian to make your wife breakfast than to piously pray by yourself?

And those are just the opening lines of a book I could write: Excuses I’ve Entertained to Avoid Prayer. But it would never get published. Way too long.

The reason I don’t like to pray is simple. I don’t really love God. I do love the idea of loving God. It would be a fine, fine thing to love God, I believe. But I have to face it: One reason I go to church is not because I already love God but because I’d like to love him. I’m afraid I have the same reaction to church as I do to prayer. Lots of debate about whether I should go. Going most Sundays because I should go. And when it’s over, a lot of times I can say, “I love having worshiped.”

Don’t get me wrong. I’m as devout as the next Christian. Or I should say that it’s been my experience that the next Christian struggles as I do. We love having prayed. We love having worshipped. We don’t love God as much as we like the idea of loving God.

We shouldn’t scold ourselves for this. There’s no point in shaming ourselves because we don’t love God. To begin with, you can’t make yourself love someone or some activity. You either love or you don’t.

I know a young man who took up basketball in high school and was totally taken with the sport. He spent hours practicing spin moves, jump shots, and behind the back passes. One day an older man complimented him on his discipline. The young man was startled. He never thought of basketball practice as discipline. He practiced because he loved it. And the love came to him unbidden.

You either love to pray or you don’t. You either love to serve the poor or you don’t. You either love to evangelize or you don’t. You either love God or you don’t. You can’t make these things happen. The love has to grow inside us, like a child grows in a mother’s womb. It’s something like being born again, said Jesus (John 3).

You can’t make yourself be conceived, let alone be born again. This is something that happens to you, over which you have no control whatsoever. You can’t even prepare for it—as if an egg could “prepare” to be met by a particular sperm. All the egg can do is wait for something to arrive that will make its life complete.

Maybe that’s why so many times in the Bible people are told to be still (Ps. 46) and wait (Acts 1). It’s why many traditions have created a whole season—Advent, the first and defining season of the church year—and say it’s all about waiting.

But just because we don’t love as we wish, and have no ability to do anything about it, doesn’t mean we should despair.

It isn’t as if our lovelessness surprises God. As if he hadn’t figured this out long ago. As if he’s hurt at how we could be so indifferent to him who has done so much for us! The gospel isn’t about God doing something for us so that we might be shamed into loving him in return. No, he’s done so much for us because, well, he loves us. So the fact that our narcissistic hearts have the hardest time taking an interest in anything but ourselves is not an issue.

The issue is that God is in the business of changing hearts. He had been giving humanity chest compressions for the longest time, when suddenly he gave our hearts the shock treatment—a treatment that began with the Incarnation we celebrate this season. Talk about a shock to the human system—some are so stunned, they still don’t believe it’s happened.

But in Christ—in his life, death, and resurrection—God unleashed a medicine that is already working wonders. It’s a kind of wonder drug. It’s only a matter of time before his healing is known over all the earth. Yes, even the healing of hearts more enamored with their own thoughts than the thoughts of their Lover, and the healing of those more committed to doing their own thing than to the One whose thing is us. Jeremiah is right: How deceitful and desperately wicked is the heart (17:9). But St. Paul is more right: “How blessed is God! … Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love” (Eph. 1:3-4, The Message).

The crazy thing about this time of year—the time we remember Jesus growing in the womb of Mary, coming as love to this lonely planet—is that we don’t have time to be still, let alone wait. It’s like there’s this conspiracy to prevent us from doing the one thing that can heal our hearts. Do anything, anything, says the Tempter, but don’t be still.

I wasn’t completely truthful when I said there is nothing we can do to be filled with the love of God. God, in fact, commands us to love him. So what’s with that? He must think there is something we can “do.” But it turns out that the one thing we “do” is, by its very nature, a non-doing. It’s a relinquishment of all doing. We can be still. We can wait.

And this is why we continue to drag ourselves to church (even though most services do their best to quash stillness!). And why we get up in the quiet of dawn to pray. It’s why we clear our neighbor’s driveway of snow or volunteer at the food closet or spend an evening listening to the heartbreak of a friend. We put ourselves in places where God has been known to show up. In each of these acts, we are saying, “Okay, I’m here where you want me to be. Come, Lord Jesus.”

Most days writers like Robert Louis Stevenson have to drag themselves out of bed and force themselves to go to their writing desk. They don’t fret about this as much as give themselves in willing obedience to a call. They know that they have to show up at their writing desks and start putting pen to paper if they ever hope to meet their muse.

Those who love obey, and those who obey love. We don’t give ourselves to the various and sundry tasks God calls us to because we want to be good, obedient Christians. We don’t equate obedience with love. The great commandment is not to obey God, but to love him. We obey God, yes, but only because in willing, joyful obedience do we find ourselves in places where he shows up in wonder and love.

To put it another way: While we can’t change our hearts, we can, like Zacchaeus (Luke 19), climb a tree and wait for Jesus to pass by, expecting that when he does, he’ll see us and invite himself over for dinner! Enough encounters like that, and we’ll find that our hearts are never the same.

Mark Galli is managing editor of Christianity Today, and author of Jesus Mean and Wild: The Unexpected Love of an Untameable God (Baker) and Beyond Bells & Smells: The Wonder and Power of Christian Liturgy (Paraclete).

Anaya

 JAM 1:27  Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Abby and I are adopting an infant girl. She is not yet in this world, but will be with us in mid-January according to God’s routine. We are adopting an infant girl. Through a friend of some dear friends we have been introduced to a wonderful woman who cannot raise another child and was putting her up for adoption. We are adopting an infant girl. I have to keep saying that to make it real. Here is how God is at work in our lives…

Abby and I currently have foster twin 2 year old boys in our care. We are desiring to adopt them. If the Lord allows us to have the desires of our heart on this one, it will happen. We are preparing for this. We also have wanted to adopt a newborn to raise as our own.

God’s first whisper: About 2 weeks ago, Abby got a call from a friend who said there was  child to be born to a friend of hers that was to be given up for adoption and thought we would be interested… were we ever!

God’s second whisper: While sitting on the couch one evening last week, I said a prayer out loud, asking God to help me find a girl’s name that was pleasing to Him and that Abby would love. The first name that I saw that struck me as pleasing was Anna. I said a few other names first which we couldn’t agree on and then came back to Anna. Abby loved it! This was to be the name of our little girl, God willing.

God’s third whisper: We were invited to a birthday party for the birth mother’s son who was turning 3.  This would be our first meeting with her to introduce ourselves.  We went to Kohl’s to pick up a Remington razor that I wanted and as we were readying to leave, Abby remembered that we needed to buy a birthday present for the boy. I asked about what kinds of interests he had and neither of us had any idea. Immediately, from down the isle, comes the birth mother’s sister and aunt. We have never seen them at any store and we never go to Kohl’s.  They updated us on the boy’s interests and we bought him a shirt with a train theme.

God’s fourth whisper: At the birthday party, we met the birth mother’s mother and got to talking about family dynamics and other matters. The mother asked when the birthdays were for our twin foster boys. We replied and the mother revealed that this was her birthday as well.

God’s first shout: While sitting on the couch conversing with the birth mother, she indicated that she would like to name the child at birth for her own birth certificate and that we could rename later when the adoption was final. We asked what she wanted that name to be. She chose Anaya. ANAYA IS THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN VERSION OF ANNA. ANAYA MEANS “ANSWER FROM GOD”. We choose to keep this name because the child is of mixed heritage… African American and Caucasian.

GOD is good!

less is More

John 3:30 (NIV) “He must become greater I must become less.”

I often thought that I must take less credit for the things I do and give all credit to the Lord… for His glory is the reason for everything… not mine.

Recently, however, I am realizing that this verse means so much more. I must also pattern and live my life after the life that Jesus lived. In this way, my human nature diminishes and God’s nature becomes more revealed through my actions.

I pray, not as much as I should, that my actions reflect the face of Jesus… and that I honor Him in all I do throughout my day… so that He becomes greater in the eyes of the world, while I become less. At the same time, His will becomes greater in my life, while my wants  become less.

where everybody knows his name…

I was reading Christianity Today, today, and came across an article about government grants to faith based organizations and the implications that came with accepting this money. That article is here.

However, I wanted to comment on the revelations of more and more of our Christian leaders that Christ isn’t the only answer. The one narrated here was about an Episcopal Bishop who denounced a prayer that was “aggressively Christian” and served up one that addressed the “God of our many understandings.” ?????

Also included was the Episcopal Church hosting interfaith worship services. ?????

Did Jesus ever indicate that we are to do these things? Are we to allow worship of false gods in our Churches? Are we to be so afraid of the political machine that we are no longer going to claim Jesus is the only way? Are we to allow cafeteria or buffet type theology to ruin our faith?

Perhaps we are? God is in control, right? His will be done. How much time do we have left? I mean… its all spelled out in the Word… about the world accepting one religion.

FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!

Abby received a phone call on Friday from our foster – adopt social worker claiming she had some good news. We will pick up two 2 year old fraternal twin boys Monday afternoon. We spent all day Saturday buying beds, sheets, car seats, a lamp, potty trainer, etc… This has been the longest weekend of my life.

We are both so excited to start this new chapter in our lives, and are amazed by the series of “coincidences” that took place prior to receiving this news.

1. A few months ago, Abby and I left our previous church and joined a new church with an incredible children’s program.
2. 2 weeks ago, Abby started teaching in the children’s program at church.
3. 1 week ago, Abby bought a new car to accomodate children, in case this ever happened, and AWD for the Colorado roads.
4. Friday, Abby receives a call that we are getting 2 boys, right in the age range we hoped for, and a sibling group.

Coincidences? Or God’s plan… you decide, because I already know.