Intentional Faith

A Good Thought

This is the season of the cradle, not the cross, but we need the cross now. The cradle is bathed in too much light from Star and Angel. Radiant beams only hurt our eyes, which have recently become unwillingly accustomed to deepest dark. For now, we need the cover of night.

This is the season of the cradle, not the cross, but we need the cross now. In the cradle lies a child, and we are not ready to see him, he is so beautiful. The beauty of other children is a searing pain right now. How can we come on bended knee to this one, glad for his appearance when the rest are gone? If we bend now, we may break in two. For now, we need to stay away.

This is the season of the cradle, not the cross, but we need the cross now. The cradle puts glory on our lips, and the lyrics of lullabies. We need a word more adequate than these. We are poring over the lexicon to find a word with which to fashion inconsolable laments. What we find is the cross.

It is a word that offers no answers. It offers instead a common lot. It is the gathering place for all the world’s sorrows, all its wasted efforts, all its murdered children, its violence and catastrophe, its indifference, its evasive posturing and political cowardice, and all its stupefied silences. Sooner or later life deposits us all at the cross.

When we arrive at its foot, we discover its gift—a durable hope that comes not from assurances that the sun will come up tomorrow, or from the truth that God grieves with us, or even from our faith in a risen Lord; but simply from having a place to go; a place to gather so that we will not be alone, so that we will not get lost, when the pain is unspeakable and the sorrow beyond all bearing.

Carols will ring and light will shine and knees now doubled in pain will bend in awe, but not yet. First, and for a little while longer, and forever, we need the cross.

Prayer for the Day

Throughout your churches, O Lord, your people seek to remember and honor your entrance into our world. We pray that the words of our lips, the prayers of our hearts and the deeds of our hands please You this holy season. You changed our world that first Christmas. May we honor Yours this Christmas. Amen.

Thoughts for the Famly

Philippians 4:4-9. Paul restates John’s message to encourage his friends at Philippi. Paul’s list (vs. 8) is abstract. Children will need help in identifying which kinds of interests and activities fall in each category (e.g., a backyard club may not be pure and noble if it cuts people out and encourages ridicule). The vocabulary in the New International Version of the Bible is the clearest for children.

CHILDREN: Have you ever seen people rowing a boat? Why is it important that everyone work together? Why is it important that we work together as a family?

YOUTH: What do your friends argue about most? How can I keep the peace with my friends?

ADULT: How do you deal with the petty squabbles that fellow Christians have? What can you do to keep the unity of the faith?

Thoughts on Philippians 4:4-7

Paul’s concern is unity in the church, which can only arise once we recognize our redemption as coworkers for the Lord, giving us a spirit of gentleness, and thereby turning our sight from earthly matters that lead to petty squabbles, derision, and anxiety. Only then can we experience the peace that transcends all understanding.

Jesus has redeemed us from petty squabbles and derisive chatter to provide a particular kind of witness to the world. That witness is found in the way we treat one another. That is the core of Paul’s truth to the churches at Philippi and our congregations.

Today’s Reading

Philippians 4:4-7 (NIV)
4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!
5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.
6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Morning Prayer

Sing joyfully to the Lord, all you lands;
serve the Lord with gladness;
come before him with joyful song.
Know that the Lord is God;
he made us, his we are;
his people, the flock he tends.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
his courts with praise;
Give thanks to him;
bless his name, for
he is good:
the Lord,
whose kindness endures forever,
and his faithfulness to all generations. Amen.
Psalm 100

Family Devotions for Matthew 2:1-12

With the events of Newtown still dominating the news, this is a good time to explain to children that in terrible times there are more people doing good than bad. One person may cause pain but thousands will help each other to deal with the trouble. The Wise Men represent people who see the real meaning of Christmas while others demean it or simply ignore it.

CHILDREN: How long would you wait to see someone special? Would you wait for months or years? The Wise Men waited a long time to see the Christ child.

YOUTH: If you could have given any gift to the baby Jesus, what would you have given? Why?

ADULT: When tragedy or trouble occurs around you, what do you do? Helping one another is the wisest effort. Who could you help right now?

Notes on Matthew 2:1-12

Wise men, or, more literally, Magi, he calls them, not kings, as the medieval legend has it, but the scientists of those days who, at many a court, formed the king’s privy council, Jer 39:3; Dan 2:48. They cultivated chiefly medicine, natural science, especially in its occult applications, the interpretation of dreams, astronomy, and astrology. “Therefore the Magi, or wise men, were not kings, but learned and expert people in natural science… The Magi were nothing else than what the philosophers were in Greece and the priests in Egypt, and such men as are with us the learned men of the universities; in short, they were the theologians and the learned men of Arabia Felix, just as if ecclesiastics and learned men from universities would now be sent to a prince. ” Magi from the East they were, and Matthew probably used the vague indication of the locality intentionally. It matters little whether the men were from Arabia, or from Persia, or from Media, or from Babylon, or from Parthia. A tradition among the Jews has it that there were prophets in the kingdom of Saba and Arabia that were of the posterity of Abraham by Keturah, who transmitted the promise of God given to Abraham from one generation to the next. All this signifies nothing. But all the more important is the fact that these strangers from a far country come to Jerusalem on such an extraordinary errand. “Him whom His own would not seek or acknowledge, nor the inhabitants and citizens, this strange, foreign people sought in so many days’ journeying. To Him to whom the learned men and priests would not come and worship, to Him the soothsayers and astronomers come. That was truly a great disgrace for the entire Jewish land and people that Christ was born in the midst of them and they should first learn of it from strange, heathen, foreign people.”

Today’s Reading

Matthew 2:1-12 (NIV)
1 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem
2 and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.”
3 When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him.
4 When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ was to be born.
5 “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:
6 “‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.'”
7 Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared.
8 He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”
9 After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was.
10 When they saw the star, they were overjoyed.
11 On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh.
12 And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.

James H. Aughey, 20th century
“Palaces and pyramids are reared by laying one brick, or block, at a time; and the kingdom of Christ is enlarged by individual conversions.”