Christian Living on Childbirth

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The Child Born in the Night Among Beasts

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Scripture

Isaiah 7:14, Micah 5:2-4, 1 Kings 19:11-13, Luke 2:6-7, Philippians 2:5-8, Psalm 22:6-8 , Matthew 1:22-25

In this excerpt, Frederick Buechner shares a meditation on the vulnerability of Jesus’ birth: The child born in the night among beasts. The sweet breath and steaming dung of beasts. And nothing is...

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Community & Identity in the Himba People

Author

Ann Voskamp

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There’s a brilliant family of people in Africa, called the Himba. When a Himba woman is expecting a child, she goes out into the wilderness with a few of her sisters, and together they wait till they ...

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The Prayer of Jabez Revisited

Author

Ben Witherington III

Keywords

Scripture

1 Chronicles 4:9-10, Matthew 6:6, Luke 11:9, Philippians 4:6, James 5:16

First Chronicles 4:9-10 could be forgiven for being called the text that roared, once Bruce Wilkinson got his hands on it and wrote a little book called The Prayer of Jabez. This book, which was relea...

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Author

Frederick Buechner

Keywords

The birth of the child into the darkness of the world made possible not just a new way of understanding life but a new way of living it.

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Being Born Again

Author

Rudolph Otto

Keywords

Journeys

This being born again is no longer the active transfer of our will from the realm of inclination into that of obedience. It is, in the sense of the third chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, t...

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Rejection and Acceptance

Author

Scott Bowerman

Keywords

Scripture

Jeremiah 3:13, 1 Peter 5:7, Romans 8:38-39, Matthew 11:28, Isaiah 66:13, Psalm 27:10, Isaiah 49:15-16

In his book The Logic of the Spirit, James Loder talks about a woman with whom he had been in a therapeutic relationship for years. This woman’s underlying issue seemed to be a complete sense of rejec...

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Author

Gloria Furman

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Mothering or nurturing is not just a calling for women who have biological or adopted children. Mothering is a calling for all women. Every Christian woman is called to the spiritual motherhood of mak...

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Author

Henry Ward Beecher

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Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven.

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Author

N. T. Wright

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As a newborn baby breathes and cries, so the signs of life in a newborn Christian are faith and repentance, inhaling the love of God and exhaling an initial cry of distress. And at that point what God...

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Returning to Joy

Author

Cyd and Geoff Holsclaw

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 12:3, Isaiah 41:10, John 15:11, Romans 15:13, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4

Ideally, when a baby is born into a healthy family, she is received with gladness. Her parents look on her with delight and the baby responds with joy. The baby is wanted—is loved. Her parents will ma...

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Author

Donald S. Whitney

Keywords

Scripture

Jeremiah 31:33, Ezekiel 36:26-27 , Isaiah 43:1, Psalm 73:25-26, Romans 8:15-16, Philippians 3:20-21

Thus when someone is born again, the Holy Spirit gives that person new Fatherward desires, a new heavenward orientation whereby we cry, “Abba, Father!”

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The Healing Power of Christ's Love

Author

Scott Bowerman

Keywords

Scripture

Jeremiah 31:3, 1 Peter 5:7, Romans 8:38-39, Matthew 11:28, Isaiah 66:13, Psalm 27:10

James Loder, in his book The Logic of the Spirit, talks about a woman with whom he had been in a therapeutic relationship for years. This woman’s underlying issue seemed to be a complete sense of reje...

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Author

Cyril of Jerusalem

Keywords

[When you were baptized,] you died and were born in one and the same moment. This saving water was both tomb and womb. It is a strange thing, quite out of the ordinary. For indeed, at the moment of Ba...

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Author

J. C. Ryle

Keywords

Conversion

To be born again is, as it were, to enter upon a new existence, to have a new mind, a new heart, new views, new principles, new tastes, new affections, new likings, new dislikings, new fears, new joys...

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Blessed is She

Author

Sarah Bourns Crosby

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 18:9-14, Genesis 38:26, Joshua 2:11-12, Ruth 1:16-17, 2 Samuel 12:, Luke 1:13-14, Luke 1:30-33

For Those Who Still Hope I am Sarah Bitter and barren Burnt out by this promise that never came Worn out from waiting Laughing to hide the aching Longing for these empty arms to hold a baby B...

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The Great Exchange

Author

John Chrysostom

Keywords

Scripture

Philippians 2:6-8, 2 Corinthians 8:9, John 1:14, Luke 2:7, Isaiah 9:6, John 3:16

The incarnation has often been described as “The Great Exchange,” whereupon God took on human form so that we might participate in God's divine life (through the Holy Spirit). In a sermon on the n...

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Author

Henri J. M. Nouwen

Keywords

Becoming a child is living the Beatitudes and so finding the narrow gate into the Kingdom.

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Control Issues

Author

M. Robert Mulholland Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 16:9, Jeremiah 29:11, John 15:1-27, Proverbs 3:5-6, Galatians 2:20, Matthew 6:25-34

In their excellent book Invitation to a Journey , M. Robert Mulholland and Ruth Haley Barton describe the foundation of life as being spiritual in nature. This means we are constantly be “formed” s...

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Author

Frederick Buechner

Keywords

Scripture

Luke 2:10-11, John 1:4-5, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Matthew 5:14-16, Acts 9:1-22, Hebrews 13:8, Revelation 7:9-10

It is impossible to conceive how different things would have turned out if that birth had not happened whenever, wherever, however it did ... for millions of people who have lived since, the birth of ...

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Descent and Resurrection

Author

C. S. Lewis

Keywords

Scripture

Philippians 2:null, 1 Corinthians 15:22, Romans 6:4, John 12:24, Luke 24:5-6, Matthew 20:28

In the Christian story God descends to reascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity; down further still, if embryologists are right, to reca...

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Incarnation is a Dirty Business

Author

William Rowley

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 14:19-20, John 9:6-7, Mark 2:3-4, John 13:4-5, Mark 1:40-42, Luke 2:7, John 1:14

The gospels are earthy. People are close to the earth. They travel here and there by foot. They eat the live heads of grain growing from the soil as they walk through the fields. They get grubby and h...

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The Holy Spirit Births Faith

Author

Tim Chester and Christopher de la Hoyde

Keywords

Scripture

1 Peter 1:23, Titus 3:5-6, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Romans 8:15-16, 1 John 5:6-8, John 14:15-17, John 7:37-39

Hannah was one of my wife’s work colleagues. She used to love spending time with our congregation, but she found the gospel message just plain weird. We did some Bible studies with her over the summer...

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Author

Samuel Chadwick

Keywords

Scripture

John 3:5-8, Galatians 5:16-26, Romans 8:14, Philippians 1:19, 2 Corinthians 3:18, 1 Corinthians 2:12

The Christian religion begins in a New Birth in the power of the Spirit. It is developed under His guidance, and sustained by His presence; but ignoring the Spirit, it becomes a matter of education an...

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Preference for the Christ-Child Over the Cross

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Luke 19:10, Luke 2:7, John 19:18, Philippians 2:8-9, Isaiah 53:5, 2 Corinthians 5:17

In the sixteenth century, Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci journeyed to China, bringing religious art to share the Christian story with those unfamiliar with it. The Chinese readily embraced images of t...

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Author

Sue Monk Kidd

Keywords

Scripture

Philippians 1:6, James 1:2-4, Jeremiah 29:11, 1 Peter 5:10, Psalm 51:10

To fashion an inner story of our pain carries us into the heart of it, which is where rebirth inevitably occurs.

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Baptism: A New Beginning out of the Watery Chaos

Author

Rowan Williams

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:1-2, Genesis 8:6-12 , Isaiah 32:14-17, Matthew 3:13-17, John 3:5-8, Romans 6:3-4

At the very beginning of creation, the book of Genesis tells us, there was watery chaos. And over that watery chaos there was, depending on how you read the Hebrew, the Holy Spirit hovering or a great...

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Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Author

Charles Teixeira

Scripture

Mark 5:21-43, Mark 5:17-21, Leviticus 15:7

Intertwined Narratives Jesus’ encounters with Jairus’ daughter and the bleeding woman are sandwiched together with the intention that the two narratives would unlock and help to interpret the other....

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O Simplicitas

Author

Madeleine L'Engle

Keywords

Scripture

Luke 2:19, John 1:14, Matthew 2:9-11, Luke 2:8-12, Matthew 2:1-2, Luke 2:6-7

An angel came to me And I was unprepared To be what God was using. Mother I was to be A moment I despaired, Thought briefly of refusing. The angel knew I heard According to God’s word, ...

liturgy

Adapted from John 3:5-8

Author

Bud Thoreen

Keywords

Scripture

John 3:5-8

Leader: Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. People: That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Sp...

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Author

Rudolph Otto

Keywords

This being born again is no longer the active transfer of our will from the realm of inclination into that of obedience. It is, in the sense of the third chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, t...

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