christmas from isaiah 53

Pour your grace into our hearts, O Lord, that we who have known the incarnation of your Son Jesus Christ, announced by an angel to the Virgin Mary, may by his cross and passion be brought to the glory...

I don’t have the nerve to stand up on Christmas Eve and preach about the choreography of childbirth, but I wish I did. I wish I had the nerve to preach about Mary’s increased estrogen production, a...

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...

Advent 2023: Make some noise! Echoes of a Dream AIM commentary Ancient lens What's the historical context? A Song Celebrating the Return from Babylonian Exile The book of Ezra recount...

Ancient lens What's the historical context? A Song Celebrating the Return from Babylonian Exile The book of Ezra recounts the return of 50,000 exiles and their entourage from Babylon after Cy...

Into this world, this demented inn in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ comes uninvited.

The very purpose of Christ’s coming into the world was that He might offer up His life as a sacrifice for the sins of men. He came to die. This is the heart of Christmas.

To perceive Christmas through its wrapping becomes more difficult with every year.

The Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity--hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory--because at the Father's will Jesus became poor, and was born in a stable s...

One of our troubles, is that we have romanticized and sentimentalized the stable and the manger…We see them through the warm glow of our comfortable homes, our candles and our well-fed bodies....Perha...

If you lacked simplicity, how then should this fall to you that midnight skies are a shine with? God, who stoked at men mild in you now comes to mortal eyes. That he’s not more great—does this surpris...

How shall we celebrate the day, When God appear’d in mortal clay; The mark of worldly scorn; When the Archangels heavenly lays, Attempted the Redeemer’s Praise And hailed Salvation’s Morn.

Seek not in courts, nor palaces, Nor royal curtains draw; But search the stable, see your God, Extended on the straw.

Fragile finger sent to heal us Tender brow prepared for thorn Tiny heart whose blood will save us Unto us is born

Among the sheep (I like a sheep have strayed) I watch the manger where my Lord is laid; Oh that my baa-ing nature would win thence Some woolly innocence!

Only with great care. For thousands, carols will be their only link with a church. At the same time, sentimentality is perhaps the single most dangerous feature of our Church and culture-and the senti...