December 25, 2012 3 Comments
A blessed Christmas to all the readers and visitors to this blog. Rejoice and be glad for the Saviour has been born!
May you always believe that Jesus loves you and is with you. And may you find time to reflect upon the blessing and true meaning of Christmas.
Merry Christmas!
December 24, 2012 2 Comments
The Birth of Jesus Christ
2 In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2 This was the first registration whenQuirinius was governor of Syria. 3 And all went to be registered, each to his own town. 4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, 5 to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. 6 And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. 7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
The Shepherds and the Angels
8 And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. 10 And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 12 And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”
- St Luke 2:1-14
December 24, 2012 1 Comment
Prime Minister Netanyahu sends a special Christmas greeting to Christians around the world and in Israel … complete with an invite to the Holy Land!
December 23, 2012 4 Comments
I saw this over at Steve Ray’s Blog:
What Christmas Carol is This?
It is a clever riddle, but see if you can figure it out.
Don’t read the below unless you give up.
November 28, 2012 Leave a comment
Lest an offence is caused. Christmas cancelled in Brussels.
Here’s a little something from Friends of Hungary.
THE END OF CHRISTIANITY IN BRUSSELS – NO CHRISTMAS THIS YEAR
According to Brussels city government’s representative Bianca Debaets Brussels will not place a Christmas tree on its historical Grand Place square, because the tree, as a symbol of Christianity, could harm the feelings of people of other faiths. The electronic timber that has been granted and already placed is called “winter tree”. The “Christmas market” thus receives a new name, from which the word “Christmas” is missing. (The muslim community reached 25% of Brussel’s total population. According to most analysts the size and influence of the muslim community in Belgium was a key factor in making the decision.)
December 26, 2011 Leave a comment
An infant and a corpse. They are the most common images of Christ ― the baby in the manger or his mother’s arms, the dead man on the cross ― and they offer a final refutation and a last hope for Christopher Hitchens for all time.
Hitchens, the great pugilist pundit, died a little over a week ago, and he went out with a beautiful flourish. His last essay, “Trial of the Will” in the new Vanity Fair, does what every writer dreams a last essay will do: It distills his worldview, attaches it to the moment, and leaves it as a last testimony.
It’s the last contrarian stand of a man who spent his life being contrary ― most famously in his polemical, pointed, angry book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, which he used as a launching pad for a twilight career as an atheist debater.
In “Trial of the Will,” Hitchens looks at the maxim “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” and explains in brutal detail the maladies that have disproven it. He tells us how Friedrich Nietzsche (to whom the phrase is most often attributed) descended into dementia before dying painfully. He recounts how Kingsley Amis angrily begged to be killed on his death bed. Hitchens, in the throes of esophageal cancer, adds that he himself is suffering terribly as he dies.
Some things don’t make us stronger, but weaker, he says. Some things break us, and leave us without our dignity. He offers the most extreme examples of human weakness: dementia, which leaves us human shells of ourselves; or intolerable, unstoppable pain; or the helplessness of the dying.
But these are precisely the qualities of infancy. Babies can’t put two thoughts together. Babies cannot tolerate pain. Babies can do nothing for themselves but cry. The newborn baby has the mental ability of an Alzheimer’s sufferer, the helplessness of a comatose person.
Yet this is the great mystery of Christmas: Not that God became a man, but that he became a baby.
“For a child is born to us, a son is given to us; upon his shoulder dominion rests,” prophesied Isaiah. “They name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace.”
How can a helpless, trembling infant who is unable to think straight be the “God-Hero”? Because of the power of presence and love…
Continue reading here.
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