Details

Published: 30 November 2017

I have a cold.  I do not like colds.  Colds are bad.  I don’t know who gave it to me but it doesn’t matter, I can’t give it back .  There are infections that are annoying and inconvenient but did you know that there are good infections?  In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote about a “good infection.”  I’ll quote him, “Good things as well as bad, you know, are caught by a kind of infection.  If you want to get warm, you must stand near the fire; if you want to get wet, you must get into the water.  If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to the thing that has them.  They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone.”  In other words, if we want eternal life, we’re going to have to get close to the One who has it.  The good news is, He has come close to us.  Emmanuel has come to infect us with the kind of life He has.  We can become partakers of the Divine nature.  This won’t happen overnight by using our Bible as a pillow.  The process will in fact produce fruit if we chose to seek Him, repent when necessary and obey Him faithfully.  This is an infection we want and Advent is the reminder of how this good infection was made possible.  I’ll be relieved when the Christmas cold is gone but I never want the infection of His life made possible through the First Advent to ever stop!

Details

Published: 24 November 2017

For years I thought a “cold war” was one that was fought in the winter.  I was born in 1961 and in addition to being a “baby-boomer,” I am a child of the cold war era.  A more accurate term might be “contempt war” because the bitterness and resentment that developed between nations was divisive beyond words.  Fewer bullets were exchanged after Viet Nam but the propaganda war continued.  I actually remember having hatred for those “communists.”  I didn’t even know what communism was and I sure didn’t know one.  My contempt wasn’t my parent’s fault and I will not blame the church!  It was our American culture of the day.  In school and on TV, it was very clear that America was good and right and true and Communists, wherever they were, were evil and wrong and false.  This bifurcation of humanity based on government ideologies is no different than racism or any other form of prejudice.  Travelling to a communist country while studying Acts 10 was like a “field trip” for me.  I learned a lot more from them than they did from me.  I met some people who have lived under Communism/Socialism their whole lives.  They didn’t hate me!  They were as gracious as any people I have ever met.  They were hospitable, generous and kind.  They put up with my lack of Spanish, they proudly showed us their beautiful country and most importantly talked freely of their love for God.  What drew us together was greater than what divides us.  I became very aware that there is something far worse than poverty and Communism—that is, life without God.  It was wonderfully evident that in Christ there can be real unity in spite of political and economic diversity.  I experienced a little of what Peter and Cornelius experienced as they looked beyond their nationalities and backgrounds and celebrated their mutual baptism in the Holy Spirit.