Year round, I display a statue which takes center stage on our mantel in December. It is of a little grinning girl (who reminds me of my daughter) delivering a present, accompanied by a just-as-eager dog. Across it are painted the words, "Dear God, we just love Christmas!" I've never known whether that was a prayer, a praise, or just a statement of fact--I think it is all three.
Our celebration of the season touches every sense--the smell of fresh fir and fresh fudge, the gleaming lights, and the sound of Christmas carols. When alone, I can always sing, it seems, in a perfect duet with Nat King Cole or Bing Crosby, or I'm the brother that Karen Carpenter never knew.
But all these lights, gifts, and songs are just touchstones for the center of it all--the celebration of Christ's coming into this world, to live, to die, and to rise again, our ever-living Savior. It is good that each December we unwrap these reminders of His amazing grace, because we so quickly forget. Life is so full, busy, rushed, packed, crowded, and stressed that we easily find ourselves in the Bethlehem innkeeper's sandals--"no room!"
Recently in reading Samuel Zwemer's "The Glory of the Manger," he reminded me of a time when Christians needed few reminders of the meaning of Christmas, because it was as real as the Risen Lord and as fresh as a New Birth:
The church of the first century had no need of any external ceremony to recall the stupendous fact of the incarnation. To Paul the observance of days and months and seasons belonged to Judaism. Every day was Christmas to him--Christ in him the hope of Glory. He required no Christmas card to remind him that God so loved the world. He bore in his body the marks of the Lord Jesus. The only Christmas tree he knew was the tree on Calvary. He was so close to the event that he felt its full and aweful significance. In Paul's epistles we have the most ancient documentary evidence of what the birth of Jesus meant to early Christianity. And it is refreshing to go back to those days and to those records. If you would know the length and breadth and height and depth of God's love for the world in sending His son, read Paul's epistles. No one ever packed more meaning into words than this dauntless missionary, writing to his early converts. Here we have "good measure pressed down, shaken together and running over." There is nothing shallow nor superficial in Paul's Christology.
In our day Christmas has degenerated into a day of hilarious mirth or, what is far worse, a certain dullness of understanding. An American college poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay, felt this when she wrote these lines, "To Jesus on His Birthday":
"For this your Mother sweated in the cold,--
For this you bled upon the bitter tree.
A yard of tinsel-ribbon bought and sold,
A paper wreath, a day at home for me.
The merry bells ring out, the people kneel--
Up goes the man of God before the crowd
With voice of honey and with eyes of steel,
He drones your humble Gospel to the proud.
Nobody listens. Less than the wind that blows
Are all your words to us! You died to save--
O Prince of Peace! O Sharon's dewy Rose,
How mute you lie within your painted grave,
The stone the Angel rolled away with tears
Is back upon your mouth these thousand years."
Not so. Christ is alive forevermore. He still speaks to those who will listen. He gave Paul the gospel of the cosmic Christ and John the gospel of the Incarnation. According to both John and Paul the birth of our Saviour at Bethlehem was the one divine event in which all other events culminated. This was the crisis of history, the goal of Old Testament prophecy, the greatest occurrence since the creation and therefore once again "the morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy." Paul gives us, in scattered fragments, an outline of the Divine biography revealed to him--the mystery of all the ages, the incarnation of the Son of God:
"He was manifested in the flesh,
Justified in the spirit,
Seen of Angels,
Preached among the nations,
Believed on in the world,
Received up into glory."
Monday, December 25, 2006
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Rise, and Fight Again
Recently a friend and I visited Washington’s Crossing, Pennsylvania. That day the Delaware River was a perfect mirror reflecting a crisp blue and white sky—the silver glass waters rippled only by lolling, lazy geese shaking off a nap as we slipped down to the river’s edge. There, giant sycamores shade the bank where stands an old stone marker which reads:
Near this spot
Washington
Crossed the Delaware
On Christmas night 1776
The eve of the Battle of Trenton
There could hardly have been a more striking contrast between that peaceful afternoon and the desperate, dangerous night when Washington risked everything.
Crossing the Delaware was a bold turn at the end of a long retreat. The fall of ’76 had been a season of setbacks. Outnumbered and outgunned, many of his soldiers had little to show for their service but their gaunt frames and a knack for digging graves. At the end of the year, just days away, their enlistments would expire, and in all of the war there was hardly a more close and critical time, as the destiny of a nation wavered on the edge of a knife. For Washington, the greatest risk was not taking one; so on Christmas Day, in the teeth of a storm, he crossed the river here and captured an enemy that was celebrating too soon—and thus turned the tide in the fight for freedom. There would be yet five more years of war, but this was the day that defined Washington and our Nation.
One of Washington’s generals, Nathanael Greene, would remark on their uneven path to victory, “We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again.” I have often thought of Greene’s words in the spiritual warfare in which we are engaged as a mission—the effort to take the Gospel to the least-reached areas. It should not surprise us that the difficult places are, well, difficult—and that for Christians in many parts of the world, suffering is as much a part of their faith as comfort is a part of ours. Despite attacks and setbacks, by God’s grace, He gives them the strength to “rise, and fight again.”
That is what Paul did. Acts 14 tells us that he was stoned and left for dead outside the city of Lystra, but amazingly Paul got up—and then just as surprising, he went back into the city and finished his sermon! That spirit lives on in many of our friends on the frontlines. Here’s one story:
A year ago in Pakistan, I met a young pastor who had been brutally attacked by a Muslim mob. They tried to beat him to death and left him with a crushed skull, a severed ear, blind in one eye, and a paralyzed right arm. Even on that day when we prayed and wept together while he laid bruised and broken, he wanted to stand up.
Just a few days ago, a friend of mine was back in Pakistan and met our dear pastor. Despite the loss of an eye and the use of an arm, he is not only standing but serving and shining for Christ. I wept for joy to see his face again. “Rise, and fight again”!
I am including here an excerpt from Samuel Zwemer’s book The Unoccupied Mission Fields, published in 1911. Zwemer was the “apostle to Arabia,” a pioneer missionary who poured his life—and buried two of his children—in the hostile lands of Islam. These are words worth reading—and reading again:
The challenge of the unoccupied fields of the world is one to great faith and, therefore, to great sacrifice. Our willingness to sacrifice for an enterprise is always in proportion to our faith in that enterprise. Faith has the genius of transforming the barely possible into actuality. Once men are dominated by the conviction that a thing must be done, they will stop at nothing until it is accomplished. We have our “marching orders,” and because our Commander-in-Chief is not absent but with us, the impossible becomes not only practical but imperative. Charles Spurgeon, preaching from the text, “All power is given unto Me. . . . Lo I am with you always,” used these words: “You have a factor here that is absolutely infinite, and what does it matter as to what other factors may be. ‘I will do as much as I can,’ says one. Any fool can do that. He that believes in Christ does what he can not do, attempts the impossible and performs it.”
Frequent set-backs and apparent failure never dishearten the real pioneer. Occasional martyrdoms are only a fresh incentive. Opposition is a stimulus to greater activity. Great victory has never been possible without great sacrifice. Does it really matter how many die or how much money we spend in opening closed doors, and in occupying the different fields, if we really believe that missions are warfare and that the King’s glory is at stake? War always means blood and treasure. Our only concern should be to keep the fight aggressive and to win victory regardless of cost or sacrifice. The unoccupied fields of the world must have their Calvary before they can have their Pentecost.
For Christians with folded hands and routine religion, his words may seem as out-of-date as the book itself, yet may they once again call out to men and women of our generation who would take risks for Christ’s sake, who would take up their cross and follow Him because they love Him more than themselves.
Near this spot
Washington
Crossed the Delaware
On Christmas night 1776
The eve of the Battle of Trenton
There could hardly have been a more striking contrast between that peaceful afternoon and the desperate, dangerous night when Washington risked everything.
Crossing the Delaware was a bold turn at the end of a long retreat. The fall of ’76 had been a season of setbacks. Outnumbered and outgunned, many of his soldiers had little to show for their service but their gaunt frames and a knack for digging graves. At the end of the year, just days away, their enlistments would expire, and in all of the war there was hardly a more close and critical time, as the destiny of a nation wavered on the edge of a knife. For Washington, the greatest risk was not taking one; so on Christmas Day, in the teeth of a storm, he crossed the river here and captured an enemy that was celebrating too soon—and thus turned the tide in the fight for freedom. There would be yet five more years of war, but this was the day that defined Washington and our Nation.
One of Washington’s generals, Nathanael Greene, would remark on their uneven path to victory, “We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again.” I have often thought of Greene’s words in the spiritual warfare in which we are engaged as a mission—the effort to take the Gospel to the least-reached areas. It should not surprise us that the difficult places are, well, difficult—and that for Christians in many parts of the world, suffering is as much a part of their faith as comfort is a part of ours. Despite attacks and setbacks, by God’s grace, He gives them the strength to “rise, and fight again.”
That is what Paul did. Acts 14 tells us that he was stoned and left for dead outside the city of Lystra, but amazingly Paul got up—and then just as surprising, he went back into the city and finished his sermon! That spirit lives on in many of our friends on the frontlines. Here’s one story:
A year ago in Pakistan, I met a young pastor who had been brutally attacked by a Muslim mob. They tried to beat him to death and left him with a crushed skull, a severed ear, blind in one eye, and a paralyzed right arm. Even on that day when we prayed and wept together while he laid bruised and broken, he wanted to stand up.
Just a few days ago, a friend of mine was back in Pakistan and met our dear pastor. Despite the loss of an eye and the use of an arm, he is not only standing but serving and shining for Christ. I wept for joy to see his face again. “Rise, and fight again”!
I am including here an excerpt from Samuel Zwemer’s book The Unoccupied Mission Fields, published in 1911. Zwemer was the “apostle to Arabia,” a pioneer missionary who poured his life—and buried two of his children—in the hostile lands of Islam. These are words worth reading—and reading again:
The challenge of the unoccupied fields of the world is one to great faith and, therefore, to great sacrifice. Our willingness to sacrifice for an enterprise is always in proportion to our faith in that enterprise. Faith has the genius of transforming the barely possible into actuality. Once men are dominated by the conviction that a thing must be done, they will stop at nothing until it is accomplished. We have our “marching orders,” and because our Commander-in-Chief is not absent but with us, the impossible becomes not only practical but imperative. Charles Spurgeon, preaching from the text, “All power is given unto Me. . . . Lo I am with you always,” used these words: “You have a factor here that is absolutely infinite, and what does it matter as to what other factors may be. ‘I will do as much as I can,’ says one. Any fool can do that. He that believes in Christ does what he can not do, attempts the impossible and performs it.”
Frequent set-backs and apparent failure never dishearten the real pioneer. Occasional martyrdoms are only a fresh incentive. Opposition is a stimulus to greater activity. Great victory has never been possible without great sacrifice. Does it really matter how many die or how much money we spend in opening closed doors, and in occupying the different fields, if we really believe that missions are warfare and that the King’s glory is at stake? War always means blood and treasure. Our only concern should be to keep the fight aggressive and to win victory regardless of cost or sacrifice. The unoccupied fields of the world must have their Calvary before they can have their Pentecost.
For Christians with folded hands and routine religion, his words may seem as out-of-date as the book itself, yet may they once again call out to men and women of our generation who would take risks for Christ’s sake, who would take up their cross and follow Him because they love Him more than themselves.
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