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Reflections on the wonder of Christmas by Christianity's most beloved writers.A Light Has Dawned recovers the best Advent and Christmas articles from half a century of Christianity Today. Guiding the reader through Advent, Christmas, and the climax of Epiphany and including contributions by Billy Graham, Tim Keller, Elisabeth Elliot, Ruth Bell Graham, Eugene Peterson, and more. A Light Has Dawned will inspire readers with the wonder of Advent and Christmas.

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Philosophie et théologie

Christian worship

Religious festival

Christianity

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Publié par	Lexham Press
Date de parution	28 octobre 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781683594239
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	5 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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A Light Has Dawned
Meditations on Advent and Christmas
Best of Christianity Today
A Light Has Dawned: Meditations on Advent and Christmas
Best of Christianity Today
Copyright 2020 Christianity Today International
Lexham Press, 1313 Commercial St., Bellingham, WA 98225
LexhamPress.com
All rights reserved. You may use brief quotations from this resource in presentations, articles, and books. For all other uses, please write Lexham Press for permission. Email us at permissions@lexhampress.com .
Scripture quotations marked ( ESV ) are from ESV ® Bible ( The Holy Bible, English Standard Version ® ), copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked ( KJV ) are from the King James Version. Public domain.
Scripture quotations marked ( MESSAGE ) are from THE MESSAGE, copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Scripture quotations marked ( NASB ) are from the New American Standard Bible ® , copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
Scripture quotations marked ( NIV ) are from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION ® , copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Scripture quotations marked ( NLT ) are from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007, 2013 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked ( NRSV ) are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked ( RSV ) are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Print ISBN 9781683594222
Digital ISBN 9781683594239
Library of Congress Control Number 2020941280
Lexham Editorial: Elliot Ritzema, Danielle Thevenaz
Cover Design: Joshua Hunt
Contents
INTRODUCTION | Carolyn Arends
NOVEMBER 27 | Alice Slaikeu Lawhead
Advent
NOVEMBER 28 | Stanley Grenz
Drive-Through Christmas
NOVEMBER 29 | Katelyn Beaty
The Poverty of Christmas
NOVEMBER 30 | Tim Stafford
Bethlehem on a Budget
DECEMBER 1 | Mary Ellen Ashcroft
Away from the Manger
DECEMBER 2 | Wendy Alsup
Saved through Child-Bearing
DECEMBER 3 | Leigh C. Bishop
Christmas in Afghanistan
DECEMBER 4 | Mary Ellen Ashcroft
Gift Wrapping God
DECEMBER 5 | Eugene H. Peterson
Christmas Shame
DECEMBER 6 | Donald J. Shelby
Christmas on Tiptoe
DECEMBER 7 | Charles Colson with Catherine Larson
A Cosmic Culmination
DECEMBER 8 | David Neff
Misreading the Magnificat
DECEMBER 9 | Rodney Clapp
Let the Pagans Have the Holiday
DECEMBER 10 | Ruth Bell Graham
God’s Gift on God’s Tree
DECEMBER 11 | Bill McKibben
Christmas Unplugged
DECEMBER 12 | Addison H. Leitch
The Prince of Peace
DECEMBER 13 | Billy Graham
Peace: At Times a Sword and Fire
DECEMBER 14 | Philip Yancey
Hallelujah!
DECEMBER 15 | Charles Colson with Anne Morse
The Invasion of God
DECEMBER 16 | Verne Becker
Saved by the Bell
DECEMBER 17 | D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
His Kingdom Is Forever
DECEMBER 18 | Walter Wangerin, Jr.
Painting Christmas
DECEMBER 19 | Charlotte F. Otten
Stars on a Silent Night
DECEMBER 20 | Walter A. Elwell
When God Came Down
DECEMBER 21 | Thomas Howard
On the Festival of Christ’s Nativity
DECEMBER 22 | Thomas C. Oden
My Dad’s Death Brought Christmas “Home”
DECEMBER 23 | Mike Mason
Yabba-ka-doodles!
DECEMBER 24 | Tim Keller
The Advent of Humility
DECEMBER 25 | Elisabeth Elliot
The Wondrous Gift
DECEMBER 26 | Frank E. Gaebelein
The Most Beautiful Story Ever Told
DECEMBER 27 | Carolyn Arends
Our Divine Distortion
DECEMBER 28 | Wendy Murray Zoba
Mary Rejoicing, Rachel Weeping
DECEMBER 29 | Harold John Ockenga
Simeon and the Child Jesus
DECEMBER 30 | James Montgomery Boice
The Men Who Missed Christmas
DECEMBER 31 | Philip Yancey
Ongoing Incarnation
JANUARY 1 | L. Nelson Bell
Christmas Implications
JANUARY 2 | Helmut Thielicke
Why I Celebrate Christmas
JANUARY 3 | Timothy George
The Blessed Evangelical Mary
JANUARY 4 | Lee Knapp
An After-Christmas Gift
JANUARY 5 | Jen Pollock Michel
Not Yet Home for Christmas
JANUARY 6 | Kent R. Hughes
The Magi’s Worship
SOURCES
Introduction
Carolyn Arends
P erhaps, like me, you have a fondness for puns. If so, here are a few Advent gifts for you.
I know a guy who’s addicted to brake fluid. He says he can stop anytime.
I’m reading a book on anti-gravity. I can’t put it down.
Don’t trust atoms. They make everything up.
I stayed up all night to see where the sun went. Then it dawned on me.
Here’s the thing about that last one. It’s been dawning on me (pun intended) that there is an important Advent invitation beating right at the heart of that otherwise-silly pun.
Imagine the first dawn after the birth of Jesus. Picture an exhausted Joseph, holding his adopted newborn in the aftermath of a very strange night, rubbing his bleary eyes and suddenly remembering the words of the prophet Isaiah:
The people walking in darkness
have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of deep darkness
a light has dawned. (Isaiah 9:2 NIV )
T hat first Christmas morning, was Joseph capable of beholding the great light right before his eyes? Could he grasp what was taking place? To whatever extent he reached an understanding, did it come to him in a flash, or did it take a while?
I’m willing to bet it took some time. Human eyes can only take in so much light at once. Our brains can only comprehend so much so fast. Our hearts need time to expand.
Counterintuitively, the more glorious something is, the longer it takes to dawn on us.
E very year, whether we’re ready for it or not, we’re offered a fresh chance to take in the blazing miracle of the incarnation—God becoming flesh, the Light of the World moving into the neighborhood (John 1:14 MESSAGE ). And yet, how many Christmases have we missed the glory entirely, captured by lesser lights, allowing ourselves to be spent (both literally and figuratively) attending to a thousand distractions?
Oh, how we need the season of Advent. On the Christian calendar, Advent always begins the fourth Sunday before Christmas. This means, depending on the year, Advent can begin as early as November 27 or as late as December 3, offering us a three-to-four week season of preparation and longing. When we observe Advent with intentionality, we give ourselves the chance to take in a bit more of the light each day: adjusting our eyes, calibrating our hearts, preparing him room.
I t’s no coincidence that this book of Advent and Christmas reflections is entitled A Light Has Dawned . The articles in these pages were all written for Christianity Today over a sixty-year period. Certainly, the pieces vary to some extent in style and tone. But there is a remarkable cohesion around the invitation to attend to the light.
In the first piece in this collection, for example, Alice Slaikeau Lawhead is struck afresh by an astonishing line in the Christmas Eve liturgy: In the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord .
A few entries later, Katelyn Beaty reminds us that the incarnation can’t be “sold, scheduled, or enjoyed in the way a glass of eggnog or a new gadget can,” but rather “can only be beheld.” Beaty also warns us that the light might not appear in the ways that we expect, even as she reassures us that Jesus “waits for our eyes to adjust to the dim light emanating from the manger.” Her words, written in 2015, resonate with reflections offered by Donald J. Shelby twenty-five years earlier: “God ‘came down the backstairs at Bethlehem,’ wrote [George] Buttrick, ‘lest he blind us by excess of light.’ ”
Mary Ellen Ashcroft, on the other hand, rounds out the picture by asking us to remember that we find Christ not only sleeping in the manger but also ruling on the throne. Here, the light she asks us to behold is the “blazing fire” in his eyes. And Billy Graham likewise urges us to understand that the loving, peaceful Christ and the flame-setting, sword-bearing Christ are not at odds. Grappling with Jesus’ declaration, “I have come to bring fire on the earth” (Luke 12:49 NIV ), Graham commends John Wesley’s paraphrase, “I come to spread the fire of heavenly love over all the earth.”
Other pieces in this collection helpfully reflect not only on the wonder of the light himself, but also on all that we can see by the light—including and especially our call as followers of the risen Christ to reflect his light by caring for the poor and the oppressed.
As we read A Light Has Dawned , we might envision this collection of reflections as a series of frames in a slow-motion sunrise. Each day of Advent and Christmastide, there is an invitation to allow the wonders of the incarnation to dawn on us incrementally, as we take in the light at a rate we can absorb. Imagine what might happen if we really do go slow this year. Can we, like Mary, learn to treasure the miracle, to ponder it in our hearts? Will we, like the Magi, train our eyes on the light and pursue it at any cost?
A Light Has Dawned is arranged to bring us through Advent and into Christmastide, culminating on January 6 with Epiphany. My prayer for you—and for me—is that by the time we reach those early days of January, we will have absorbed enough of the light to be able to say with Helmut Thielicke: “There is a sun ‘that smiles at me,’ and I can run out of t