Evendays

I have enjoyed reading your comments from the last few posts and am thankful for this way of keeping in touch with you. It makes me feel “connected”.
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As usual, we attended the annual retreat in Ardeche, France during the Ascension weekend. This year, all of the speakers were “amateurs”, that is, they were not paid ministers, and boy did they do a good job. Three of the speakers were 20 or younger, (one of them was Son 1), and they all spoke true words without hypocrisy that went right to the heart.

It was late to bed and “early” to rise for the three day stay… Lots of fellowship, sport, study, praise and prayer. Way too much time spent at the table. All in all, a time of renewal.

I know you probably missed it. Yet it’s one of the few Protestant holidays with Christian roots. Not Jewish. Not pagan. Just Christian.

When Jesus had led the disciples out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God (Luke 24.50-53).

It happened “yesterday”, some 2000 years ago. And the world has never been the same since Christ received his throne on Ascension Day.

A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth.

Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born.

She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne (Revelation 12.1-5).

From the people of God came forth the Messiah. From the moment of his birth, Satanic forces strove for his destruction. The vision answers our question: Where is the Christ? Not in a manger. Not even on a cross. He is at the right hand of God.

As Peterson wrote in Reversed Thunder, this text reminds us…

that the nativity cannot be sentimentalized into coziness, nor domesticated into drabness, nor commercialized into worldliness…

Merry Christmas, my Kingdom friends.