A Call to Arms

It is St. John’s Spirit-appointed task to supplement the work of St. Matthew and St. Luke so that the nativity cannot be sentimentalized into coziness, nor domesticated into drabness, nor commercialized into worldliness. He makes explicit what is implicit in the Gospel stories. The messianic birth takes place out of the womb of God‘s people in a cosmos resplendent with wonder. The entire creation is clothing for God’s people who are, Eve and Mary, mother to Messiah. The visibilities of creation and the invisibilities of salvation cohere in the action. The splendors of creation and the agonies of redemption combine in this event, the center where God in Christ invaded existence with redeeming life and decisively defeats evil. It is St. John’s genius to take Jesus in a manger attended by shepherds and wisemen and put him in the cosmos attacked by a dragon. The consequence to our faith is that we are fortified against intimidation. Our response to the nativity cannot be reduced to shutting the doors against a wintry world, drinking hot chocolate, and singing carols. Rather, we are ready to walk out the door with, as one psalmist put it, high praises of God in our throats and two-edged swords in our hands (Ps. 149:6).

-Eugene Peterson, Reversed Thunder, 122.

The Risen Christ

In every visit, every meeting I attend, every appointment I keep, I have been anticipated. The risen Christ is in that room already. What is he doing? What is he saying? What is going on?

- Eugene Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant, 127.

House Love

How can we help loving houses when they stand to us for so much...Warmth and protection and a means of expressing ourselves. You love a new house because it stands there waiting to be good to human beings and an old one because it has been.

-Elizabeth Goudge, A City of Bells, 68.