Perhaps society is to blame for the full-blown Christmas decorations that appear in churches as soon as the Thanksgiving turkey carcass is thrown into the pot for soup. After all, when Christmas shows up in stores as early as September, who can blame worshipers for wanting the sanctuary halls to be decked as well?
I’m too old to write to Santa. If I could, though, I’d ask the jolly elf for Barbie’s Dream Church. What? You’ve never heard of Barbie’s Dream Church? It’s a place where money flows as freely as volunteers, and the coffee actually tastes like coffee — rich and robust.
Between the commercial observances of Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday, Unbound: An Interactive Journal of Christian Social Justice is giving its readers a gift for the first Sunday of Advent: a new look.
Think about the first and last words of Scripture. The book of Genesis opens with “In the beginning …” (Gen. 1:1). And the book of Revelation closes with “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev. 22:20), followed only by a postscript extending Christ’s grace to all the saints. The season of Advent brings together both ends of the Bible.
While a summertime academic emphasis is not unusual for high-achieving high school students, Lucianna (Luci) Astorga’s educational focus between school years has been much different than that of other scholastically-minded peers.
There’s a reason Blue Christmas and Longest Night services have become popular in recent years. They recognize that amid all the shopping and get-togethers, the holidays need tidings of both comfort and joy. Comfort, because loneliness, grief and pain can be especially potent this time of year. Joy, because we need the hope of the gospel.
The turkey sandwiches were made, and hot chocolate filled our thermoses. We piled into the car and drove off for a family tradition: our day-after-Thanksgiving trek into the woods.
The season of Advent, which begins on Sunday, Dec. 2, is often misunderstood. Before Thanksgiving is even finished, people are inundated with the sights and sounds of Christmas. Within this consumer culture, it’s easy to confuse the season of Advent with the number of shopping days until December 25.
The refrain of Advent is Come, Lord Jesus. And so, during the season, we stand in the place of those who awaited the advent of the Lord for centuries before the birth of Christ. We cry out for the Lord to come. But just as importantly, we also stand looking forward to Christ’s second advent, when we, who see through a glass darkly, will see our Savior face to face.
It’s November. The air is full of politics across the United States, and the world will be watching to see whether the face of our country will change or will be one more edition of the same old, same old.
