The Internet Monk Archives

two patients, one day

two patients, one day

one day, two visits
two patients near the end of life…

new georgia, augusta, st. george…
he could name them all
the islands he’d hopped
with the merchant marines in world war II
refueling ships, on the lookout for jap subs
never once felt afraid he said

now 95, he said it again
i’ve lived a good life, i’ve had it good
if i could have my wish
i’d just close my eyes tonight and not wake up
fear didn’t enter in
there in his comfortable home
a sense of peace, an air of contentment
children with him (now retired themselves)
listening to his stories again and again
laughing, adding commentary, patient
did you put your sugar in your tea, dad?

said he’s thought long and hard about his life
in the end, life’s a stranger, he told me
doesn’t know if he’ll make it to that better place
as a firefighter he used to carry burnt bodies
from the rubble and work with the coroner on them
made him wonder a little about god
and how sure some people are
that they’ve got it all figured out
while he described a life of service to others
that puts occasional samaritans like me to shame
and besides, he could quote the 23rd psalm
said he was keeping that one handy
just in case st. peter asked for his credentials

i prayed for him
sure as i could be that god loves this man

young girl, mid-20s, looks about 13
not a wrinkle not a flaw
tiny little thing, a sparrow, a sprite
in the hospital bed her skin a telltale yellow
she filled that skin with drink
for as long as anyone can remember
difficult child, prodigal, wastrel
but grandpa’s there, holding her hand

and grandma’s talking a mile a minute
hinting at their troubles
but not wanting to appear disreputable
it’s clear, i get it
i allow her that dignity
who the hell wants to be here?
with this? with her like this?

i make my way around grandma
and sit by the bed
i hold the tiny one’s slight hand
so soft so soft
quietly i pray for a peace
she may never have known
or maybe once, when she was a child
she felt it on a summer day
her twirly dress making a circle
of joy above her dancing feet
as she spun
and fell down in the grass breathless
so soft so soft

sure as i can be that god loves this girl
i say to her, now rest…

How Do You Want Your Children to View the Bible?

How Do You Want Your Children to View the Bible?

In this BioLogos Forum discussion , “Gabe” raises the question about how to reconcile a biblical worldview with science. He is struggling with verses like:

Acts 17:26 NIV

From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.

1 Timothy 2:13 NIV

For Adam was formed first, then Eve.

2 Peter 3:5-6 NIV

But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed.

He says he is: “…still struggling to reconcile Peter and Paul’s beliefs in things like a global flood and traditional Adam and Eve as significant points in their theology with the idea that science says that there was no global flood or first pair of humans.”

Moderator Phil McCurdy (jpm) gives an answer that most of us are probably familiar with:

“We often speak of “God meeting us where we are,” and I think that that is what is happening. The text is not addressing science and origins, it is addressing theologic concerns, and God is accommodating their knowledge and belief and using it to make a theological statement, revealing himself to us through our finite senses.

I have no real doubt that Paul and Peter had a literal historical concept of those things. No doubt they also believed in geocentricity, if they were well versed enough to believe in a spherical earth, though they may have accepted the description given of the cosmos in the Bible as flat and covered by a dome, or by concentric shells supporting the heavens, or whatever. But that is not the point of the scripture.”

It’s a pretty good answer. Christy Hemphill, another Moderator, fleshes out the answer by referring to cultural contexts of Paul’s answer to Timothy that Paul “…was probably countering the Roman Artemis cult in Ephesus that taught women were created first, were superior to men, and should forego marriage and childbearing. So, the communicative intent was more to point people back to the teaching of the Christian church that held marriage as sacred and good, and women as not justified in trying to lord it over men or become completely independent from them from a position of alleged created superiority.”

But the money answer, Christy notes, is “…I think a lot of these questions come down to your doctrine of inspiration– what you believe it means that human words are God’s words and how it all works.”

Now I read to the end of the comments with no mention of how old Gabe was, but I’m betting he is a young person. Which led me to ponder how I am communicating the Bible’s importance to my children and grandchildren. What doctrine of inspiration am I promulgating to them? Towards the end of the discussion, commentator “Peter” delivers the most succinct and valuable summation of the issue:

“It is the central theme of this site and the project of most modern religions – not just Christianity – to find some way to reconcile scriptures written in the past with what we know today. The strategies vary from losing one’s faith entirely to denying science entirely, and everything in between. Francis Collins has tried to find a way to reconcile them so that they are both true.

Here is the thing. For them both to be true, and to accept science as being about the natural world, we must accept the literal truth of the results of science (although they are ultimately provisional) and do the work of finding new ways to conceptualize bible verses.

As has been commented here, many translations, changes and additions have affected the bible as read today and so this discussion is prone to lead us down fruitless pathways that ultimately teach us nothing other than that we don’t know what the original verse was or what it was meant to convey or if it really was just a metaphor or allegorical or poetic, or literal.

I am no biblical scholar, and I know that this problem has been written about by many many learned folks before this, but I would say that a more profitable use of your time is to not see science as destroying your bible, but to see the bible as a means that God used to convey ideas to simple, primitive people in ways that they could comprehend. There is no way that the people of that time could have been convinced of the world being a sphere orbiting a gigantic thermonuclear furnace, or about the eons of time, survival of the fittest, evolution and common ancestry (particularly when these people knew such or a small number of lifeforms), or about physics, genetics, organic chemistry, let alone the fact that the vast majority of people could not read and had little formal education.

Yes, God could have done anything, but as it is, the bible is a useful device to teach God’s word to people who have little understanding of the greater world and the actual reality as has since been revealed by science. Now that we have science, we must focus not on what the bible says that conflicts with science, but on what was meant by those things. That is the whole point.

On this reading, there need not have been an actual global flood to cleanse us of sin, but a story that teaches us of the need to be cleansed of our sin, or more importantly to avoid the need to be cleansed!

Similarly, we have no need to try to shoe-horn Adam’s genetic code into each of us, and bend the laws of inheritance to our beliefs. Adam can be the metaphorical ancestor of us all spiritually, and could have existed not as an individual but as ‘all of us’ in spirit, and that could have been 250,000 thousand years ago or 6,000 years ago because once we liberate ourselves from the tyranny of literalism, we are free to grasp what is truly important.”

That’s a money quote there: “…once we liberate ourselves from the tyranny of literalism, we are free to grasp what is truly important.” That is what I want to communicate to my descendants.

Scott Cairns: Early Frost

Early Frost
By Scott Cairns

This morning the world’s white face reminds us
that life intends to become serious again.
And the same loud birds that all summer long
annoyed us with their high attitudes and chatter
silently line the gibbet of the fence a little stunned,
chastened enough.

They look as if they’re waiting for things
to grow worse, but are watching the house,
as if somewhere in their dim memories
they recall something about this abandoned garden
that could save them.

The neighbor’s dog has also learned to wake
without exaggeration. And the neighbor himself
has made it to his car with less noise, starting
the small engine with a kind of reverence. At the window
his wife witnesses this bleak tableau, blinking
her eyes, silent.

I fill the feeders to the top and cart them
to the tree, hurrying back inside
to leave the morning to these ridiculous
birds, who, reminded, find the rough shelters,
bow, and then feed.

Not Logic but Love

Two hours into the conversation, the real question emerged: “but what about the suffering of the innocent children”?

My friend and I were basking in the sunlight streaming into our favorite coffee shop, and he had been relating his recent spiritual journey. The atheism he had embraced some 8 years earlier was wearing thin. He was especially troubled by the thought of his own story, and his children’s story, not being connected to anything larger or more significant.

My friend is perhaps not quite ready to turn to Christ. He had read (as I had also) the new atheists. But their arguments were not what was holding him back. Rather it was this question: How can God allow the innocent children to suffer?

After a few years as a debate coach and a few decades as a pastor I could have given answers that would, at least in my mind I suppose, logically defended God. On my bookshelf is a tome of some 600 pages written by one of my philosophy professors on the problem of evil. He wrote it as his Ph.D. dissertation, and it reads like one. The problem of evil is looked at in its various forms, and each analyzed and answered from a logical, rational viewpoint.

But after listening to my friend enough to know if he wanted my opinion, I did not pull out the logical syllogism I sometimes teach my students, or summarize the tome on my bookshelf. Instead, I summarized a book of an entirely different sort. A book that has helped me in this area more than any other.

The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

This is, of course, a work of fiction, published in Russia in 1879. The main characters of the story are the father, Fyodor Karamazov, and his four sons: Ivan, Dmitri, Alyosha and their half-brother Smerdyakov.

Each of the brothers has a quite distinct worldview and personality. Western-educated Ivan is a thoughtful and moral atheist. Dimitri would likely claim to be a Christian, but is dominated by passions and sensuality. Alyosha is a devote believer, who is marked in the story by a strong, Christlike love to others, especially the hurt and needy. And Smerdyakov is the closest thing in the novel to a villain: at once cunning and foolish, he seems to wear a perpetual sneer.

The plot of the story centers around the murder of the father, Fyodor Karamazov. Dimitri, violent of temper and a rival to the father for the affections of a woman, is the immediate suspect. Though the evidence against him is only circumstantial, he is ultimately convicted and sent away to a prison labor camp.

This is not a plot-centric novel. Its majesty comes from the psychological portraits of the brothers, and especially the interactions between Ivan and Alyosha.

The key chapter is titled Rebellion, and focuses on a dinner conversation between the two brothers. Ivan does most all the talking; one senses he is at last able to unload his thoughts on his younger brother. He relates his own spiritual journey, and how the one sticking point to believing in God (or, more precisely, to accepting the offer of the kingdom of God), is the suffering of children. He focuses on children alone, for, as he says, adults have “tasted the apple”, but young children are innocent, and thus the question of punishment is not relevant.

He confesses that he has become something of a collector of stories of suffering children; he clips and saves the newspaper articles. He relates a half-dozen of the worst stories to Alyosha, who is almost silent in pain as he hears them. Ivan concludes that even if the kingdom of heaven could somehow justify the suffering of one child as necessary for it to come into the world, he could never accept it. He would instead, “return the admittance ticket”.

Here, and in other chapters, Ivan Karamazov makes the most moving and passionate argument for rejecting Christianity that I have ever read. That, and the profound psychological analysis, is perhaps why Freud would call this book “the most magnificent novel ever written”. I would agree with the claim, but not, I suspect, the reason.

For despite Alyosha’s silence, there is in this novel a profound answer to Ivan. It is not in the words of Alyosha. It is Alyosha.

Alyosha loves. He even loves Ivan despite his great sadness and fear that Ivan’s philosophy will destroy his life, and even though Ivan affirms that without God, “everything is permitted”.

Alyosha loves. He continues to love, even those who abuse him and scorn him. He continues to seek peace and healing. He continues to do good to those who are in need, even when they, in their resentment, insult and despise him. He always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Despite not even attempting to argue with his atheist brother, despite not even having an answer, Alyosha goes on doing what he has been doing: loving others, and sharing their suffering, in Christian devotion.

Ivan, in the meanwhile, finds he walks a more bitter path. He learns, to his horror, that Smerdyakov, not Dimitri, is the murderer of their father. Worse, that Smerdyakov has done this influenced by Ivan’s philosophy. Smerdyakov has taken “everything is permitted” quite seriously. Or…more consistently.

Ideas have consequences. And Ivan finds that while he himself would never commit parricide, his ideas, taken up by men with lesser intellects and worse morals, lead to suffering and death. And here Dostoyevsky predicts 20^th century Russia.

Alyosha and Ivan see the same reality, yet choose differently each how to interpret that. One brother, while not having the answer for suffering, lives a life that relieves suffering and spreads love. The other brother collects newspaper accounts of the suffering of innocent, yet does nothing to relieve such suffering. In fact his rejection of God leads only to more suffering and evil.

This is Dostoevsky’s “non-answer answer” to the problem of suffering. And this book, not the 600-page technical theodicy, is what has helped me, and what I recommended to my friend.

For evil is not an argument: It is a thing. And the answer to evil is not logic but the cross. Alysha is an heir and a symbol of the One who took evil and suffering upon Himself, out of love for others. And I live in the hope that the cross has laid the groundwork for that Day when evil is no more, and love is perfected.

Even so, come quickly.

So Damn Tired

I’ve had a tough day. It started with my church continuing to make (what I think are) poor choices regarding the pandemic.

But really it started before today: with the knowledge of not being able to see my son over Christmas and not being able to share Christmas with my parents in person for the first time in my life. This is a culmination of a lot of people making poor choices.

It was also a culmination of feelings of hopelessness brought about from people sharing stupid ideas on social media.

It concluded with news that Jade, a young woman I know, has experienced two strokes in rapid succession and is not expected to survive. She leaves three young children. She is the daughter of a Pastor of small church with which I used to be heavily involved.

I had another post nearing completion. It will wait for another day.

Right now I just need to put my head down and hope for a better day tomorrow.

Advent I – Make Ready for Surprise

The IM Saturday Monks Brunch: November 28, 2020

My grandpets recently got together to reenact Edward Hicks’s famous painting series, “The Peaceable Kingdom.”

The IM Saturday Monks Brunch: November 28, 2020

I don’t know about you, but I am missing traveling these days. We stayed put this Thanksgiving and had a quiet meal, just the two of us, at home. For many reasons, we felt this was the safe and wise choice. Apparently however, enough people decided it wasn’t worth the trouble to stay home over Turkey Day and the holiday weekend.

Number of Thanksgiving holiday travelers in the United States from 2005 to 2020 (in millions)

According to the website statista.com, holiday travel in the U.S. was down a little bit from the last three years. However, more people traveled this year than they did in the vast majority of the past 15 years. This, despite repeated warnings regarding the pandemic. We’ll see in about two weeks if this had any impact on transmission of the virus.

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And then, of course, came the most observed day of the Christian Year…

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Let’s take a road trip!

Snow Cap Diner on Route 66, Seligman AZ. (Taken on a trip to AZ in spring of 2019)

Well, since many of us decided not to join the crowds on the road this weekend, let’s do a little virtual traveling today. We’ll journey to some of the more eccentric sites around the U.S. of A.

All of our stops today come from the Eccentric Roadside website, which “is devoted to old-fashioned American roadside attractions… the wonderfully big, bizarre, crazy, wacky, quirky, weird, funny, unique and mundane sites you see traveling cross-country by car in the USA, where getting there really is all the fun!”

World’s Tallest Thermometer (134 ft), Baker CA

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Big Duck Gift Shop (built in 1931), Flanders Long Island NY. It’s 15-feet wide, 30-feet long, and 20-feet tall, made of white concrete. It was originally built to advertise a duck farm business. The owners were inspired by a giant coffee pot roadside attraction they had visited.

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Corn Palace, Mitchell SD. The exterior murals and decorations are made up of corn kernels, husks and cobs. Visited by over 500,000 people per year.

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Dixie Cup Watertower, Lexington KY (1958)

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The RV Hall of Fame in (where else?) Elkhart IN

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For a more substantial monument, you can visit Carhenge in Alliance NE.

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Harold’s Auto, Spring Hill FL. Originally built by Sinclair, whose logo was a dinosaur, they constructed the station in the shape of a 47-foot tall, 110-foot long apatosaurus back in 1964.

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Naughty Amish Pennsylvania town names in the heart of the land of the devout – who, nevertheless, are not above cashing in!

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Lenny, the life-sized chocolate moose, Scarborough ME. He’s 1,700-pounds, 8-feet tall, and 9-feet long.

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The Idaho Potato Expo and Potato Museum, Blackfoot ID. (“We give taters to Out-Of-Staters”)

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Salem Sue, the world’s biggest Holstein cow, New Salem ND. She stands 38 feet high and is 50 feet long.

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If coffee is more your cup of tea, there’s The Coffee Pot in Bedford PA

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Museum of Pez Memorabilia, Burlingame CA

The museum also features a “Banned Toys” section, which includes this Cold War era science kit. Because who doesn’t want their child learning about how to work with radioactive materials?

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And, lest we forget…

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News story of the year, so far…

With all the craziness of 2020, I can’t think of a more important story than this. Nothing compares when considering our national interest. Please, please pay attention to this warning.

From CNN:

Officials in Jasper, an alpine town in Canada’s Alberta province, have put up signs asking motorists to avoid allowing moose to lick the salt, a treat moose find hard to resist, off their cars.

“They’re obsessed with salt, it’s one of the things they need for the minerals in their body,” Jasper National Park spokesman Steve Young told CNN. “They usually get it from salt lakes in the park, but now they realized they can also get road salt that splashes onto cars.”

By allowing moose to lick the salt off your car, they will become habituated with being around cars. That poses a risk to both the animals and the drivers who can accidentally crash into them.

“Moose and cars are not a good mix….” Young said.

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Coolest story of the year, so far…

From NPR:

State officials were flying over southeastern Utah looking for sheep as part of a routine task. Instead they found something straight out of a sci-fi movie.

From a helicopter, officers from the Utah Department of Public Safety spotted a large metal monolith — a single block of metal — last week. It was sitting in Utah’s Red Rock Country in the southeast. Officials have no idea how or when it got there — or who might have placed it.

…In the classic sci-fi film 2001: A Space Odyssey, a group of prehistoric ape-men was baffled by a large black monolith that appeared in an African desert.

“I’m assuming it’s some new-wave artist or something,” Hutchings said, according to KSL TV. “Somebody that was a big fan [of the film].”

Gospelish – By C J Fitz – An Internet Monk Review

The past couple of weeks I have been hanging out musically at the intersection of country and folk. It is not a place I have been known to frequent, but the artistry of C J Fritz is persuading me that this might be a part of town that I want to visit more often.

So who is C J Fritz, and what is Gospelish?

C J is none other than the frequent and insightful Internet Monk commenter known to us a ChrisS. I think he has been hanging out here about as long as I have. Gospelish is his second album due to be released next month.

Let me start off by saying that I was blown away when I heard these tracks. While listening to these songs, I put on a pair of giant headphones to shut out any external distractions and drifted off into musical bliss.

Anyone who knows me, knows what a huge fan of Bruce Cockburn I am, and intentionally or not, Chris hooked me with a Bruce Cockburn cover, “Child of the Wind”. I absolutely love Chris’ version of this song. I must confess I have probably listened to this song 50 times in the past two weeks and would be perfectly content listening to it another 50 times.

Chris would want you to know that these tracks are not the final mixed and polished versions. I would never have guessed that. Listen for yourself and you will understand what I mean.

Child of the Wind
(Upon further reflection Audio track has been removed as permission has not yet been given.)

Chris’ mastery of the guitar is showcased in this next song, “Without a Shield.” His folk style in the song’s intro reminded me of another Cockburn song, the wonderful “Water Into Wine“.

But “Without a Shield” is not an instrumental. Its accompanying lyrics are deep, meaningful, and powerful.

Without a Shield

Nailed onto a beam
Atop a barren hill
A foul and vile scene
A strange mysterious will
Flesh and blood
An awful grace
Rend the veil
Reveal his face
Mary’s son
Without a shield

The Lamb of God
Without a Shield

Here’s where we begin
If we dare step in
Here’s how we forgive
And are forgiven
Waves and waves
Of time and space
Erode the scales
We’re face to face
The Lord our God
Without a shield

The guitar, lyrics, melody, and Chris’ rich voice combine into what I consider to be a musical masterpiece. Have a listen.

Without a Shield

If you lean towards the Country end of the musical spectrum. This next song will give you a taste of some of Chris’ more “Countryish” stylings. A simpler song, and a great song of worship as well.

I will give
Like you give to me.
I will forgive
Like you forgive.
I will see
Like you see me.
I will love like you do.
I will love like you do.

Like you

It has been both a pleasure and a privilege to be able to listen to all the tracks that Chris sent me. I know that I will be purchasing the album when it is released. Chris has kindly provided us with his email. If you would like to be contacted when the album is available, please send him an email now. I am hoping that many of you are as impressed as I am, and would love to support and encourage Chris in his musical career. He can be reached at: cjfitz444@gmail.com

And of course, be sure to send your encouragements along in the comments as well.

On a final note: It is interesting how many of us have interacted on Internet Monk for years, and really have no idea what each other look like or sound like. I had imagined Chris as a guy in his 20s or 30s with an upstate New York kind of accent. Wrong on both counts there! As I knew that Internet Monk is drawing to a close, I also knew that I wanted to get the information about this album out to you while I still had the chance. That is why I have posted the unfinished tracks. I am hoping that I will be able to continue this interaction that I have had with Chris and others of our readers into the future in whatever form that might take. I will be looking to flesh some of that out in the coming weeks.

As usual your thoughts and comments are welcome!

thanksgiving in a year of covid

In Tove Jansson’s Moominland Midwinter, Moomintroll accidentally wakes from hibernation too early. Accustomed to sleeping through winter, he is shocked to find the world shrouded in snow, his garden entirely unfamiliar. “All the world has died while I slept,” he thinks. “It isn’t made for Moomins.” Feeling terribly lonely, he goes to the bedroom and pulls back his mother’s quilt: “Wake up!” he shouts. “All the world’s got lost!” His mother curls up on her bed-mat and sleeps on. This is a mirror of my own winter, or how it seems to me: everybody else is drowsing while I am wide awake and hounded by sharp fears.

• Katherine May. Wintering (p. 20)

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not me, the wakeful moomin
i am more like the mother
on the bed-mat i huff
hinge to my other side
hug the pillow, hunker down

the house will smell of thanksgiving
and we’ll have a quiet dinner
looking out on the fallow garden
beneath the gray
but, just so you know,
i’ll be sleeping through it all
just like the rest of this year
so vague and tiresome

it’s my part to wait it out
i tell myself
but another voice says this is not a good waiting
this is entropy, plain and simple
lay there long enough
and it all turns to shit

the world’s got lost
right under our noses
but no matter who tries to shake me
awake i’ve not the energy
to arise right now

i know it’s not
the warmest or brightest thanksgiving thought
but senses are dulled this year
so i wish you a restful day
and the comfort of pie
and hope that the garden will become
familiar again

IM Book Review: Reflections of Immanuel, by Scott Lencke

IM Book Review: Reflections of Immanuel, by Scott Lencke

“Getting ready for Christmas” is commonly experienced as an uptick in the speed and frenzy of life. We rush, scurry, and get caught up in the “mall religion” around us. With grace and insight, Scott Lencke offers us a well-trodden but forgotten alternative path — the Advent way. Leading us to contemplate markers left by prophets, psalmists, sages, and evangelists along the road, Scott accompanies us on a slow, conversational walk to the manger of Immanuel.

• Chaplain Mike, Internet Monk

One of the positive developments within evangelicalism during my lifetime has been more openness toward marking aspects of the Church Year (thank you most of all, Robert Webber).

The first and most natural season that I became aware of as an evangelical pastor and worship leader was Advent. The idea of a time of preparation for Christmas and the coming of Christ was a relatively easy sell, especially when the consumer culture we’re immersed in started gearing up for the “holiday season” even earlier.

This has led to the annual publication of devotional guides for Advent, so that Christians can have material on which to reflect, meditate, and pray during the days and weeks leading up to the Nativity. This year, one of our good friends here at Internet Monk, Scott Lencke, has written such a guide, called Reflections of Immanuel.

Here is a brief video trailer, introducing Scott’s book:

Scott begins Reflections by reminding us of our cultural setting here in the West (“mall religion”), which rushes us into Christmas through consumeristic ideology and a bombardment of busy-ness that leaves many of us, including church leaders and workers, exhausted. The hustle and bustle of the season renders us incapable of sustained silence and contemplation on the promise of Christ and the mystery of the Incarnation. Instead, in this book Scott Lencke calls us to “the radical act of waiting.”

We can practice waiting.

In a season of pause, we learn the practice of not bowing to the culturally formed golden calf. We can do this because we first need to journey through the season of Advent before we come to Christmas.

In all, I hope this little book reminds us and refocuses us toward what the church has celebrated for two millennia. It asks us to celebrate Christmas. We will get to that. However, it first invites us to join the Advent path, which kicks off the new year in the wider Christian story.

Along this Advent path, Scott invites us to return to the First Testament roots of the Christmas story, to “find solace in the fact that my story is part of a more magnificent than my own, even beyond what I can fathom.” Don’t just tell the Christmas story, tell the Advent story.

And so we stop back in the days of the prophet Isaiah, to hear him give the sign of Immanuel to a king with shaky faith named Ahaz. Scott also takes us to Isaiah 9, where we reflect on the nature of the kingdom this child from David’s line will bring, the government he will bear on his own shoulders.

Scott Lencke also takes us to a place that I have not traveled much during Advent — to the place where Job suffered and argued with his “comforters.” This is the place of lament, pain, tears, disappointment, and anger. He links Job’s story with Israel’s history of suffering under her oppressors and finds in it a collective message of anguish as well.

This part of the book, along with another chapter on the psalms of lament, offer a much-needed injection of the theology of the cross into our preparations for Christmas. Traditionally, Advent is a penitential season. It is designed to be a time of lament, confession, and crying out to God. This part of Scott’s book contains a most significant message for Christians today, for whom the “Christmas season” is typically portrayed as a continual feast.

I won’t describe every point along the path on which Scott leads us in the Advent journey, but I appreciate the fact that he shows us a few sights along the way that give unique insight into the idea of waiting and preparing our hearts to welcome Christ at Christmas. For example, I love his chapter on the surprising four women from the First Testament in Matthew’s genealogy. It reminds us that the biblical story is “untidy” (just like our lives), and that it includes “a myriad of people whom even religious folk despised. From the blind and diseased, to prostitutes and tax collectors, to the shameful and unimportant.” Yep. The true nature of the season is not nearly as pretty as our holiday decorations.

Thanks, Scott, for giving us your own thoughtful, cogent reflections to help us slow down and ponder what it means to wait for Jesus and know him better as Immanuel, God with us.

I’m happy to recommend Reflections of Immanuel for our Advent meditations this year.