Israel’s Defensible Borders

Critical Security Needs for a Viable Peace

HT. Jesus Creed

First Sunday After Christmas - Isaiah 61:10

My Soul Shall Exult in My God

This is how I felt after the Celtic Christmas midnight candle service I attended at the First Pres Church in my city last night – a practice I believe I’m going to make a Christmas Eve tradition.

10 I will greatly rejoice in the Lord;

my soul shall exult in my God,

for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation;

he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,

as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress,

and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

11 For as the earth brings forth its sprouts,

and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up,

so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise

to sprout up before all the nations.

Six Useful Books on Writing

From Andrew Naselli

Andy Naselli has posted a piece that recommends Six Useful Books on Writing.  The comments are good, as always.

Books on writing are even more common than first-year Greek grammars. (I should probably revise that sentence.)  Here are six that I’ve found especially useful. I’d suggest reading them in this order.

1. William Strunk Jr. The Elements of Style. Wth revisions, an introduction, and a chapter on writing by E. B. White. 4th ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2000. 105 pp.

2. William Zinsser. On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction. 30th Anniversary Edition. New York: Collins, 2006. 321 pp.

3. Joseph M. Williams. Style: Toward Clarity and Grace. With two chapters coauthored by Gregory G. Colomb. Rev. ed. Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1995. 208 pp.

4. Anthony Weston. A Rulebook for Arguments. 4th ed. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2008. 104 pp.

5. Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams. The Craft of Research. 3rd ed. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2008. 336 pp.

6. Merriam-Webster’s Concise Dictionary of English Usage. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 2002. 799 pp.

Read the whole thing, if you want some more of his comments on each book. And be sure to skim the comments where several additional works are cited.

Born of Hope

An “Absolutely Stunning” Prequel to LOTR

I just found an amazing prequel to The Lord of the Rings that's been produced by an independent group called Actors at Work Productions.   It doesn't have the production quality of the film, but it's far better than many T.V. movies. I agree with one of the reviewers – it's "absolutely stunning".  It's called Born of Hope.  Being a huge Tolkien fan, I loved it.  Loved it.  The story is about the Dúnedain:

A scattered people, the descendants of storied sea kings of the ancient West, struggle to survive in a lonely wilderness as a dark force relentlessly bends its will toward their destruction. Yet amidst these valiant, desperate people, hope remains. A royal house endures unbroken from father to son.

This hour long original drama is set in the time before the War of the Ring and tells the story of the Dúnedain, the Rangers of the North, before the return of the King. Inspired by only a couple of paragraphs written by Tolkien in the appendices of the Lord of the Rings we follow Arathorn and Gilraen, the parents of Aragorn, from their first meeting through a turbulent time in their people's history.

You'll need a little over an hour to watch it.  It’s well worth your time.  I just downloaded it and watched it, without the annoying network hiccups, via FLV Player.  Here’s a line in the film from Arathorn:

 

"Arise, Dúnedain!  Remember who you are.  Let our enemies once again flee before us...."  

 

Then Arathorn, son of Arador, Lord of the Dunedain led his people in a great and valiant onslaught.  And the servants of the enemy quailed.

Get's my blood going. 

 

If you want to learn more about the Dúnedain, there is a wealth of information online.  Some more here, and here.

Merry Christmas Everyone

The Desire of All Nations Has Come

The “desire of all nations”.  Do you know what it means to desire some thing or someone with an intensity so fierce it unsettles you?  Can we desire the Lord that way and still be sober?  I mean sober in the sense of sober-minded.  Sometimes I do -  long for Him, I mean, with the same desire the heart of every desperate seeker longs with.  If we seek with with the same passion we seek our addictions with, perhaps we would be found by Him – seeking Him with everything we’ve got ‘till we can say with Eric Liddell, “I feel His pleasure.”  Oh God, we want to feel Your pleasure.  The desire of ages, the desire of all nations, Christ the Savior is born.   This is our true desire’s star – that “infinite, soul-staggering grandeur” that only He can fulfill.  Our souls were designed to be connected to something bigger, something higher – His “shocking, stunning, divine, absolute, staggering grandeur.”  The human heart was “made to be staggered by terrifyingly awesome, joyous dread and peace.” ^[1] The human heart was made to find its pleasure in God.

  “The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. . . . Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” ^[2]

 

Resources

1. Piper, John, God’s Design for History, gods-design-for-history-the-glory-of-his-mercy
2. Lewis, C.S. The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, HarperSanFrancisco 2001

Bethlehem’s Shepherds

A “Lovely Thought” Indeed

I stumbled across something the other day – something I hadn’t given any thought to before.  And although the picture of the starry shepherd’s night watch being filled with the glory of a multitude of angels singing praises to a newborn King has always delighted my imagination, I never quite connected these shepherds to the Lamb of God the way William Barclay does below.

Jim L. Wilson has been providing his Fresh Sermons for some time now; they’re available via Logos and on the Web.   I was reading his “Shepherds” sermon and was intrigued by this:

Shepherds weren’t admired in Biblical times. They are called loathsome (NAS) [Also “an abomination”, “detestable”, “loathsome”] in Genesis 46:34. In fact, being a shepherd was considered punishment. Numbers 14:33 says, “And your sons shall be shepherds for forty years in the wilderness, and they shall suffer for your unfaithfulness, until your corpses lie in the wilderness.”

Wilson follows that up with a quotation from Barclay’s The New Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of Luke that supports the above:

It is a wonderful thing that the story should tell that the first announcement of God should come to some shepherds. Shepherds were despised by the orthodox good people of the day. They were quite unable to keep the details of the ceremonial law; they could not observe all the meticulous hand washings and rules and regulations. Their flock made constant demands on them; and so the orthodox looked down on them. It was to simple men of the fields that God’s message first came.

Wilson stops the quotation there.  He is, after all, making another point - the one about the social status of the shepherds in 1st Century Bethlehem, that no one is beyond God’s reach; not you, not me, not even the despised shepherds of that day.  But I wanted to find the full attribution for this quote so I went looking, and I found something I’ve never seen before (nor heard).  That’s always a nice Christmas gift – to be able to see the old, familiar story in a new way.   It was again from Barclay, and it immediately follows the quote given above.  But this one stopped me in my tracks:

But these were in all likelihood very special shepherds. We have already seen how in the Temple, morning and evening, an unblemished lamb was offered as a sacrifice to God. The see that the supply of perfect offerings was always available the temple authorities had their own private sheep flocks; and we know that these flocks were pastured near Bethlehem.  It is most likely that these shepherds were in charge of the flocks from which the Temple offerings were chosen.  It is a lovely thought that the shepherds who looked after the Temple lambs were the first to see the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Isn’t that wonderful?  And of course…but how perfect.  I’ll never read this story the same way again:

The Angels Announce Jesus to the Shepherds

Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.”

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”

So it was, when the angels had gone away from them into heaven, that the shepherds said to one another, “Let us now go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has come to pass, which the Lord has made known to us.” And they came with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the Babe lying in a manger. Now when they had seen Him, they made widely known the saying which was told them concerning this Child. And all those who heard it marveled at those things which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told them.

One of the Best Christmas Videos

Breath of Heaven  and The Nativity