Armchair QB



This Sunday we attended worship at Victory.  It felt nice to worship in community again.  Churches were snowed out last week, and we have been floundering in our church tryouts.  Sometimes it is just exhausting, particularly when all you want is to be at home with your family. 

This Sunday was the program that got snowed out, What Child is This, which focused on "behold," a word Scripture authors used to get readers attention.  Often the only things that people know about Jesus is that he was born in a manger and that his name is a cussword.  Pastor Curt illustrated some more things we should know about Jesus by using behold.

A prophecy written about Jesus but written 700 years before his birth:
Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel. Isaiah 7:14 NKJV

The sacrificial lamb, the prescribed sin offering from long ago:
The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! John 1:29 NKJV

Fully divine, but also a man who understands our pain, grief, fears:
Then Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And Pilate said to them, “Behold the Man!” Therefore, when the chief priests and officers saw Him, they cried out, saying, “Crucify Him, crucify Him!” Pilate said to them, “You take Him and crucify Him, for I find no fault in Him.”  John 19:5-6 NKJV

The soon returning King:
“And behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every one according to his work. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last.” Revelation 22:12-13 NKJV

In Christmas time when we think about the gift of Jesus born as a babe, it is good to meditate on the gift of grace that this man who is God also brought and the gift of the promise that this King has made to us. 

Comments

Anonymous said…
Advent was for me a great season. I was even a little glad we got snowed out last Sunday! I needed a Sunday off. I hope your quest to settle into a church community pays off soon.
December 29, 2009 at 12:32 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Christ in His Distressing Disguise

Image
When I was much younger, I learned about this remarkable woman, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, then simply known as Mother Teresa. As a teenager herself, she had chosen to serve God by leaving her home in the former Yugoslavia to go practically around the world to India and become a nun. There she taught school, but she was distracted by the poor on the streets. Longing to care for them, she needed to be released from her teaching duties. Eventually a new religious order, the Missionaries of Charity, was formed by Mother Teresa to serve them, the poorest of the poor. I wonder today what attracted me to her. I didn't know much about India. The pictures of the suffering, the cachetic bodies that barely resembled humans, puzzled me. Growing up with movies and air brushed photographs, as well as a skepticism of news and government organizations, it can be hard to believe. How can there be such incredible suffering in my world? Mother Teresa was doing God's work; I know that was exciti
Read more

Blog Carnival-Seasons

Image
It was all so much simpler in my spring.  I suppose it is for everyone.  That is why babies and puppies and newness are squealed over.  I have been struggling.  Spring has long gone.  The leaves are falling. I loved what I had, what once defined me. Without it now, I feel like a crab without a shell-              vulnerable...                            homeless...                                           dry in spirit. I know, that all is not lost. I know, things change. I know, that God,              who brought me from there to there once,              will bring me from here to there again. I know, the story is not over. I know, the season will change, again. I wish my heart knew all this as well. Check out more blog entries on Seasons at the Carnival .
Read more

Blog Carnival: Community

Image
Blog Carnival: Community Community is getting to be a buzzword that hardly seems recognizable.  It has become permanently connected with a metrosexual worship leader at the hip church which has an outreach into some impoverished place.  But is that community? Yesterday I wrote about Facebook's social networking site.  Did you know that there are more than 300 million active users and that 50% of their active users (returned to the site in the last 30 days) log on to Facebook in any given day and that the average user has 130 friends on the site? Is that community? Do we really have a community or do we talk so much about it and request friends by the busload because we desire it intensely? We were made for community.  Creator said it was not good for that first man to be alone.  Even Creator was not alone.  We need to walk with others.  We need our village.  We need them to not only walk with us and love us and share our burdens, but to challenge us, to force us to grow.
Read more