We wanted to compile a list of movies that get at the real heart of the Advent season. Some take place in a Christmas setting but the majority are probably the most un-Christmassy Christmas movies you’ve ever heard of. So toss a yule log on the fire, grab the popcorn, and snuggle up under a blanket – here are our top picks.
Recently, I received a bit of an Advent jolt thanks to art critic and theologian Dan Siedell. In his book Who's Afraid of Modern Art?: Essays on Modern Art and Theology in Conversation, Seidell tells the engrossing story of the controversy surrounding the work below: The image, created by American artist Andrés Serrano, seems rather innocuous –... Continue Reading →
"We must not take flight to a better land or to some height or other unknown, nor to any spiritual Cloud-Cukcooland nor to a Christian fairyland. God has come into our life in its utter unloveliness and frightfulness."
If the sermon does not seem to be coming out of the preacher’s inmost convictions, it’s not biblical preaching. If the preacher is not preaching as George Whitfield did, “a dying man to dying men,” it’s not biblical preaching.
50 years ago today, Martin Luther King Jr., one of the most prominent evangelicals and activists in the 20th century, was murdered because he stood defiantly for truth and justice. Below is an excerpt from a sermon he gave in 1967 on the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace, about six months before his assassination.
Not even that “final enemy” of death, which so seems to have the final word in human affairs. Easter corrects our faulty notions. Christ, in fact, as Victor over the grave has the final say in human affairs, whether living or dying!
I praise you for the relief of knowing that neither my prayers, my worship, my service, my repentance, my listening, my giving, my helping, my work performance, my refraining from impolite things, nor keeping of commands---nothing I manage to perform that I should nor resist that I shouldn’t will ever be enough!
Today, we pray for an increase of love. For an increase of desire to love. For an increased apprehension of the marvel of this Savior who “stoops to conquer.”
...On the surface, the holidays seem at opposite ends of the spectrum; their awkward clash akin to a middle school dance where the angsty emo kid slow dances with the class flirt. But I say all the better for it. For me, the coming together of the unlikely pair raises a question worth considering: What can love be in light of the unsavory truth that we all will die?
The beauty of Advent is not in the waiting or giving great gifts or even in baby Jesus: It is receiving the grace of God. When the Word becomes flesh, we see and we receive. This is the simple message of the gospel: See and receive!
