Christmas 1

The familiar Christmas story that features angels and shepherds, a brilliant star and a silent night, Mary and Joseph in a stable, and the newborn child asleep on the hay – this is a story that captures the imagination. It is the source for countless carols and pageants, greeting cards and paintings, and nativity scenes….

[NOTE TO READER: The word Chuuk is pronounced to rhyme with “look.”] On the island of Guam, a U.S. territory in the western Pacific, there are many people who have come seeking a better life for their children. One of them is a man we’ll call Andrew. Andrew is from Chuuk State, a chain of islands surrounding…

I once watched a television program on the theoretical physicist, Richard Feynman. It was said that he had the finest mind since Einstein. He had worked on the Manhattan Project, taught at the California Institute of Technology, and as a final project, had served on the commission that investigated the Challenger disaster. The TV program…

Today we celebrate the first Sunday in the Octave of Christmas. Many of us see it as an anticlimax, a time of letdown after the Big Day, when we gather all the family and share all the gifts and eat all the food. Far too often, this is a day when “Sabbath” basically means that…

On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day we heard the wonderful story of Jesus’ birth from Luke’s Gospel-the account of a baby in a stable, of shepherds, and angels in the town of Bethlehem. This is the narrative from one of the four Gospel accounts, the four versions of the Good News of Jesus Christ. How…

In the bleak mid-winter, frosty wind made moan,earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone…snow had fallen, snow on snow,in the bleak mid-winter long, long ago. Some days seem darker than others. Some days seem colder. The shortest, darkest day of the year was only a few days ago. Although the days gradually lengthen…

This is the Sunday of Christmastide when we begin to consider what God has done in the birth of Jesus. In some homes by now the tree has been taken down, perhaps decorations put away. Stores are advertising year-end sales. Some people have already bought presents and cards for next year at significant savings. In…

O Little town of Bethlehem,The hopes and fears of all the years are met again this year in you.Has it always been so? It was certainly so ten years ago. Some ten years ago, a tourist reflected in this way about his surprising visit to Bethlehem: My adolescent daughter and I were with a small…

We are not allowed long to linger at the manger. Here we are, only the day after Christmas, and we already are beginning to deal with the implications of the birth of Jesus. The lofty and majestic prologue from the Gospel of John captures the awesome and wondrous meaning of the Incarnation, the birth of…

About a year and a half ago, in a restaurant in Austin, Texas, called the Green Mesquite in the booth next to us sat a family. If you ever go there and you like barbecue, try it. At the booth next to us was a family of three, a little girl, her father and mother….