Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.
Well, the season has begun, specifically the season of complaining that the world has forgotten the reason for the season.
However, The reason that many seem to want restored has more in common with Hallmark than Christ. While celebration, family, and friendship are indeed essential aspects of the holiday season as it is culturally practiced, the church calendar offers the season of Advent as a way of preparing our hearts and minds for the feast of Christmas. Essential to the season of Advent is to remember and rehearse the story of Scripture, particularly those parts that promise God's salvation. To this end, Michael Card's album, The Promise, is a staple in the Stone Street household this time of year. And for the more musically gifted in our home, of which I am not one, there's also the commitment of time to listen again and again to Handel's Brilliant Messiah.
Speaking of brilliant, the witty G.K. Chesterton was a big fan of Christmas. And in 2023, Ryan Smith wrote Winter Fire, Christmas with G.K. Chesterton, which is a delightful mix of Chesterton essays, articles, and poems and meditations. And of course, closer to Christmas Day, don't forget about G.K.
Chesterton's letters from Father Christmas. For those who are interested in going deeper, the 2024 book by Ryan Putman, Conceived by the Holy Spirit, The Virgin Birth in Scripture and Theology, is one of those rare works for both laity and theological professionals. In it, Putnam describes Advent and the birth of Christ by reaching across the story of Scripture and into various Elements of the practical Christian walk. And Daniel Spanger's Advent is the story, seeing the Nativity through Scripture, combines rich theology with a day-to-day reading list for the entire month of December. From the first chapters of Genesis to the concluding verses of Revelation, Spanger describes, and I quote, Christmas as worldview.
Here's how he puts it: quote, the history of the universe is a story with a specific plot. It began with a garden of beauty and goodness. God will bring the universe to completion as it was designed, Yahweh's permanent eternal home among his people, end quote. And there's also Dan Darling's 2019 book, The Characters of Christmas, The Unlikely People Caught Up in the Story of Jesus. It's a wonderful challenge to anyone too familiar with the Nativity story, if that's possible.
Darling reminds his readers how God used ordinary people to do the extraordinary things. including Joseph and Mary, Zachariah and Elizabeth, Simeon and Anna. As Darling describes it in the book, quote, this is the real story of Christmas, the heart of Christianity, brokenness and new birth. The same God who birthed life into Sarah's dead womb had breathed life into Elizabeth and Mary. And this baby, Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, breathes new birth into his people, end quote.
Yes, this season is certainly bigger than the commercialism and the decorations, but it is even more than time with family and friends. See, everything that matters in this world matters because it ultimately finds its significance in the work that God is doing in his world. And Advent is to remind us all of God's work of redemption. As Mary first sang, quote, he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate. He has filled the hungry with good things, the rich he has sent away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his offspring forever. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. Today's Breakpoint was co-authored with Dr. Timothy Padgett. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, please leave us a review wherever you download your podcast.
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