What a paradox that a babe in a manger should be called mighty! Yet even as a baby, Jesus Christ revealed power. His birth affected the heavens as that star appeared. The star affected the Magi, and they left their homes and made that long journey to Jerusalem. Their announcement shook King Herod and his court. Jesus’ birth brought angels from heaven and simple shepherds from their flocks on the hillside. Midnight became midday as the glory of the Lord appeared to men.
—Warren W. Wiersbe in His Name Is Wonderful
Augustine’S Barbarians Or Ours?
We are at a point in history comparable to the one occupied by Augustine.… The classical vision had lost its power over people’s minds, and society was disintegrating.… Alasdair MacIntyre, who invokes the memory of that moment to illuminate our situation, adds, however, that there is one great difference between Augustine’s time and ours: then the barbarians were waiting outside the gates, but now they are already in the seats of power.
Lesslie Newbigin in Foolishness to the Greeks
The Greatest Christmas
Some businessmen are saying that this could be the greatest Christmas ever. I always thought that the first one was.
—Art Fettig in Quotable Quotations, by Lloyd Cory
Spirit As Life
Long before the term “ecology” was discovered by the environmentalists, Joseph Sittler employed it to suggest the interconnectedness of all of life. One of his more provocative images is that of a spider web—touch one part of it and all parts quiver. Just so, spirit cannot be separated from life, but must be understood and received in the midst of all of existence.
—James M. Wall in The Christian Century (June 18–25, 1986)
Sloganized Christianity
As long ago as the colonial period in our history, Alexis de Tocqueville observed the tendency among Americans to be “the slaves of slogans.” We still are. We must be the only people in history who think the Bible can be put on a bumper sticker. We turn theological insights into brand-names.
—Virginia Stem Owens, “On Eating Words” in The Reformed Journal (June 1986)
The Jingle-Bell Crowd
We live in a spiritually troubled time in history. Christianity has gone over to the jingle-bell crowd. Everyone is just delighted that Jesus has done all of the sorrowing, all of the suffering, all of the dying.
—A. W. Tozer in Men Who Met God
Hemmed In To Nothing
God has hemmed me in to nothing, that I may have nothing, do nothing, want nothing, save Himself.
Sometimes faith looks pious. Sometimes faith looks like dying. Sometimes faith looks like doubt. Faith can even look like despair. Each one of these faces are different peaks of the same mountain range.
—Walter Wangerin, Jr., quoted by Bruce Buursma in The Chicago Tribune (Aug. 8, 1986)
Deadlock
Man finds it hard to get what he wants, because he does not want the best; God finds it hard to give, because He would give the best, and man will not take it.
—George MacDonald in George MacDonald, An Anthology (130), edited by C. S. Lewis
Keeping Christmas Christian
Christmas took over a pagan celebration, and now a non-Christian world is trying to make it into a purely secular festival again. But real Christians will keep Christ, and therefore they will keep Christmas.… Some years ago there was a campaign to “put Christ back into Christmas,” but Christ never left the real Christmas.… Christmas may be an oasis, but at least it is a time when love is made manifest.
—Father Henry Fehren in U.S. Catholic (December 1985)
Destroying The Evidence
It’s a tough job trying to make Christmas nonreligious.… To eliminate Christ from Christmas you would have to destroy all the evidence—including the Michelangelos, the Rembrandts, Rubens, and da Vincis, the works of Beethoven, Haydn, Bach, Mozart, and Handel. To search for the millions of Bibles, translated into many languages and distributed around the world, would take quite a force. The job would be too big for the FBI, the KGB, and Scotland Yard combined.
—Ruth Hackman in God in the Midst of Every Day
Contending For The Faith
Opposition is a fact: the Christian who is not conscious of being opposed had better watch himself for he is in danger.
—J. I. Packer in Knowing God
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