Crisis Fatigue, Cowardice, and Christian Genocide

I'm weary of war. And poverty. And disease. And large-scale crises of any kind, really.

I'm soul-tired of decade-long conflicts — of men from my generation dying in deserts across the globe. I'm exhausted of the internet and cable news which delivers evidence of the fall before my very eyes all the time. In short, I've got an acute case of crisis fatigue. This is a condition that's epidemic, I'm afraid. Its symptoms include increased distraction with trivial matters (Facebook, TV, everything BuzzFeed), terminal shallowness (because thinking and knowing deeply hurts, and we're tired of hurting), Selfies, and worst of all, cowardice.

Crisis Fatigue is making me a coward.

Cowards are those who lack the courage to do or endure dangerous or unpleasant things. I'm so tired of seeing, reading about, and watching really unpleasant things that I simply don't want to endure them anymore.

Actually, I think Crisis Fatigue is making all of us cowards.

Politically, our cowardice shows as the impulse to create "fortress America," and withdraw from the world. Socially, this manifests in the instinct to live virtual lives where we're liked in lieu of real lives where we're loved. Morally, our cowardice rears its ugly head in our flat refusal to call wrong wrong. Spiritually, we're afraid to open our mouths and declare the good news of God's grace either because we're terrified it won't really work or mortified at the prospect of being frowned upon by someone else.

And, then there's Christian genocide. In my increasing and unnoticed cowardice, I was distracting myself with social media. Normally a safe haven for the meaningless mind vomit of other crisis-fatigued cowards, my social streams were overrun with report after report of the genocide of Christians in Iraq, carried out at the hand of ISIS. As I sat next to my own children, I scrolled past pictures of Iraqi children dying in the desert, or worse. As I sat reclining on my couch in my home I read reports of whole families fleeing theirs. Something shook on the inside of me.

That shaking was a grace.

At that point, my reaction was to quickly think about something else. Anything else. I scrambled for another show, another story, another anything ... Like a coward, I tried to run. But graciously, there are some stories — some images — from which one cannot run. That, I think, is the point.

Since that moment I have not refused to watch, to learn, and to hurt deeply at what I see in the world. I'm staring ISIS down in my soul. I'm heaping prayers up for them toward Heaven. I'm coordinating ways to help through our church. No longer running, I've found the courage to fight again.

Am I still Crisis Fatigued? You bet. Do I still hate what I read and watch? Absolutely. But God has given me a grace. He let me see my inner coward — fat on the luxuries purchased by the blood and sweat of men greater and earlier than me. And, horrified by what I saw in myself, He called me to return, readied again to engage.

May it be with us. This will not be the final struggle we see. May God give us the grace to rise up under it, strengthened by love, hardened by trial, and head first to the fight. The battle to pray, to be bold, to give generously, love recklessly, and give ourselves away for God's glory and the good of all.

"...the righteous falls seven times, but gets up again..." (Proverbs 24:16)

Biblical Fidelity and Our Times

In every generation there is some challenge to biblical fidelity. Discussing this with a friend and pastor I admire deeply, Nic Gibson, he said this. I want to share it with you.

Arguing that the Bible isn't all that clear isn't actually all that hard or all that clever. This is the major tactic of almost all revisionist biblical interpretation – that the text allows for many interpretive options, and that its message is woefully ambiguous to careful observers with more advanced knowledge. And yet almost none of these people would accept that this is true about virtually anything they themselves have written. They think of their own writing as clear, accurately enunciating a definite meaning. They would see doubts raised against their sentence structure, philological choices, and presumed assumptions as unwarranted and unnecessary speculations marshaled against the otherwise clear meaning of a straightforward and unadorned text. But this is modern biblical interpretation, if not all modern literary interpretation. This is the end of all schools of deconstruction and accommodation – the refusal of the surgeon to submit to his own knife ... [A]t the end of the day there is one incision of logical division that they cannot stomach – that the embracing of logical honesty will not uphold the desires of their compassionate sentiment. It is because it is unthinkable that they should believe that their compassion isn't compassionate because what they believe is loving isn't love. Such a moral accusation coming from the word of God or from our very conscience is too much for the deconstructionist to admit and bear – as it would be unthinkable for any of us. But, what we would refuse to be done to text that we write ourselves, we must refuse to do to the apostles, to Moses, or to Christ himself— and all the more if we believe in the divine authorship of all these texts. It is too often those who try to have it all that have nothing. The one who stands with one foot in two boats ends up terribly sore. It is the one who lashes his wrists to two departing trains who holds fast to the trains, but not to his own torso.

Confronted by Jesus

It's a warm day. The smell of dust and animals in the air — the sounds of a small, bustling Palestinian town in the background. Jesus is on his way from one place to the next, when in the distance he hears someone shouting his name. The disciples hear it too. Their sound is desperate, but the disciples are tired. Must they stop again? Soon the shouting prevails as they see their master locating the source of the cries. Two blind men. Two brave, reckless blind men, being hushed by passers-by. But Jesus stops. He asks what they want, as if it weren't obvious. But he wants to hear them say it. They need to speak their needs to Jesus. His answer, "According to your faith may it be done to you."

These words confront me like a fist confronts a jaw. I don't want this to be true. I want Jesus to say, "according to my power, may it be done to you." Or, "according to my mercy, may it be done to you." This word faith disrupts me to the core. I'd much rather live in a world where God just made it all happen, and I, like a floating leaf, meandered down the river. But this verse cries, "Swim!"

But that's not how it works. Not with Jesus. Jesus chooses our participation with our growth. He enables and inspires faith, and then he demands it of us. When I become like the blind men, desperately weary of my own blindness and wholly convinced of Jesus' power to heal, I'll cry out to him in faith too.

The real question is, then, what am I desperate for? Because it seems to me that desperation is the foundation of miracle-enabling faith.

A Theology of Mom

Since one of the stated goals of modern society is the erasure of gender identity, it comes as no surprise that with Mother's Day approaching, some on the fringes are crying sexism. Normally the fringes don't bother me all that much. Crazy's been around for a long time, and that's not likely to change. But our culture has apparently installed an HOV lane from crazy straight into the downtown district of normal, because normal is changing at a rapid pace. So, here's a brief theology of the glorious gift of mom. It seems to me a wonderful idea to celebrate moms. I have a mom. I'm married to a mom. I pastor a bunch of moms. And since the idea of showing honor to one another is entirely biblical, celebrating our mothers is not only appropriate, but wonderful.

Motherhood is a Created Good This one's no longer obvious, so I'll just state it plainly. God made motherhood, and He made it good. Motherhood is part of the created order itself—what Lewis might call the "deep magic." In Genesis 1-2, God made man and woman and gave them a mandate to be fruitful and multiply. Part of God's intentionality in making everything was to make women who became moms. No, motherhood isn't a form of cultural misogyny, cast upon women to oppress them. Has it been used that way in the past? Sure. But when God made everything, he made motherhood as a good, intentional, beautiful gift. Therefore celebrating motherhood can be worshipful as we say, "God, thank you for your good gift of motherhood! Thank you for the good gift of mom!" To think of motherhood as anything other than a good gift given to women is to think very differently than God.

Motherhood is a Gift of Femininity  I remember going to city hall to register the birth of my first son. I sat down across the desk from the woman in the office of registration. She began to ask me questions. Name. Address. Occupation. "Pastor," I said.

"Your wife?" she asked.

"She's a homemaker and a mom," I said.

She looked at me with one brow lifted, "So, she doesn't have a real job, then?"

"You mean like sitting at a desk at City Hall?" She got my point, I think.

Culture (and by that I mean us) doesn't value women as mothers as much as we value them as bodies and jobs. We'll buy their albums as long as they're super sexualized on the album cover. We'll celebrate them as long as they're fit. We'll sing their praises if they achieve something in their careers, when they dress well, have nice homes, or become sexually liberated (whatever that means). If moms are celebrated all, it's only when they have a baby and get their abs back in two weeks. Somehow, we've dislodged motherhood from femininity. But this is not the picture God gives us. Proverbs 31 gives us an amazing picture of a woman of valor, dignity, and deep beauty. What's she like? She's a mom, a wife, a businesswoman, a lover of God, and loving to others. Her abs, breasts, and fierceness are never mentioned. Not even once.

All this doesn't mean you have to be a mom to be a real woman. It simply means that motherhood is a gift of womanhood. Gifts should be celebrated.

Godly Moms can Change the World It's not hyperbole to say the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. In my own experience, the amount of influence that my wife exercises over my kids constantly amazes me. She is making four little disciples all day, every day. These four little people will grow to be and do something—hopefully something amazing like, I don't know, become mothers like her.

The influence of godly mothers is replete in history. Western civilization wouldn't be what it is without St. Augustine. He wouldn't have been who he was without his mother, Monica. Her prayers and guidance moved him from being a cult-member and sex-addict to the brilliant church father love. America wouldn't be the nation it is without men like John and Charles Wesley. Their mother, Susanna, bore 17 children, losing more than half of them. She faithfully raised her kids and as a result, we got her sons. Susanna Edwards, wife of Jonathan (easily the greatest theologian America has ever produced) gave birth to generations of good, godly influence—13 college presidents, 86 college professors, 430 ministers, 314 war veterans, 75 authors, 100 lawyers, 30 judges, 66 physicians, and 80 holders of public office, including 3 U.S. Senators, 7 congressman, mayors of 3 large cities, governors of 3 states, a Vice-President of the United States, and a controller of the United States Treasury—all from her and her progeny. Moms—diaper changing, boo boo kissing, husband loving, child rearing, working, loving, totally normal human moms—can change the world.

So here's to you, moms. You hold an office created by God for good and glory. Your motherhood is a gift of your femininity. Your influence is unthinkably great upon the future. To fail to celebrate that would be a horrible mistake, one which I mean to avoid by wishing you a deep, profound, and joyful Mother's Day.

The Cross of Christ

Let us pause on the words of greater men.

...we are spectators of a wonder the praise and glory of which eternity will not exhaust. It is the Lord of glory, the Son of God incarnate, the God-man, drinking the cup given him by the eternal Father, the cup of woe and of indescribable agony. We almost hesitate to say so. But it must be said. It is God in our nature forsaken of God. The cry from the accursed tree evinces nothing less than the abandonment that is the wages of sin ... There is no reproduction or parallel in the experience of archangels or of the greatest saints. The faintest parallel would crush the holiest of men and the mightiest of the angelic host. (John Murray, Redemption—Accomplished and Applied, 77-78)

It cannot be emphasized too strongly that God's love is the source, not the consequence, of the atonement ... God does not love us because Christ died for us; Christ died for us because God loved us. If it is God's wrath which needed to be propitiated, it is God's love which did the propitiating. (John Stott, The Cross of Christ, 174)

The very form of the death embodies a striking truth. The cross was cursed not only in the opinion of men, but by the enactment of the Divine Law. Hence Christ, while suspended on it, subjects himself to the curse. And thus it behoved to be done, in order that the whole curse, which on account of our iniquities awaited us, or rather lay upon us, might be taken from us by being transferred to him ... For the Son of God, though spotlessly pure, took upon him the disgrace and ignominy of our iniquities, and in return clothed us with his purity ... Of this the cross to which he was nailed was a symbol, as the Apostle declares, “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ,” (Gal. 3:13, 14) ... Hence it is not without cause that Paul magnificently celebrates the triumph which Christ obtained upon the cross, as if the cross, the symbol of ignominy, had been converted into a triumphal chariot. (Calvin, Institutes, II, xvi, 6)

Prayer & Fasting, Day 2: God is Creator

In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth. (Genesis 1:1) Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. (Isaiah 40:28)

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. (Psalm 19:1-2).

Creation is the glorious effect of the cause of God’s will. This is a subject of considerable wonder, given the kind of creation in which we find ourselves. To say that the universe is vast is a laughable understatement—traveling at light speed, it takes over 150 billion years to travel across the cosmos. To say that it is complex and delicately made is to almost trivialize how complex and delicate it actually is. The universe that you and I inhabit is an enormous, lovingly made home designed to tell us something about the God who made it.

The first thing to note about God’s activity in creation is that it’s something that only God could do. The Bible uses an interesting word to describe God’s activity in creation. When God creates, he bara ’s—a unique Hebrew word which means to create or initiate out of nothing. Only God can do that. We make things out of pre-existent stuff, but God does not. God makes from nothing. In his fullness he approaches the emptiness and void of nothingness and fills it up with everything.

The simple fact is, you and I require a creator. We are contingent beings—contingent on being made. God is not like us. God does not require a creator, because God is eternally existent. He is the source of all life, the giver of the world we inhabit, and for this fact we should be utterly amazed by him. When you go outside and stare up at the starry sky, or when you go inside and stare into a microscope, our breath should be taken away at the intricate wisdom with which God made the world that you and I call home.

So why does this matter? Let’s consider two reasons. First, the world God made was a good world. The Scriptures tell us seven times in Genesis 1 that God’s creation was good. So the world, prior to sin, was good. This means that stuff (money, food, our bodies, etc.) is neither totally evil as the ascetic, religious people tell us, nor is totally good, like the materialists say. Instead, the “stuff” of creation is given for a different purpose, which is the second reason this whole discussion matters: God made you and I and everything to declare his glory, greatness, and power. Like a living painting, like a moving sculpture, the world of worlds spinning in harmony from the greatest celestial body to the smallest subatomic particle is given to us to cause us to say, “Wow, God. You are amazing.” At bottom, the universe isn’t about us. Creation is all about God! This doctrine should drop down into our hearts like a match into a box kindling, causing the fire of our love for God to blaze brighter, just like a star in God’s creation—burning passionately for the glory of God, and our deep joy.

God you are the maker of all things. I exalt your power and infinite intelligence and wisdom with which you made everything! The Bible tells us that in you we live, move, and have our being. Thank you for creating me. Thank you for creating the world in which I live. Since you’re the Creator of all things, you own everything. Help me to live out my day today dependent on you. 

God, you made everything, so you know how it works best. So God, please give me wisdom today how to live rightly. I want to experience your glory, and the comfort of being constantly aware the I know the creator of all things. Thank you for this grace, creator God.

In Jesus name, and for your glory, amen.

Prayer & Fasting, Day 1: God Is.

Today at Aletheia, we decided that if Jesus is central, then truth is central. Here's the fact, if we're going to grow up in Christ, then we must look at him. We must know him. We must celebrate him and enjoy him. So, for the  next 40 days, I'm going to be posting short devotionals designed to help you put your eyes on God. The hope is that by doing this, we'll know him better, love him better, and be more empowered to love our neighbor.

So, I hope you enjoy these, and that they propel you toward Jesus.

Prayer and fasting, day 1: God is.

In the beginning, God... (Genesis 1:1a)

God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” (Exodus 3:14a)

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. (Revelation 22:13)

I grew up in a place where most people agreed that God existed. Many of those same people, however, never lived their lives any differently because of the fact. Sometimes the biggest gap in the world lies between what the mind acknowledges as true and what the heart lives for. Your mind may agree that God is there. Your mind may even have a few opinions about God. But has this changed you? Your behavior? The way you perceive yourself and the world around you? Is the fact of God’s existence one which presses in on you, frees you, informs you, impassions you?

The first scripture comes from Genesis. “In the beginning, God...” Stop. Before the world exists, God. Before you exist, God. Antecedent to all life, God. Prior to physical, temporal, spatial reality, God. What does this mean? God is supreme—above all that we know and experience, and the great cause of it all. He is foremost in the list of important beings, because he is the first. He is primary. He is the star of the whole story of the Bible, and he is the main character right through the plot.

After God creates, he calls a man named Moses to act as a deliverer to his people who were in bondage. What was the name that God gave Moses to most succinctly and satisfactorily describe himself? “I AM.” That is, of all people and things which exists, God is saying “I exist the most.” Of all realities that have been, God is saying, “I precede them all.” And, of all futures that will comes, God is saying, “I will outlast ever one of them.” Thus he ends the entire story by reminding us one more time, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.”

Why does any of this matter to you? Because the story, the Bible, the faith, the whole matter of following God and being a disciple of Jesus is Christ is, at bottom, not about you at all. It’s about him. It’s all about him. Every drop of ink, every atom in the universe, every star which shines, and every mind which wonders at them twinkling in the night sky through the ark of history—all of them are about God.

God is more foundational to you than you are foundational to you, and that is wonderful news for you. What you believe about him, hope about him, and deeply know about him won’t just sit in a statement of faith somewhere in a drawer. No, these beliefs about God are the matters of the soul which shape absolutely everything you and I do. What one believes—really believes—about ultimate reality is the foundation for everything he does. Thus, the journey starts today by making the simple and ineffable reality known—God is, and that is the most important fact in the world.

The Advent Changes Everything

The Advent Changes everything. Before Jesus stepped into the scene, God coming to help out directly seemed like an anomaly in an otherwise closed universe. Humanity was enslaved to the merciless consistency of cause and effect. Cause: sin. Effect: death. Cause: sin. Effect: pain. Cause: sin. Effect: brokenness. But that was before Advent—before the chain was broken, when the lid to universe was opened from the top and the creator stepped in.

You and I and everyone else who has put their ultimate hope in Jesus will be singing for ten thousand forevers of the mystery and effect of the Advent. So, I'm not going to pretend to unpack it all in one brief blog. But I do think that it's worth a moment, given the season, to consider a few very important ways the Advent changes everything.

The Advent means Nobody is a Nobody ...there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them...  (Lk. 2:8b-9a)

Shepherds were nobodies. Shepherds in the backwoods of Bethlehem, which was in the backwoods of Jerusalem, were the nobodies of nobodies. And yet, God sent legions of angels to sing in their presence of the birth of Jesus—them! If God almighty chooses to reveal the good news of the Gospel of Jesus first and foremost to the nobodies of the world, then everyone—without exception—qualifies to hear it. No one is too low, too unimportant, nor too high and self-important, to miss it. When God's armies show up to nobodies, all of a sudden they become somebodies. Now, nobody is a nobody. That's great news, especially if you've ever been tempted to think yourself too small or unimportant for God to use you or speak to you. If you're small, then you qualify.

The Advent Means God is Incomprehensibly Loving And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. (Lk. 2:10-11)

Love can be measured by the cost of its givenness. That is, you love someone only in proportion to your willingness to sacrifice for them. The Advent therefore can only mean that God is incomprehensibly loving, because he gave in the most helpless and humble state his own son to a race of beings which deserved him least. If God has done such a thing, then questions of his love for humanity are now answered with an unshakable proof—he gave us his son. He loves us, and the Advent makes this a settled fact.

The Advent means We can be Changed And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them. (Lk. 2:20)

The shepherds came back to their fields changed. That's precisely what the Advent does—when Jesus comes to us, and we come to him, the only right response is exactly what the shepherds did—worship. The delight of the heart into which Jesus has come is worship. This is the feast for the hunger after God. This is the consummation of the love of God. And, this the proof positive that these shepherds where changed, all because of an encounter with Jesus. And if Jesus can change them, then good news: he can change me too.

Tonight was a great night—easily the most successful Christmas event we at Aletheia have ever done. My prayer, though, goes way past numbers or meetings. My prayer is that width would be quickly accompanied by depth. My prayer after a great Sunday night like tonight is that, in my great city, the news of the Advent of the Son of God would change absolutely everything.

It's starting.

Where is God in the Murder of Kids?

As I write this, I sit here with my infant son, sleeping soundly in my arms. My living, healthy children are all asleep in their beds, and for that grace I am grateful... especially today, given the tragic and terrible news of the murder of my fellow New Englanders. Tragedies like this cause many of us to pose the question, "Where is God?" One commentator opined, "If God can part the Red Sea, why can't he stop a bullet?" Powerful, emotional question, isn't it? And, before we get to some observations about God, we shouldn't glide past that raw, pain-filled inquiry. At some point, all of us have asked it, or something like it. In the face of horrible, seemingly senseless evil, where is God? Let me suggest an answer to such a question by saying where God is not.

God is not Absent. The timing of this tragedy is no coincidence. If the Advent tells us anything, it's that God is not some useless deity in far-off realms, but that He is very much with us. The Scriptures tell us that Jesus was and is Emmanuel, God with us. God the Son took upon himself humanity, entered into our world, and walked among tragedy. He then left, but not without sending God the Holy Spirit—the omnipresent, comforting, powerful, and precious third Person of the Godhead. We may struggle to see him in these moments, yes. But we may not say He is not there. When the Son left Heaven and the Spirit filled men and women, God's absence ceased to be a possibility.

God is not Weak. Maybe God would like to stop evil, but it's just a bit too much for Him. How do we know this isn't true? Well, the scriptures are pretty clear about God's power. He spoke the entire universe into being, (Gen. 1). Moment by moment he holds all things in existence, (Heb. 1:3). And, most importantly, he actually defeated death itself in the resurrection of his Son, (2 Cor. 15:50-58). It cannot be that God is unable. For if he were, then he wouldn't be God.

God is not Unaware. Perhaps God isn't weak, then. He's just absent minded—a bit far off, distant—or too busy to be concerned with us. But the Advent doesn't allow us to think this, either. The Advent is the very divine stamp upon the human story. God in flesh becomes a man like us, with temptations like us, problems like us, subject to abuse like us, pain like us, and even death for us. Only the Christian God has stepped down from Heaven to identify with the murderous, senseless evil we've wrought upon the Earth. God the Father is very aware of what these weeping parents feel like today because he knows what it's like to lose a Son at the hands of violence and evil. God the Son is very aware of what it's like to be the victim of injustice, because he willingly and freely gave up the precious blood of life which pulsed through his veins so that we, in turn, may be washed free from our violence and brokenness by means of this crimson flow. He is not unaware, my friends. He knows deeply the pain of loss.

God is not Unloving. So why hasn't he stopped it? In what way may we conceive of God as loving in the light of such news? In this way: God has decisively defeated evil at the highest possible cost to himself and the free-est possible cost to us. For God so loved the world—the child-murdering, marriage destroying, war-fighting, injustice-perpetuating world—that he gave his only son. He gave his son to love, save, redeem, restore, rescue, and renew a world like that... a world like this... a world like ours. Perhaps in the face of seemingly senseless evil we have a harder time seeing God as loving. This only makes sense to us, because evil, at it's core, does not make sense—it is complete disorder, the unraveling of what is good, sensible, even rational. But remember this, evil is only senseless without God, not with him. Only God can make evil make sense because only God is powerful enough to rend good from it—even when to us it seems senseless. If in a moment of deep pain we jettison God, we jettison along with him any hope for good rising from the ashes of pain. But God is good at raising things up again, even from death. In fact, it's his speciality.

A Humble Prayer God is not absent. He is not weak. He is not unaware. He is not unloving. So what is He? He is here, and he hears. So I submit to you this prayer that I'm praying, and I invite you to pray it with me.

Father in Heaven, our hearts are broken and heavy with the loss of our children, our friends, our neighbors.Our sadness affects everything we see.

Please, God, bring comfort and peace to the moms and dads who've lost kids, to the kids who've lost parents, and the friends who've lost neighbors.

We pray with the saints for the last two millennia, that you would come quickly. You are our only hope. Only you can raise the dead. Only you can finally destroy injustice. Only you can deal with brokenness rightly, and finally. So please God, come quickly and do so. God, for those who are tempted to reject you, bring soft humility under your mighty inscrutable sovereign power and wisdom. Thank you that you saved me through the seemingly senseless tragedy of the murder of your Son, whom you raised for my salvation. I'm sure that act of violence didn't make sense to anyone at the time, and yet in your wisdom you wrought unceasing good from unimaginable evil.

So, God, I'm casting all my hope in you today. You're the only one I know who can do anything good with  horrible violence. So, please God, do it. Do it in such a way that at the end of days, when all the dust settles, your greatness and beauty are magnified above and beyond all question, and in seeing you we find unstoppable joy.

In the name of your son, whom you lost, to save a murderous wretch like me. Amen.

Thoughts on Joy

Christmastime brings with it a ubiquity of gospel opportunity—that is, it is much cooler to explain the joyful news of Christmas at Christmastime... go figure. It's not every month that we in the west are afforded the cultural opportunity to be more outspoken about the good news of the Advent. So when this time of year comes around, I want to take full advantage of it! For our church, that means doing things like The Big Give. But for me personally, it must also mean reflecting on the reason that the joyful news is so, well, joyful.

And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.

Potential Joy We all live in the state of potential joy in Jesus. That's great news—that anyone, at anytime, is a prime candidate for the joyous news of Jesus' coming for their rescue... even shepherds who occupied the bottom of the social ladder in a backwater, nowhere town. Of course, the irony of the Gospel is that it's precisely our lowliness which qualifies us. The more familiar we are with our own unworthiness, the nearer we find ourselves to the outbreak of gospel joy.

Realized Joy What's exciting about this passage, though, isn't just the potential for joy, but it's realization. Five minutes prior to the angels' arrival, none of them would've expected that they'd be running toward a tumbledown barn to view God's boy in utter and total joy and awe. But it happened anyway. That's good news, too—that at any moment, even one of mundane, job-oriented boredom, God can bust open a tear in Heaven and change everything by the proclamation of good news... of the gospel.

Shared Joy Immediately after this experience, these shepherds moved to the highest state of joy in Christ: shared joy. Lewis and Piper both like to tell us that joy isn't really, fully experienced until it's shared. If that's true, then these men experienced a very full joy. As they ran to see their hopes in the face of an infant, they not only experienced the gospel joy of Jesus himself, but of seeing that joy in one another. This is the taste of Heaven itself; the multifaceted, prismatic wonder of Jesus-fueled joy in the face of others. This motivates mission, this inspires passion, and this consummates gospel proclamation.

Speaking of gospel-fired joy, Jonathan Edwards said,

This light, and this only, will bring the soul to a saving close with Christ. It conforms the heart to the gospel, mortifies its enmity and opposition against the scheme of salvation therein revealed: it causes the heart to embrace the joyful tidings, and entirely to adhere to, and acquiesce in the revelation of Christ as our Savior.

So Lord, move me from potential joy in Jesus to a fuller place. For this joy is my goal and my hope.