Tag Archives: Advent

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From the archives of Christmas past:

So, we're now five days into advent (although I'm already three five nine days into my advent calendar - quit judging, I was hungry yeh). Feeling festive yet?

I wanted to write something poetic about the start of the Season of Goodwill celebrating Christ becoming a Man and all that. I wanted to describe the poignant symbolism and candlemonium (yes it is a real word) of the Christingle service at church. Something about how I love the unity of standing in a circle holding candles stuck in oranges, slowly passing on the flame. Something about how Jesus being the Light of the World by which the darkness is conquered makes so much more sense when the flickering flame of the candle helps you to see your brothers and sisters on the far side of the room. I wanted to segway into a Narnia reference and then end it all with a sweet scripture from one of the prophets about the coming of the King establishing peace and justice.

But I don’t have the words. Instead, you know what They say - when in doubt, C. S. Lewis quote it out...

On the incarnation

The Second Person in God, the Son, became human Himself: was born into the world as an actual man—a real man of a particular height, with hair of a particular colour, speaking a particular language, weighing so many stone. The Eternal Being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before that) a baby, and before that a foetus inside a Woman’s body. If you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug or a crab.

From Mere Christianity 

Happy Advent y'all.

Christingle service at St Peter's Bethnal Green

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I just LOVE this Tolkien quote:

“We all long for [Eden], and we are constantly glimpsing it; our whole nature at it’s best and least corrupted, it’s gentlest and most humane, is still soaked with the sense of ‘exile’... As far as we can go back the nobler part of the human mind is filled with the thoughts of sibb (peace, kinship), peace and goodwill. And with the thought of it’s loss.”

I have so much drama surrounding being exiled to the suburbs. I’ve been reading the Old Testament books dealing with the Exile of the people of Israel and Judah – there was a lot of drama there too.  But this weekend I realised that Adam and Eve were the first exiles. They were exiled from the Garden of Eden.

So the Lord God banished Adam and his wife from the Garden of Eden, and he sent Adam out to cultivate the ground from which he had been made. After banishing them from the garden, the Lord stationed mighty angelic beings to the east of Eden. And a flaming sword flashed back and forth guarding the way to the tree of life.                                                                                                                                              Genesis 3 v 23-24

After Adam and Eve ate fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil their relationship with God was broken. Their relationship with each other was fractured. And their relationship with the garden was corrupted. The consequence was that they were exiled.

God exiled Adam and Eve from the place where they were in a perfect relationship with God, a perfect relationship with each other and a perfect relationship with the garden. God exiled them from the place where they had known peace and unity with God, peace and unity with each other and peace and unity with the garden. The peace and sweet living of former days was gone and there was nothing they could do to bring it back.

Instead they had to work the earth for food. They had to navigate the parameters of their new relationship. God no longer walked with them in the garden – their relationship with him was broken beyond their ability to repair it; they were separated.

Unlike me who ends up in East London nearly every week, Adam and Eve could no longer return to the place they had called home. Banished. Exiled. Never to return.

The Old Testament chronicles life for God’s people from that moment of exile. It points toward the one who could and would bring us back to the peace and unity of the garden. It points to the one who would establish a kingdom of justice and righteousness, removing evil from the world. It points to the one who would bring us back from exile into a relationship with God. It points to Jesus.

And so it follows that the New Testament is how God enables us to return from exile and how we can live our lives neither exiled from our relationship with God, but not quite home yet. Not quite returned to the peace and unity of the garden.

I think this is what Tolkien meant – no matter how perfect a particular moment in time we always know that it will end. So we long for the time in the garden when all was well. We are soaked with a sense of exile.

I know in Advent we’re supposed to be looking forward to celebrating the arrival of Christ on earth. But my heart always skips from being thankful for the birth of Christ as a man on earth, to being even more thankful that his death and resurrection can bring us back from exile – if we would choose it.

Choose life y'all.

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Yesterday was the first day of Advent (although I'm already three four five days into my advent calendar - quit judging, I was hungry yeh).

I wanted to write something poetic about the start of the Season of Goodwill celebrating Christ becoming a Man and all that jazz. I wanted to describe the poignant symbolism and candlemonium (yes it is a real word) of the Christingle service at church. Something about how I love the unity of standing in a circle holding candles stuck in oranges, slowly passing on the flame. Something about how Jesus being the Light of the World by which the darkness is conquered makes so much more sense when the flickering flame of the candle helps you to see your brothers and sisters on the far side of the room. I wanted to segway into a Narnia reference and then end it all with a sweet scripture from one of the prophets about the coming of the King establishing peace and justice.

But I don’t have the words - maybe once I've put in my 10,000 hours I will. Instead, you know what They say - when in doubt, C. S. Lewis quote it out...

On the incarnation

The Second Person in God, the Son, became human Himself: was born into the world as an actual man—a real man of a particular height, with hair of a particular colour, speaking a particular language, weighing so many stone. The Eternal Being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before that) a baby, and before that a foetus inside a Woman’s body. If you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug or a crab.

From Mere Christianity 

Happy Advent y'all.

Christingle service at St Peter's Bethnal Green