B L O G P A S T O R

my Christmas present for Jesus

This week the Lord has been using people to talk to me. It’s similar to how you sense the Lord is speaking to you as you read the Bible, a book, or see a film or hear a sermon. What is said sort of gets your attention or strikes you. Or it may quietly, gently fall on the soil of your desire. Or it may simply generate insight or expectancy. Or it may unobtrusively return again and again like a shadow waiting to be noticed.

I was having lunch with my bible college friends when Benedict mentioned that he loved the New King James Version of the Bible. I have been using the New International Version most of the time for the last 12 years or so and last year dallied with English Standard Version and found it to be accurate and good for study but without ‘chemistry’. I loved the old King James Version for its cadence, and masterful and captivating use of language but disliked it for its opaque, archaic expressions. So when Benedict said he used the New KJV, the idea of trying out the version allured me. Its as though he planted a desire in my soul that I could not delete and this week I bought a new Bible, a giant print NKJV. I’ll be using it henceforth. Cross frontiers.

I just read my sister Beryl’s letter last night. It was a “red letter” edition. A paragraph spoke to me and affirmed what I have felt this week. It hit me all the more because you expect a “sister” to be more liturgical, eucharistic and monastic. You do not expect to read this:

“Well, dear Brother please continue to move with the Holy Spirit! listen to Him! You want ‘explosions’ in the hearts of your church- its only through the Holy Spirit. We have been encouraged to pray in tongues while working. Sometime words aren’t enough, expressions limited. I know you did that in your sleep. I heard you once at ‘old’ house. I told some of my sisters.”

Interesting, isn’t it, the evangelical pentecostals like me are attracted to the traditions; while the traditionals are more pentecostal than we have thought. The lines have been blurred. The Holy Spirit is telling me that he wants the old and new treasure to be rightly appreciated and appropriated, neither to be lowered in our estimation of their contributions. Thanks for that great reminder sis!

I’ll bring these two words on the Word and the Spirit into 2008 and my consecration to do them will be my Christmas present for Jesus at tomorrow’s service.

3 comments December 22nd, 2007

immanuel

O Lord Jesus Christ, make me worthy to understand the profound mystery of your holy incarnation, which you have worked for our sake and for our salvation. Truly there is nothing so great and wonderful as this, that you, my God, who are the creator of all things, should become a creature, so that we should become like God. You have humbled yourself and made yourself small that we might be made mighty. You have taken the form of a servant, so that you might confer upon us a royal and divine beauty.

You who are beyond our understanding, have made yourself understandable to us in Jesus Christ. You, who are the uncreated God, have made yourself a creature for us. You, who are the untouchable One, have made yourself touchable to us. You, who are most high, make us capable of understanding your amazing love and the wonderful things you have done for us. Make us able to understand the mystery of your incarnation, the mystery of your life, example and doctrine, the mystery of your cross and Passion, the mystery of your resurrection and ascension.

Blessed are you, O Lord, for coming to earth as a man. You were born that you might die, and in dying that you might procure our salvation. O marvellous and indescribable love! In you is all sweetness and joy! To contemplate your love is to exalt the soul above the world and to enable it to abide alone in joy and rest and tranquillity.
Angela of Foligno, 1248-1390

Add comment December 22nd, 2007