A Very Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

What a great reason for a celebration: God becomes incarnate - Jesus Christ is born - completely God, and completely human. Amazing. Athanasius, in his writings against Arius, noted that 'what God has not assumed, God has not healed'. We Christians often put all the emphasis on Easter as the culminating point of God's mission on earth. We don't realize that the salvation plan began in earnest on that distant night while shepherds watched their flocks. We should ponder this great mystery, that Incarnation. How wonderful God is, to have humbled Himself, and taking the form and very being of a human. Fully God, and yet, fully human. Not a human body but devine mind - NO. Somehow, fully God and fully human - only such a way as this could Jesus take upon Himself the sinfulness of all humanity, then, now, and future.

Have you thought about this on this great day of celebration?

Amidst all of the celebrating, the eating, the ripping open of presents, I hope you will call upon the Lord, and thank Him for the greatest of all gifts, His Son.

One of our Christmas morning traditions is for the kids to gather in my wife's and my bedroom so that we may read together the Jesus' birth narrative as presented in Luke 2:1-20, and thanking God in prayer for the gift of sending His Son. Then we run downstairs to enjoy the gift giviing and receiving. It was pretty cool - a very good morning.

I hope you, too, have had a good day with your family. May the rest of your Christmas be a blessed reminder of the Father's love for you, in the name of the Son, through the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. God's great blessings in Christ to you!

Amen, and amen.

It is finished!

Or at least this stage of things are... Yesterday afternoon, I turned in my the second of my two mini-theses, thus completing the last of my requirements for finishing my Master's in Theological Studies, with a concentration in Contemporary Theology.

I must say, it was all very anticlimactic. Though, as I was finishing the very last piece of editing that second paper, one of classmates came up to where I was working in the library. She asked if I was finished writing, and when I told her I was, she let out with an "aaaahhhhhhh!" that was both shock and joy for me. She then ran and got another classmate of ours who has a camera phone, so that I could get some pictures of that important moment for my personal posterity. It was kind of her, but I still felt kind of empty after a semester of working on these two major papers.

That was Wednesday. Yesterday, I made the final draft copy, punched holes, set in its binder, and left it for Dr. Adelekan on his office door knob. My first paper I was able to turn in the week before. I gave it to Dr. Brash just after his Thursday morning class finished up.

So, both papers are finished. Both are turned in.

It is finished? Only that particular chapter. I still need to find out what my prof.s thought of these two papers. I still need to get my grades, and find out how my overall cum average comes out.

Now the rest of my life begins, starting with diving into filling out my application to Princeton for a Ph.D in Systematic Theology. At the same time, I'll be preparing for my GRE's. And if that's not enough, I have a few Christmas gifts to buy or create for my beautiful and awesome wife. Not to mention prepare my heart in celebrating this great season Advent, and soon Christmas.

I want to put in "writing" my thanks and praise to God Most High, the Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who brought me through five and a half years of studies, and a great deal of transition in those last couple. The LORD was for me all that I needed HIM to be, plus much more than I could have realized or hoped for. Thank you, O LORD!

I also want to "write" my thanks to my wonderful wife who has been very supportive and incredibly flexible in allowing me to work late a few more evenings and Saturdays in the last few weeks than I had needed to through most of the semester. She has been a true help-mate.

I need to thank Dr. Brash and Dr. Adelekan for their insights and assistance for each of my papers. Each offered encouragement and perspectives that helped me write a better paper than I could have managed on my own. They had done a great job in giving me a sense of what writing a dissertation will be like. They have blessed me through out not only this past semester, but for many others as professors in other subjects and classes. Thank you, both. You really gentlemen and scholars!

If you're interested in reading either or both of my mini-theses, please let me know via a reply. MTS Paper 1 is on a theology of Proclamation of Word and Sacrament in Reformed Theology. MTS Paper 2 is a theological ethics paper on the need for the Church to be the Beloved Community in a way that rejects that more base parts of Culture, while loving the people who inhabit it. Each was a great deal of fun to write, and I learned quite a bit in the process of each.

Gloria Dei!