Merry Christmas 2008

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Stories organize our lives, and the stories that won’t or can’t do that are false stories. The stories that orient us, that place us back where we should have been, the stories that bring redemption, are called true stories. They go by other names if you listen to the tellers of false stories — legends, lies, myths, fairy stories. But true stories have authority to overcome the envious carping of the adversary.

This is especially true of the true story. The first man and woman were placed by God in a glorious garden, and given the earth as their inheritance. They were told to stay away from one tree — for the time being — and when the serpent worm entered the garden and lied to them, they gave way to the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life. They, and all of us with them, fell into darkness and confusion apart from the life of God, and were expelled from the garden. Since that time, in the darkness outside, as we have told one another stories, they have all centered on some way of getting back into the garden — but it never seems to work.

But the Lord Himself promised a way for us back into the garden. Since the serpent had deceived the woman, and brought condemnation into the world by means of that woman, God in His mercy determined that salvation would come through the woman. The seed of the woman would come to crush the serpent’s head, and deliver us all from our self-deceptions. Throughout all the Scriptures, God gave us various indications of what He was going to do — by raising up women to crush the heads of the foe and the avenger.

And when the time was full, when the time was right, the Holy Spirit came to a young Jewish woman who was steeped in the sacred stories, and He told her that she was to be the one. And the Holy Spirit caused her to conceive, such that her son would be truly and completely human, born of a woman, and at the same time He would be the divine Son of God. She received the news of the enormous honor that had been bestowed on her in all humility, and she received the news as the handmaiden of the Lord. She bowed before Him, as we do now.

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