As we mark the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, we of course begin by celebrating the objective nature of His arrival. He was born in particular town, to a particular mother, in a particular year. He truly lived among us. When the time was fulfilled, He was born of a woman, born under the …
Christmas Started It
To be fair, we ought not to be too hard on the secularists for their ongoing war against Christmas. Because Christmas started it. When Jesus was born in Bethlehem, there were no doubt people in the surrounding neighborhoods who drank too much, or who quarreled with their wives, or who sometimes shaved the edges of …
Openness Enough
The folks at CT were kind enough to reprint a section of God Rest Ye Merry, and it was the section that urges everyone — in the name of Puritanism no less — to go overboard for Christmas. Now I admit that there are ways of sinning in this, going over the port rail when …
And Slew the Little Childer
Whenever you have to deal with something like the Connecticut shooting, something that simply crushes the heart, it is important to think carefully before speaking or writing. This is not the time to be debating gun control, drone attacks in the Middle East, and it is certainly not the time to be drawing ham-fisted comparisons …
Thanksgiving 2012
I have been thinking about this for some years now, but for certain reasons rhyming with prudence have been putting it off. It has been my practice to publicly register my itemized thanksgiving to God on Thanksgiving Day, and I certainly have had no shortage of material. God is greatly to be praised — “Blessed …
The Holy, Horror, and Halloween
I want to take the approach of yet another Halloween to address something that is increasingly related to it. A few years ago I wrote about the lawfulness of celebrating Halloween itself — at the little kid dressing up level — but here I want to develop further a thought I mentioned in passing there. …
Good Friday Invocation
Our Father and God, we worship you now in the name of Jesus, and in the goodness of the Holy Spirit we entrust ourselves to You now, asking Him to make our worship complete before You. Two thousand years ago, when our Lord suffered and died, You were the God who made the land of …
On Being a Lentendud
A few days ago I posted a little poem — one of my periodic forays into high art — about the affair of the sausages, as a result of which incident the Swiss Reformation began in earnest. It turns out that this poem and other related things generated some excitement on the Internet (and who …
A Lenten Meditation for Meat Lovers
 Sing if you can the affair of the sausages, Brave Zwingli taking on Lenten observances. Honor then Wittenberg’s 95 theses, But Zurich was first with the meat reformation.  What could be better than fat, roasting sausages, Striking a blow against vain gnostic scrupling? What could be better to set the soul soaring Than …
The Politics of Christmas
Introduction The carnal, unbelieving mind always understands political rule in a particular way. The names may change—Pharaoh, Caesar, pope, or president-for-life—but the underlying realities are always the same. These realities have to do with tyranny and coercion, and the imposition of a right-handed power, the kind of power that is necessarily suspicious of biblical liberty. …