CHRISTMAS AT FRIENDSHIP

I always look forward to Christmas, and if my wife would let me the Christmas tree would stay up till July 4. Christmas was a time on the farm when everything got slower and snow covered the ground and the house, the streets and the town were filled with the sights, and sounds of the Christmas season. Many people in the world celebrate Christmas, but as Christians we celebrate with special joy because it announces the day when our Savior came to the earth to rescue us from sin, and death.

Like the song says, “God rest you merry gentleman, let nothing you dismay, remember Christ our Savior was  born on Christmas day to save us all from Satan’s power when we were gone astray, O tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy, O tidings of comfort and joy.” So worship and bring your friends to hear this best of all good news. Here are the special events of the Christmas season:

1. Advent Candle lighting. Every Sunday, we will sing carols and light the Advent candles.
2. Christmas celebration, Sunday, December 21. The children will sing and have a play. Also our international students have formed a choir and will sing, and there will be the Christmas message.
3. Shida night market caroling. On Saturday, December 20, buy your lunch and come to the fifth floor at 5:30 pm. We will eat dinner together, practice the carols and then go to the Shida Night Market at 7 pm to announce to our friends and neighbors that Jesus Christ is born! At the end you are invited to come to our home for hot chocolate.
4. Holiday dinner, Sunday, December 21. The church will buy the hams, and turkeys. Everyone is asked to pitch in by helping provide the “sides.” This Sunday and next you can sign up to help out.
5. Christmas Eve service, December 24, 7:30 pm. This will take place in the 4th floor chapel. It will be a traditional service of lessons and carols, and readings in different languages from friends from all over the earth. Afterward (weather permitting) we will gather on the roof to sing carols, light candles and drink hot cider together.

Waiting on the Lord! One Year, 30 Year, 2,600 Year Prayers!

In Isaiah 40, Isaiah gives encouragement to Judah when he sees them in captivity under the Babylonians. Isaiah told Hezekiah that because of Judah's disobedience that they would go into captivity. He even sees Cyrus, the Persian coming to deliver them and permitting them after 70 years to return home. He tells them that they who "wait on the Lord will renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint."

What did it mean for them to wait on the Lord, and what does it mean for us? What does it mean to pray 10, 20, 30 years for something? How about 2600 years? This is the time from Judah's captivity to the present when we can see how God has been working during that whole time frame.

Waiting!  We hate that word, don't we? We can't stand to be put on "hold".  Everything today is supposed to be instant! We can't stand it when people don't text us back--NOW! We are upset when people don't reply to our e-mails. We can download our books instantly on Kindle. We get movies on demand on Netflix. "On demand"..."now"...doesn't that describe modern life? Yet how does a person brew good (not instant) coffee, play the piano, grow a marriage that lasts fifty years, walk with God. In all of those instances, "instant" doesn't work. Maybe God has another agenda in mind when he tells us to "wait."

Here is something interesting that I found out about Judah's Babylonian captivity. I found it in Paul Miller's A Praying Life, the best book on how to pray and wait on the Lord that I have ever read. (By the way, you can download it instantly on Kindle!) Because Judah went into captivity for seventy years and returned only to be disappointed again:

1. They learned to create synagogues (which was the precursor of the local church). They weren't able to go to the temple anymore.
2. They learned to cling to their scrolls--the Biblical story, as we must cling to the Bible and its story to make sense of our lives.
3. They were purified from mixing their religion with idols.
4. Their dispersion became the base from which Paul and others were able to spread the gospel.
5. They left the world with something unique--monotheism--belief in a transcendent, holy, personal God separate from the world. This was the foundation of Christian thought and modern science.
6. Because they were monotheists, they got upset when Jesus claimed to be the incarnate God and participated in Jesus crucifixion--the means of our salvation. Jesus was raised from the dead and we are blessed with that message 2,600 years later!

Don't you see that God is working on his timetable, not ours? He is about soul-making and the redemption of the world. He is in eternity. We are in time. So when we wait on the Lord and pray 30 year prayers (aren't there situations like that in our lives?), or 2,600 year prayers (the time from the Babylonian captivity to the present), we acknowledge that He is in control and not us, and we depend on His good grace to work things out "in his time." So "wait" expectantly for Him to show up...but again, in His time not ours!

Hezekiah's Sundial

“This shall be the sign to you from the LORD, that the LORD will do this thing that he has promised: Behold, I will make the shadow cast by the declining sun on the dial of Ahaz turn back ten steps.” So the sun turned back on the dial the ten steps by which it had declined.”

— Isaiah 38:4-8

In Isaiah 38:7-8, God gives Hezekiah a sign that he will heal Hezekiah and add 15 years to his life. This is a supernatural event. It’s a miracle. The sun cast a shadow on the dial and as the shadow moved with the declining sun, it would show the passing of time. God’s sign to Hezekiah was to make the shadow cast by the sun move backwards. 

So how did God do that? We don’t know exactly how it happened because the Bible doesn’t tell us. God could have stopped the world on it’s axis. Or it could have been a refraction of light. Whatever the miracle was, it was a miracle because it happened at the moment God wanted it to happen to coincide with his purpose in the life of Hezekiah.

Do you believe this really happened? Maybe you're not a Christian yet or you're not sure what you believe. Or maybe you've recently trusted in Christ and you're trying to understand better the ways God works in the world he's made. Either way, you might not really be sure whether it’s reasonable to believe that this miracle actually happened the way the Bible describes it. And I understand that. 

We all assume certain things about the world. We all have commitments, values, and beliefs that are like lens through which we see the world. And one of those lens is our assumptions about God. 

If you already presuppose that God doesn’t exist — or maybe if he does exist he’s absent from the world — then of course it’s more reasonable to say that miracles don’t happen. If God doesn’t exist the world is entirely impersonal. The universe is made up of matter, energy, and motion that operates according to observable scientific regularities and there are no exceptions, i.e., there are no miracles. So miracles in the Bible have to be seen as untrue. And people will say that they’re religious myths and that it’s irrational for a modern person to believe them.

But the Bible gives us a completely different view of the world. The Bible tells us that God does exist. And not only does He exist, but He personally created the world and even today continues to rule it. Moreover, it’s the creating and sustaining power of God’s Word that keeps the laws of matter, energy, and motion working in ways that we can measure and observe.

Because God is a personal God, He acts in the world to accomplish his own purposes. The Bible tells us that we live in a personal universe where God cares about us as persons. If we accept what the Bible teaches us about God, then exceptions can happen. Miracles fit rationally with God's purposes in the world. 

So when we look at this miracle God performs of causing the shadow to move backwards as a sign for Hezekiah, it's not some weird thing that happens. God tells us why he decided to make an exception to the way He normally operates the world. And it’s rational for Him to do a miracle when we decides to for his own purposes. It's an expression of His faithfulness to His people.