I think my most enduring christmas memory is as a boy running up and down the sitting room, almost delirious with anticipation waiting for the family to gather so we could open the presents.
The excitement came from the awareness that my hopes for a particular gift were about to be realized.
The bible tells us that ‘hope differed makes the heart sick’ but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. It is this fulfillment that is the embodiment of christmas. Jesus appearing was, and is the greatest result in human history. Jesus coming has the potential to fulfill the collective longings of all humanity over all time. There is no hope, no desire, no dream, no passion that cannot find it’s completion in Jesus.
I have been in full-time ministry for over a decade and I am more like the little boy running up and down the sitting room than ever before. The hope for this country to find it’s identity in jesus is more alive today than in all the 34 years I have been a christian. More people are being born again than I can ever remember, more people coming alive in the spirit, more people finding hope fulfilled.
There is every reason to confident in the future, not because of some amazing scientific discovery or because we might just save the planet if we start drinking decaf and walk to work wearing hemp suits but because JESUS IS ALIVE.
happy christmas
“I loathe the word celebration, as it is now used, but what we need, I believe, is a celebration of men and masculinity. If feminism is running according to the usual historical rules, we will probably get one: a backlash is overdue. Men have wonderful qualities which women often lack and need. Men are much more likely than women to be of exceptionally high – and exceptionally low – intelligence; they are on average stronger, funnier and have a better three-dimensional sense and they are usually better at techy things. They are much more likely to be architects, composers, mathematicians, joke tellers and orators and are more inventive. As Camille Paglia once said, if civilisation had been left to women, we’d still be living in grass huts.’However, men are not mostly as good at bringing up small children, according to research from Bristol University published last week. Little boys brought up by stay-at-home dads are less likely to do well at school than other children and the absence of the mother may do emotional damage. Researchers warned that couples should beware of swapping traditional roles.”
So writes Minette Marrin in ‘The Times’ this week. Marrin has moved to this from this.
“For nearly 30 years we have seen a subtle but increasing onslaught against masculinity. From the female separatism of the 1970s, when I went to feminist meetings that were open to “women and girl children only”, to the feminisation of the classroom and exams and the widespread use of the word testosterone as a term of blame and abuse, men and boys have come to understand that they are increasingly seen as hairy, smelly, lazy, disruptive, violent and generally rather a bad thing. Women regularly blame their difficulties on men and expect them to make reparation. They increasingly tolerate men only if they take on domestic chores and childcare. Meanwhile, women are beginning to feel truly independent of men, at least financially.”
The ‘world’ is waking up to the damage extreme forms of feminism has done to society. If we adopt feminist ideas and pass them off as Biblical we’re going to look pretty silly when the world moves on and we’re left with a position we’re saying is doctrinally sound but turns out to be a cultural blip.
The traditional biblical position is that men and women have different roles which are of equal value before God. To use a dreadful romantic phrase ‘we complete each other’.
When society chooses to devalue one role, elevate another and then fight over the one it’s chosen as more important the Bible is not at fault.
