Stopping to Think

O come, O come, Emmanuel And ransom captive Israel That mourns in lonely exile here Until the Son of God appear Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel. O come, Thou Day-Spring, come and cheer Our spirits by Thine advent here Disperse the gloomy clouds of night And death's dark shadows put to flight. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel. These are two of the verses to the familiar Christmas Hymn "O come, O come, Emmanuel." It is my favorite Christmas song, for a rather simple reason. In this song there is an incredible tension between an anxious, almost dejected, sense of waiting on the one hand; and a confident hope on the other.   On Sunday Andie and I started working through Desiring God's advent devotional, "Good News of Great Joy" (available free to download at http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/good-news-of-great-joy-free-advent-ebook ). And I have been struck by how little joy there is surrounding Ch...

Death. The mere fact that the title of the post along with it's first word consisted simply of that one word will have a good many of you considering the writer to be a person or rather morbid character. It's not a popular topic. On the one hand, we glory and revel in it, just so long as it is confined to our video games, TV shows, and movies. But do we want to have real conversations about it? Do we want to delve into the reason it exists, how it affects us, what happens afterword, and so on? No. We embrace the idea in our entertainment because it is “real”, yet this same reality is something we are constantly running from. There is no end to the number of ways in which we are trying to extend our lives, make our later years more painless, and eliminate from ourselves the appearance of being old. Most of us want nothing to do with the idea that one day our life here on earth will be over. Furthermore, even those willing to entertain that notion and consider will very rarel...