Considering Cards - 10.The Fake Fireside

 

Another beautiful card.  I admit that on first glance I simply thought this was quite a nostalgic scene that someone had taken in their grand living room and that had found its way onto a card.  Then I looked harder.

 

That's always a good thing to do at Christmas I think.  I realise that it seems humbuggish but perhaps looking at the true nature of things helps us appreciate the truly good things.

 

The shaft of light rising up from the Christmas tree is a bit of a giveaway.  That's not a wall of panelling but a screen as can be seen in the mirror.  Speaking of which, whoever in their house rests a mirror on a mantelpiece rather than hang it up?  Speaking of which mantelpiece - the decoration on it blocks sight of the cards!  Real homes add cards later and where they can be seen.   They're not real logs either, are they?  But saddest of all, none of the 'presents' have any names on.  They are not from anyone to anyone.

 

In the end this is a fireside that never has any people.  It is for cameras only.

 

A Christmas without people is no Christmas at all.  You cannot have an Immanuel (God with us) unless there is an 'us'.  The Saviour of the World doesn't want a fireside, he wants a family, and he came to save one for himself from the sad story of the human race.  He is a present from heaven to humanity.

 

May God draw you into his family this Christmas!

Considering Cards - 9. Undercamelled

For everyone who does assemblies, carol services, sermons and written articles the challenge of Christmas returns each year demanding a new angle on an old and rather short story of angels, shepherds and wise men.

 

Just when you think there is no possible variation or speculation that you haven't considered along comes a Christmas card that introduces a new 'train' of thought. What if . . .

 

Biblically the story of the incarnation is animal-free.  A manger but no animals mentioned, shepherds that have left their sheep and wise men who must have travelled on something but we don't know what.

 

Tradition bequeaths us three wise men and therefore three camels.  It's speculative but tidy.  This card introduces the thought that there was only one camel.  It's certainly a new angle.

 

Did they have to sell the other camels to pay for the expensive gifts?

Is this where car lifts to church really began as they shared the one camel?

Most provocatively of all (as the wise man on the camel appears to have no gift) was Gold, Frankincense or Myrrh actually the name of the camel??

 

Considering Cards - 8. Parental Neglect

This beautiful but mysterious card captures a non-canonical incident when the Holy Family visited Bethlehem Children's Zoo and Jesus' parents neglectfully abandoned him in Pets Corner.  I cannot trace this story anywhere else though.

 

 

Considering Cards - 7. Christmas is for Atheists too!

Today is Sunday, the last Lord's Day before Christmas.

 

But so what?  Why should anyone miss out on the commercial lightfest?  Here's just the card you need if the whole God-Jesus-Prince of Peace-Mary-Manger-Carols-Wise Men-Shepherds-Religion-Bethlehem thing is too much for you.

 

And you dislike Santa too.

 

However - it was sent us by someone who's been an ordained Christian minister longer than me!

Considering Cards - 6. Simon Cowell's Entry

This card depicts the scene were the Magi (Wise Men) to appear on The X Factor.

Yes, we can see that's what it depicts. 

But why?

Considering Cards (and envelopes) - 5. The Postman's Challenge (Part 2)

One of our elderly relatives sent us a Christmas Card in this envelope:

 

We thought it was more than a little surprising that this got to us. Well done Royal Mail!  Just as well I'm not at some of our nearby churches - like Grace Church or St James or St Andrews!

The formula we end prayers with is also very simple - in Jesus' name.  God has made a way to him that is as simple as can be.

Considering Cards - 4. The Problem of Joseph

Two cards that illustrate the Problem of Joseph.

 

Joseph is portrayed as a very good man in the Biblical narrative.  Certainly a step or three ahead of most of the Apostles as things are recorded.  Then he disappears.  For all the attractive whimsy of Jesus working as a twenty-something alongside his father (as it were) in the carpenter's workshop we do not know to what extent this was true.  We do not need to know.

 

Christmas plunges the somewhat obscure good man Joseph next to the world-changing good Man who was God, Jesus.  And, thanks to the unfortunate development of Marian devotion in the ancient Church, taken up with a vengeance (literally) by post-Reformation Roman Catholicism, next to the Divine Child and the obscure man is the Blessed Virgin Mary. 

What is a mere card manufacturer to make of it all?  Giving Jesus a halo is easy.  Giving Mary a halo is, well, Catholically easy.  Giving Joseph a halo?  So-so.

Considering Cards - 3. Infant in Spontaneous Combustion Horror

The title and the picture say it all really.

Is it a prophecy of Pentecost?  Did the artist find babies hard to draw?  Did someone spill bleach on the card? 

We'll never know.

Considering Cards - 2. The Postman's Challenge

Sometimes cards arrive late.  Sometimes cards one might have expected don't arrive at all.  There are perhaps many reasons for this.  However, should the sender live in the town depicted on this card the cause of the delay or non-delivery is obvious enough.

 

 

It's a brave card sender who risks that tiny gap between post-box and river.  And it must be slippery too in the snow.  Maybe they never made it?  Think of the postman/woman though - perched on the ice by the river's edge to empty the thing.

 

Any community that can fund such bright lights in the top of the church tower should invest in a little health and safety for the postman I reckon.

Considering Cards - 1. The Tree and the Church

It's that time of year.

When so many people are lonely we are so privileged to have friends and family.  Most of all we are privileged to be part of the people of God where there can be feelings of loneliness but the loneliest Christian is streets ahead of their saddest secular counterparts, especially in old age.  Little breaks my heart more than seeing lonely elderly unbelievers living out painful, pointless years toward a lost eternity.

 

In this context we are really grateful for every Christmas Card we receive and for what it means in friendship.  Thanks!

 

Some readers of this blog will know that I do, however, like to give my Christmas card pictures a second look.  This year I'm sharing some of my second looks with my blog.  If it's your card, don't worry - you will not be identified and we were really glad to receive it whatever I say on here!

 

Exhibit 1:

Presumably this picture comes from a Christmas Tree producer or their decoration-making cousins.  There is a church so as to nod at the religious meaning of Christmas but the church is grey and distant.  There is snow (I love snow!) but whereas it has obliterated the church and kept the people indoors the tree seems mystically unaffected.

 

Well, that's a secular Christmas for you.  Trees starring in front of churches and people.

 

Except that this card is published by . . .

 

. . . The Salvation Army!

A December 6th Moment

Thomas was certainly clever.

Very few preachers, theologians or philosophers will have failed to mention him a few times.  But even if they choose to leave him in what they think is medieval history he will find them anyway if they are engaged with the Western world at all for his writings are that foundational to the history of thought.

 

 

 

Yet Thomas Aquinas's masterwork, his epic summary of theology, was never really completed.  Though it has shaped so much directly or indirectly it was put into best perspective by its author himself.

 

In early December of the year before he died he was in worship (a Mass of course, it being the medieval era) when he suddenly said that he would write no more.  His personal experience of God in that place on that day had left him lost for words.  All his writings, he estimated (in a way that even the militant atheists might hesitate to concede) were as straw.

 

As I watch a thousand texts being texted and blogs blogged and 'friends' messaged I cannot help thinking that every Christmas and every Advent is another opportunity to be lost in wonder that is lost in writing.

 

We can only ever know God when we stop and realise how little we have grasped of Him so far and how beyond words he and his love is.