Category Archives: Advent

Advent – Day Six

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So proud to be a part of Blackhawk Ministries and our efforts on behalf of the least of these this Christmas season.

Each December, we, as a part of the church, endeavor to give above and beyond our normal offering as we consider the poor and the powerless. This year, we are thrilled to make it our goal to raise $75,000 for New Life Home Trust in Nairobi, Kenya.

It is our desire to build 10 rooms to house 10 special needs children for the rest of their lives. If you’d like to join us in caring for these kids, you can give here.

The following video gives a complete account of our plans for the project, and much more about our heart for these kids.

Special Needs Promo [CWB2011] v1 from ehdesign on Vimeo.

May we be able to agree with Job’s words this season:

11When the ear heard, it called me blessed,
and when the eye saw, it approved,
12because I delivered the poor who cried for help,
and the fatherless who had none to help him.

Job 29:11,12 – ESV

Advent – Day Five

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Rogier van der Weyden 1399/1400 – 1464
The Nativity

oil on panel (91 × 89 cm) — c. 1445 – 1448
Museum Gemäldegalerie der Staatlichen Museen, Berlin

Great stuff today from my friend, Jill Carattini

“How true that to be human is to be implicitly religious, for even within our most deeply felt needs for love and refuge, we are reminded that there is one who comes so very far to meet us. Inherent in our most vulnerable days, whoever we are, is the hope that God, too, took on the despairing quality of fragility in order to offer the hope of wholeness. In our most weakened states of despair and shortcoming, Christ breaks in and shows the paradoxical power of God in an unlikely nativity scene. Glory to God in the lowest, indeed.”

(Read the rest of her entry here)

Advent – Day Four

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Named one of the 10 best albums of the decade, Behold the Lamb of God is a collection of songs about Jesus. Since 2000, Andrew Peterson and his friends have performed Behold the Lamb around the country, telling again and again this “true myth”, as C.S. Lewis called it, this tale that’s bigger than life, but is—astonishingly—true.

You can buy it here.

The inimitable Andrew Peterson himself talks about the project:

Advent – Day Three

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Botticelli (Sandro Filipepi) ca. 1445 – 1510
The Birth of Christ

tempera on canvas (109 × 75 cm) — 1500 Museum National Gallery, London

“If the [Incarnation] happened, it was the central event in the history of the Earth–the very thing that the whole story has been about.”

–CS Lewis, re: “The Grand Miracle” of the incarnation of Christ, in Miracles p. 398 of “Signature Classics”

Advent – Day One

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Let every heart prepare Him room…

So excited for another month of Advent postings this year.

May He “be born in us today” each and every day this December.

Really excited about this book this season.

You can both listen to and read the poem here.

The Innkeeper — New Updated Edition from Desiring God on Vimeo.

Advent – Christmas Day

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Botticelli (Sandro Filipepi) ca. 1445 – 1510
The Birth of Christ

tempera on canvas (109 × 75 cm) — 1500
National Gallery, London

The wait is over! Christ is born!

May this be our prayer, Father, both today and each day of every year.

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. 19For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

21 And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, 22he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, (Colossians 1:15-22 – ESV)

You’re the center of the universe
Everything was made in You Jesus
Breath of every living thing
Everyone was made for You

:P re-Chorus:
You hold everything together
You hold everything together

:chorus:
Christ be the center of our lives
Be the place we fix our eyes
Be the center of our lives

We lift our eyes to heaven
We wrap our lives around your life
We lift our eyes to heaven, to You

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
look full in His wonderful face
and the things of earth will grow strangely dim
in the light of His glory and grace.

Advent – Day Twenty-Three

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The Adoration of the Magi
Peter Paul Rubens 1577 – 1640
The Adoration of the Magi (1624)
oil on panel (447 × 336 cm) — 1624
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp

“The Christ of God was not then first crucified when the Jews brought Him to the Cross; but Adam and Eve were His first real murderers; for the death which happened to them, in the day that they did eat of the earthly tree was the death of the Christ of God, or the divine life in their souls. For Christ had never come into the world as a second Adam to redeem it, had He not been originally the life and perfection and glory of the first Adam.”
… William Law (1686-1761), The Spirit of Love [1752-4], in Works of Rev. William Law, v. VIII, London: G. Moreton, 1893, p. 7