Posts

Showing posts from December, 2011

Christmas Specials

I recently watched two very different Christmas specials. The first one, I am not even sure of the title. It is something like "A Shrek Christmas". I caught it about half way through, but I don't think that will make much difference to the ending. Shrek (a large green ogre with a big green ogre family) has apparently never celebrated Christmas before. So he buys a book, something like "Christmas for Dummies". He creates a feast, gets a tree and decorates it, buys tons of gifts. But his Christmas if far from perfect. There is too much chaos and commotion. Finally Shrek has to learn the real meaning of Christmas: family and chaos. What?! That's right, the point of Christmas, according to Shrek, is to have lots of family and lots of chaos. Let us compare this to another Christmas program from another era. Charlie Brown wanted to know what Christmas was all about. Was it about pageants and plays? Was it about cards and presents, Santa Claus and

Being a man "after" God's heart.

We need to put to rest a little bit of confusion that seems to exist in the minds of Christian men. In First Samuel 13:14 Yahweh rejects the kingship of Saul and, through Samuel, announces that "the LORD has sought out a man after his own heart." The prophecy is thought to point to David, the next king in line. As we read this in English we can get confused. To "be after" something, after all, means that we are seeking it, pursuing it. This, however, is not what the Hebrew text communicates. A more accurate, or at least less confusing, translation might read "the LORD has sought out a man like his own heart." Who is like the heart of God? Is it David, the adulterous, murderous, neglectful father? That seems rather unlikely. Rather, this serves as a case in point of how the purpose of the Old Testament is to point us to Jesus Christ FIRST. Samuel probably did not know it at the time, but he was prophesying the Incarnation. Jesus is the man who i