Christian Carnival CCIV

It’s the day after Christmas and what a mess! I bet that’s what many are saying, anyhow. Our Christmas has been very quiet this year. That’s because my wife ended up taking all the traditional holidays working, and our grandchildren don’t arrive until the end of the week. We’ve done a little bit, but the excitement starts when the grandkids arrive!

To divide up today’s carnival, I’ve chosen to use a phrase from the membership vows for the United Methodist Church. I don’t intend to be denominational on this, though I am a member of a United Methodist congregation. But I like the elements here. Each member promises to support the church through his or her “prayers, presence, gifts, and service.” As is usual, I’ll be using a bit of creativity in dividing the posts in order to create some balance. There wasn’t much on prayer, for example, but I’ll slide a couple of extras into the category. I’ve arbitrarily put the more theological posts under “presence” as when else would you hear about these things?

Prayers

Ched presents A Christmas Nightmare . . . posted at Says Simpleton.

James DeLelys presents Look with your Heart! posted at Author James DeLelys.

Jody Neufeld presents Oh Holy Night! a Christmas meditation based on the song at Jody Along the Path.

Presence

Don Bosch presents Divorce hurts the planet – II posted at The Evangelical Ecologist. “I’m hoping this will stimulate some thinking on the deeper impacts of human tragedies like divorce and abortion on Creation. The Catholic Church teaches that ‘Divorce is a grave offense against the natural law.’ It also states that ‘divorce is immoral also because it introduces disorder into the family and into society,’ a disorder that it states ‘makes it (divorce) truly a plague on society.’ Protestants (including garden variety evangelicals) aren’t used to considering marriage and divorce in such ‘natural law’ terms, but maybe we should. Folks from all parts of the Body of Christ have an important opportunity here for love and social influence through ecology that goes much deeper than recycling our plastic bottles. A shame if we continue to drop the ball on that. Would Jesus call our hearts hard too?”

Therapydoc presents Internet Pornography- Part One posted at Everyone Needs Therapy.
It’s a problem in every community. This is the first post in a series.

Steve Bishop, of An accidental blog, starts his review of J Mark Bertrand’s (Re)thinking Wolrdview: Learning to Think, Live, and Speak in this World (Crossway, 2007).

Jeremy Pierce presents Sex as a Condition for Marriage posted at Parableman. Some Christians have seen marriage as initiated by sex. The case of Joseph and Mary seems at odds with this view.

Martin presents Light upon the Earth posted at Enigmania.

Tom Gilson presents James Corbett “Taught Us How To Think”? posted at Thinking Christian. Whether James Corbett, accused of a strong anti-Christian bias in his high school history classroom, is guilty, we don’t know; but it certainly appears that he failed to do what some of his students claim he did: to teach them how to think.

Henry (Honzo) Imler presents The Basis for Belief: Part 1 posted at Theology for the Masses.

Gifts

FMF presents What is Your Attitude Toward Giving? posted at Free Money Finance. What type of giver are you?

Keyboard Culture Sales Training Expert Alan “Sell More” Altmann presents Fear and Faith are Incompatible posted at Alan Altmann Sales Training Expert at Keyboard Culture Expert Community, in which he reminds us that we have the choice of responding to situations in fear or in faith.

I present Not a Christmas Carol, a Christmas short story that’s not really like the famous Dickens story, at The Jevlir Caravansary.

Service

John presents Philophronos Blogging posted at Brain Cramps for God. A reminder, as we enter the intensity of the political season and celebrate His birth, about our requirements to show Christ’s grace and mercy even to our adversaries. And to tie in with his post, Laura rounds up the Philophronos blogroll.

Tom Fuerst presents Christian Discourse and Subverting the Rhetoric of the Empire posted at Theology for the Masses.

Roger Carr presents Share Your Faith posted at Everyday Giving Blog.

Keep Thinking about Jesus

There are reasons why that baby was in that manger. Amongst those is this, part of this week’s lectionary readings:

“Because he himself has passed through the test of suffering, he is able to help those who are in the midst of their test.” — Hebrews 2:18