I click on share and then I select embed. The identity of the video clip comes up as a series of letters and numbers. I cut and paste this into my post. I click save, releasing the clip to have a destiny in my blog. And then I select publish and the clip becomes known to a wider audience.
It sounds a bit like the Christmas story to me.
God decides to share, or give, his son to us. He embeds Jesus, or incarnates him, in human flesh to live in this world – filling him with a new identity (check out Mark 1-8). He clicks save, releasing Jesus to fulfill a destiny in this world (check out Mark 9-16). What happens next? My life – like countless others down through the centuries and across the time zones, becomes absorbed in publishing, making this Jesus known.
Here, let me give you the most exquisite example from the St Paul’s church, here in Auckland (New Zealand).
nice chatting this Christmas day
Paul
About Me
the art of unpacking
After a childhood in India, a theological training in the USA and a pastoral ministry in Southland (New Zealand), I spent twenty years in theological education in New Zealand — first at Laidlaw College and then at Carey Baptist College, where I served as principal. In 2009 I began working with Langham Partnership and since 2013 I have been the Programme Director (Langham Preaching). Through it all I've cherished the experience of the 'gracious hand of God upon me' and I've relished the opportunity to 'unpack', or exegete, all that I encounter in my walk through life with Jesus.
Recent Posts
It was my very first training seminar with Langham Preaching. April 2009. We were based at the OMF Guest House in Chiangmai, Thailand. As I wandered the property, I came across this striking quotation on one of the walls: So striking, in fact, that I stopped to take its photo! But is it really true?…
Ten years ago, Ode to Georgetown was my response to being surprised by grief when the only church I had ever pastored closed its doors. Last week brought the news that the theological college which I attended, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS), was to close most of its Chicagoland campus. I have been feeling a…
I am neither painter nor poet, musician nor actor. With Art and Music and Drama classes at school, I was present in body—but absent in spirit and skill. However, as a teacher, there has been the occasional flare of creativity in the crafting of assignments. One of my favourites is one of my first ones.…
John Stott was the first one to help me see the tension in Jesus’ teaching on salt and light. They are pictures for how his disciples are to live in society. Salt pulls them in, keeping them involved. Light holds them back, keeping them distinctive. Being light responds to ‘the danger of worldliness’, while being…
