So, on to Christmas Break! Katie and I leave early tomorrow morning for a week in California where we're absolutely excited to see our families, our church family at Copperhill and enjoy not worrying about snow! We're praying that it would be a sweet time of fellowship and that God would make us sad, again, to leave.
I'm hoping to do some intense reading over the break in order to get ready for next semester. My first project is to finish Jesus and the Victory of God by N.T. Wright. I'm actually considering starting it over since I think I would be all the more benefitted by it after this semester. Wright has some important things to say to the church and he seems to have become the force to be reckoned with in Biblical Scholarship.
Following that, if there even is a follow up to that, I would also like to finish The Temple and the Church's Mission by G.K. Beale, one of my professors at Wheaton. This book traces the Temple theme throughout scripture and then relates it to the purpose of the church at this stage of redemptive history. I think that this book has a lot of practical value in helping Christians to think theologically about the presence of God.
If I happen to have a few minutes to spare, I would also like to reacquaint myself with some of Milton's poetry. Milton is so refreshingly God-centered and his Biblical emphasis on discernment is something that is desperately needed in our contemporary theological and church climate. I love and advocate a "Missional" approach to ministry but so many people and ministries that claim the label "missional" are really just a sell out to our culture. We need to think about and engage our culture in a gloriously God-centered and countercultural way so that God is seen for who He is. I think Milton has a lot to say to us in this particular regard!
Maybe after all that I'll enjoy some fiction. I want to try and make sure that my mind doesn't become accustomed to reading only dense treatises. Fiction is good for the mind and helps us read the Bible in a more true-to-life manner. If anyone has some good suggestions for fiction, feel free to let me know!
Well, I pray that God blesses you all this Christmas Season with the knowledge and comfort that come from the amazing truth of the incarnation. I leave you with a quote from Daniel Fuller regarding the astonishing fact of God becoming man:
"Some idea of how much glory Jesus therefore lost in his incarnation can be found in the words of a well-known hymn that speaks of his leaving the "ivory palaces" and coming into a "world of woe." A helpful picture to have in mind is that of Jesus' descending a winding staircase stretching for a very long distance from the glory of heaven above far down into a world of wretched misery. Each downward stop in leaving this glory increased the pain Jesus underwent to pay for our sins, and so a good part of the severity of the punishment Jesus suffered for us consisted in coming down this staircase, whose length cannot be exaggerated, since it spanned the infinite distance between the Creator and the creature."
-Daniel Fuller in Unity of the Bible
