5 Benefits Drawn Out from Sorrow: Zach Eswine draws out some sweet comforts from the sympathy of our Lord Jesus.

iPhones are pro-life: Gene Veith notes a curious feature on the new iPhone operating system.

The Elf who stole Christmas: Gene Veith slaps around the increasingly popular Elf on the Shelf…and it’s high time someone did!

“The Church Has Waited Long”:

The Church has waited long,
Her absent Lord to see,
And still in loneliness she waits,
A friendless stranger she.
Age after age has gone,
Sun after sun has set,
And still in weeds of widowhood,
She weeps a mourner yet.

Saint after saint on earth
Has lived, and loved, and died;
And as they left us one by one,
We laid them side by side;
We laid them down to sleep,
But not in hope forlorn;
We laid them but to ripen there,
Till the last glorious morn.

The serpent’s brood increase,
The powers of hell grow bold,
The conflict thickens, faith is low,
And love is waxing cold.
How long, O Lord our God,
Holy, and true, and good,
Wilt Thou not judge Thy suffering Church,
Her sighs, and tears, and blood?

We long to hear Thy voice,
To see Thee face to face,
To share Thy crown and glory then,
As now we share Thy grace.
Should not the loving bride
Her absent bridegroom mourn?
Should she not wear the signs of grief
Until her Lord return?

The whole creation groans,
And waits to hear that voice
That shall her comeliness restore,
And make her wastes rejoice.
Come, Lord, and wipe away
The curse, the sin, the stain,
And make this blighted world of ours
Thine own fair world again.

Incarnation meant a whole new set of relationships: with his father and mother; with his brothers and sisters; with his disciples; with the scribes, the Pharisees and the Sadducees; with Roman soldiers, lepers and prostitutes. It was within these relationships that he lived his incarnate life, experiencing pain, poverty and temptation; witnessing squalor and brutality; hearing obscenities and profanities and the hopeless cry of the oppressed.  He lived not in sublime detachment or in ascetic isolation, but ‘with us’, as the ‘fellow-man of all men’, crowded, harassed, stressed, molested.  No large estate gave him space, no financial capital guaranteed his daily bread, no personal staff protected him from interruptions and no power or influence protected him from injustice.  He saved us from alongside us.’

Donald Macleod, The Person of Christ, Contours of Christian Theology, Gerald Bray, ed. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1998), 180.