Advent

O Come All You Unfaithful

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

As much as I appreciate and enjoy the traditional Christmas hymns and carols – O Come All Ye Faithful high up on my list – here is a worthy addition to the Christmas song catalog: O Come All You Unfaithful. Though not an especially new song, (it has been around for several years,) this song beautifully captures the heart behind the reason for the Incarnation.

In Luke 5, Jesus declared:

31 “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”

Advent/Christmas should be a season during which we remind ourselves, and remind one another, of God’s love for the broken, the outcast, and even the sinner – like me.

“The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.” (1 Timothy 1.15)

“God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5.8)

As Brennan Manning wrote in The Ragamuffin Gospel:

One of the mysteries of the gospel tradition is this strange attraction of Jesus for the unattractive, this strange desire for the undesirable, this strange love for the unlovely.

As C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity:

The son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.

Join the Conspiracy!

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

“There has got to be more to the holiday season than this.”

Have you ever thought this way? I have – and I do – every year, around this time.

While there is nothing inherently wrong with our many traditions and celebrations, it is beneficial to repeatedly remind ourselves what this season is primarily about: that Christ Jesus came into the world to redeem sinners; to set free those captive to their sin and their situations. 

And just as Jesus came into the world, he has also commissioned his followers to be his agents to continue what he began. (John 20.21)  

In 2006 Advent Conspiracy was birthed, with the aim to remind the world what really matters during the Advent-Christmas season; and to urge Christians to embrace four simple but key tenets:

Let’s consider how we can make a difference in some small way. Let’s all join in this most wonderful Conspiracy.