Friday, January 5, 2018

In the news, Monday, December 25, 2017


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DEC 24      INDEX      DEC 26
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Information from some sites may not be reliable, or may not be vetted.
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from BBC News (UK)
LEFT-CENTER BIAS

Queen's message pays tribute to London and Manchester
The Queen has paid tribute to London and Manchester in her Christmas Day message for their handling of this year's terror attacks. She said it was a "privilege" to meet the concert attack survivors in May and stressed both cities' "powerful identities". The monarch also remembered the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire.

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from First Things

CENSORING CHRISTMAS AT THE BUS STOP
When the Catholic Archdiocese of D.C. proposed a Christmas-themed poster for public buses, the city rejected it—the ad was not secular enough.

THE POETRY OF CHRISTMAS
People turn to poetry when words have fallen short of a mystery: at weddings, at occasions of collective mourning—and at Christmas. Throughout history, Christmas has inspired poems from believers and atheists alike.

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from The Living Church
Magazine of The Living Church Foundation (Anglican)

Light in the darkness
Hidden underneath [the surface of our lives] there is a depth, a bottom—indeed, an abyss. And there below are we human beings, each in our own way, only poor beggars, only lost sinners, only sighing and dying creatures, only people who are now at their wit’s end. And at this very time Jesus Christ comes to stay with us, and what’s more: he has already come to stay with us. … There he only waits for us to see him, to know him, to believe him, to love him. There he greets us. There we can do nothing other than greet him again and bid him welcome.

Word of Salvation
The prologue of John’s Gospel invites a different meditation on Christmas, one that is quiet and mysterious, and opens great possibilities for an expansive joy that reaches well beyond private or even merely human concern. God loves us each, yes, and God loves every family, language, people, and nation, and we sense this with great emotion in the coming of Christ as an infant among us. And yet St. John records nothing about the birth and infancy of Jesus: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”; “All things came into being through him”; “And the Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:1, 3, 14).

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from Psephizo
Community

What does Christmas mean?
Despite not preaching at Christmas services this year, for some reason I have found myself thinking about the meaning of Christmas more this year than most. To stimulate your thinking this Christmas Day, I simply offer two things—one ancient, the other modern, neither mine. The ancient focuses on the meaning of Christmas—or rather the incarnation—for God. The modern focuses on the potential meaning of Christmas for us.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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