Author: Fred Sanders
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A Silent Night, in the Fulness of Time
And I Joseph was walking, and was not walking; and I looked up into the sky, and saw the sky astonished; and I looked up to the pole of the heavens, and saw it standing, and the birds of the air keeping still. … And I saw the sheep walking, and the sheep stood still;…
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Saint Nicholas / Santa Claus Songs
Santa Claus, bless his heart, may be a corporate shill who is constantly used to elbow Christ out of Christmas, but he is based on a historical figure who had a different agenda. St. Nicholas of Myra, a bishop in what we now call Turkey, lived in the fourth century. He must have been quite…
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Sing Carols: Nothing Can Vex the Devil More
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), somewhere deep in his American epic poem Christus: A Mystery, puts these words in the mouth of Martin Luther (1483-1546): Nothing can vex the Devil more Than the name of him whom we adore. Therefore doth it delight me best To stand in the choir among the rest, With the great…
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Wedding Prayer at Christmas
Here is a prayer I said at the wedding of two friends today, Dec. 21, 2007. Congratulations to Mark and Shelley. Our Father in heaven, We thank you and praise you for all you are and for all you have done. You are the one who said in the beginning, “let light shine out of…
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A Christ Worth Christmas
The Glory of the Manger is a great little book of Christmas meditations by Samuel M. Zwemer (1867-1952), the “Apostle to Islam.” The whole book is available online (a 730k pdf here, and a bunch of his other writings here) Zwemer’s most famous book was called The Glory of the Cross, and this Manger book…
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Charles Wesley 300
Charles Wesley was born on December 18, 1707, making today his tercentennial. Let the welkin ring with Wesley hymns today –he wrote well over five thousand, and you can check out about 370 over at the Wesley Center. Good congregations are never far away from a Wesley hymn, and at Christmas time we’re all hearing…
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You Can’t Spell
At a party recently, all the kids discovered a tetherball post in the host’s backyard. Waiting for the inevitable minor head injury that was sure to follow, I was musing pessimistically, “you can’t spell tetherball without the letters H, E, R, T.” Even worse, I thought, you can rearrange the letters in tetherball to spell…
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Dragon Protagonist
Knight versus dragon, but note how the dragon is a biped who seems to be communicating via sign language. His mouth is politely closed, and the flame shooting from his nostrils barely extends further than his claws. The knight, on the other hand, holds his means defense off to one side, and brandishes his weapon…
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Mr. Collins Apologizes to Aspirin
MY DEAR BOTTLE OF BAYER, I feel myself constrained by your medical qualifications and my own recent physical indispositions of a cranial character, to call upon your services. Be assured, my dear Aspirin, that Mrs. Collins and myself sincerely desire the cessation, and that immediate, of the discomfort which has settled upon a man of…
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The Pope on Hope
On Nov. 30, Pope Benedict XVI issued the second encyclical of his pontificate. Spe Salvi, “saved by hope,” is a thoughtful and stimulating document by this elderly bishop of Rome. We shouldn’t expect anything less from Joseph Ratzinger, who would have been one of the major theologians of the 20th century even if he hadn’t…
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Why Did You Make Us Wander? Isaiah 63:17
This surely counts as a difficult verse in the Bible. In Isaiah 63:17, the prophet asks: O Lord, why do you make us wander from your ways and harden our heart, so that we fear you not? Even in context, it’s a stark question to put to God. It seems to be a confession of…
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ChaseGiving
Freddy Age Seven interprets the great American holiday, Thanksgiving, with this image of mayhem. At first glance, I took it for a battle between pilgrims (tall black hats, blunderbusses) and indians (feathered headdresses, tomahawks, bows and arrows). But upon closer examination, neither side is clearly chasing the other. Everybody’s running to the left, firing bullets…