Advent is nearing its completion. I hope you’ve experienced the hope, the peace, the joy, and the love the season leads us to meditate on. May Christmas bring you light as the light of the world dawns.

Around the Web

Slugs & Bugs: New Song + New Sales

Our good friends over at Slugs & Bugs have some great stuff for us.

It’s a new music video from Slugs & Bugs telling the story of the fifth chapter of John’s gospel. It features Propaganda and a bunch of talented, energetic children from Nashville’s New Hope Academy, St. Paul Christian Academy, and Granbery Elementary.
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Ten favorite picture books for Christmastime

Sally Lloyd-Jones shares a selection of her favorite picture books for this season.

Do you love Christmas stories as much as I do? What is it about a story? It’s a feeling, an image you can return to, year after year, when you’re little and when you’re grown. A picture book is a place to connect with the ones you love, to dream about years past or years to come. A story is a seed, planted in your heart. It’s joy.
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He Knows Our Grief

Sarah Hauser meditates on grieving at Christmas.

Christmas can be a time of joy and celebration—but it’s also a season of lament for many of us. For my family and me, we’re just past a season of grief; lament always remains a prayer on my lips. We live in a broken and hurting world, after all, and if we’re not currently grieving, we know someone who is.
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How to fix the apathy problem in schools

As we look at education, apathy is sometimes a huge issue. This piece is a good read on the topic.

Any discussion about the problems in American education – and what is to blame for these problems – will likely include one or all of the usual suspects: inadequate and unequal funding, a lack of resources, underpaid and overworked teachers, over-testing, poverty and heavy-handed legislation.
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Around the Warren

Incarnation: The Word made Flesh

John Sommer reminds us why we repeat ourselves each Christmas.

“Repetition is the mother of all learning” some people say. I’m not so sure about that, but I am sure that Repetition is the father of Acquaintance, and Acquaintance all too often sires the illegitimate child Contempt. Even the most novel and noble ideas become ordinary and mundane when reduced to bare facts and repeated until they produce the feeling that a thing is so familiar that it no longer warrants consideration or worse, is rendered almost worthless. Repetition without consideration and contemplation is just mental white noise.
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All Creation Waits

We are still waiting for the full advent of Christ, his return in which he will renew all things.

One of my favorite discoveries, on entering the liturgical tradition, was the celebration of Advent. I was delighted to learn that dark December days and the light of a simple candle were heavy with meaning. In Advent, I found not a nebulous season of festivity ending in the anti-climax of Christmas morning, but a sacred waiting that leads to a twelve-day celebration of God’s presence. It’s what I always hoped the holidays could be.
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