“Memory is power. The person who says that history is bunk, or that the past is gone and all that matters is today, just doesn’t know much about real life. In real life memory has tremendous power to inspire and guide.”
—John Piper, Pastor & Author
The Gift of Grace (Luke 1:26-45)
“Mary’s submission is a very lovely thing. ‘Whatever God says, I accept.’ Mary had learned to forget the world’s commonest prayer — ‘Your will be changed’ — and to pray the world’s greatest prayer — ‘Your will be done.’”
—William Barclay
The Collision of God’s Work with Our Understanding of This World (Luke 1:5-25)
“What we think about God will determine what we think about everything else. To speak of ‘God’ is to invoke the context for all understanding, that to which all life and thought are related: to the extent that we live and think at all, therefore, we do so in light of our understanding — whether explicit or implicit — of God. Theology, that is, is never merely ideation. It is always and inherently a total way of life.”
— Kavin Rowe, World Upside Down
Luke's Purpose (Luke 1:1-4)
“What I need first of all is not exhortation, but a gospel, not directions for saving myself but knowledge of how God has saved me. Have you any good news? That is the question that I ask of you. I know your exhortations will not help me. But if anything has been done to save me, will you not tell me the facts?”
—J. Gresham Machen
Christmas Changes Everything (Galatians 4:1-7)
“We cannot come to Christ to be justified until we have first been to Moses to be condemned. But once we have gone to Moses, and acknowledged our sin, guilt, and condemnation, we must not stay there. We must let Moses send us to Christ.”
—John Stott
Immanuel: The Dwelling Place of God is with His People (Revelation 21:1-6a, 22-27)
The tree of life my soul hath seen,
Laden with fruit and always green;
The trees of nature fruitless be,
Compared with Christ the Apple Tree.
His beauty doth all things excel,
By faith I know but ne’er can tell
The glory which I now can see,
In Jesus Christ the Appletree.
For happiness I long have sought,
And pleasure dearly I have bought;
I missed of all but now I see
‘Tis found in Christ the Appletree.
I’m weary with my former toil—
Here I will sit and rest awhile,
Under the shadow I will be,
Of Jesus Christ the Appletree.
This fruit doth make my soul to thrive,
It keeps my dying faith alive;
Which makes my soul in haste to be
With Jesus Christ the Appletree.
—“Jesus Christ the Appletree”
The Wedding Feast of the Lamb (Revelation 19:1-10)
“That feast will be, like most other marriage suppers, the fulfilment of long expectation. Our Lord has waited long for his perfected Church. He espoused himself to her before ever the earth was; but there was much to be done ere she was prepared for the marriage. The Bridegroom, too, had to leave his Father, and become one with his Bride by taking upon himself our humanity. For our sake, he did quit the thrones and royalties of heaven that he might be bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh; and here was he born, and here he lived, and here he died.”
—Charles Spurgeon
The People of God (Revelation 7:9-17)
“Maker of the sun, He is made under the sun. . . .
In [the Father] He remains,
From [His mother] He goes forth.
Creator of heaven and earth,
He was born on earth under heaven.
Unspeakably wise, He is wisely speechless;
filling the world, He lies in a manger;
Ruler of the stars, He nurses at His mother’s bosom.
He is both great in the nature of God,
and small in the form of a servant,
but so that His greatness is not diminished by His smallness,
nor His smallness overwhelmed by His greatness.”
—Augustine of Hippo
Hope for God’s Community (Revelation 5)
“My name from the palms of His hands
Eternity will not erase;
Impressed on His heart it remains
In marks of indelible grace.
Yes, I to the end shall endure,
As sure as the earnest is given
More happy, but not more secure,
The glorified spirits in heaven.”
—Augustus Toplady, “A Debtor to Mercy Alone”
God’s Presence Changes Our Relationship to Time (Leviticus 25:1-13)
“To witness the perpetual marvel of the world’s coming into being is to sense the presence of the Giver in the given, to realize that the source of time is eternity, that the secret of being is the eternal within time. … All week long we are called upon to sanctify life through employing things of space. On the Sabbath it is given us to share in the holiness that is in the heart of time. … Eternity utters a day.”
—Abraham Heschel, The Sabbath