J. I. Packer on the Hope of Christmas

The Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity—hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory—because at the Father's ...

John McCain Experiences the True Light of Christmas

During the 2008 presidential race, John McCain was asked by Time magazine to share his "personal journey of faith." In his article McCain shared ...

A Christmas Poem: "Because One Child Is Born"

More light than we can learn, More wealth than we can treasure, More love than we can earn, More peace than we can measure, Because one Child is born. ...

Experiencing the Beauty of Peace in Bethlehem

For reasons I cannot quite remember (perhaps the guidebooks or the guide himself told us it wasn't much to get worked up about), I wasn't excited ...

The Cock Crows the Whole Night Through on Christmas

While writing about the Nativity in his book The Faces of Jesus, author and pastor Frederick Buechner reflects on an early scene in Shakespeare's ...

Giving Extravagantly in Light of God's Extravagant Gift

Mike Erre writes in Men of Integrity:

My wife and I refinanced our house and cashed out what was (for us) a large sum of money. I spent several weeks ...

More Mind-boggling Than the Virgin Birth

The virgin birth is far less mind-boggling than the power of all Creation stooping so low as to become one of us.

—U.S. author Madeline L'Engle ...

Philip Yancey on Observing a Mellow, Domesticated Christmas

When the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci went to China in the sixteenth century, he brought along samples of religious art to illustrate the Christian ...

Talking My Language

In his book The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey shares an episode from his youth when the concept of "the Word becoming flesh" dawned on him ...

Augustine on the Purpose of the Incarnation

God became a man for this purpose: since you, a human being, could not reach God, but you can reach other humans, you might now reach God through a man. ...