The winter solstice and the perfect timing of God

This Wall Street Journal headline caught my eye: “It Pays to Have Long Hair and a Beard in Utah—Jesus Models Are in Demand.” People in the state are employing people who “look like Jesus” for family portraits, Christmas cards, and wedding announcements.

One model was posing for photos when a woman asked if he could walk with her for a moment and hold her hand. “You know I’m not the real Jesus, right?” he asked her. She told him she had been looking for a sign from God when she was driving by.

Perhaps you’ve heard about the child who was afraid to sleep alone on a dark, stormy night. His mother assured him that God was right beside him. The boy replied, “But Mom, I want God with skin on!”

So do we all.

“The same yesterday and today and forever”

To everyone who reads this article, the idea that the child who was born in Bethlehem’s manger is still alive and acting in our world is so commonplace that we assume this is how religion works. But it’s not so.

No Buddhist thinks Buddha is still teaching his followers today. No Muslim thinks the Prophet Muhammad is still alive in our world or that they can experience his presence. No Jew thinks the rabbis of old are still available to offer their wisdom.

But every Christian thinks (or should think) that Jesus is just as alive and active today as he was on that first Christmas night. We believe that we can experience the Baby of Bethlehem as fully today as when he first entered our world.

He promised to be with us always (Matthew 28:20). He spoke to Paul on the road to Damascus and to John on the prison island of Patmos. What Jesus did then, he can and will do today, since he is “the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).

Why is this fact so relevant to our lives and current challenges?

My visit to Stonehenge

I will always remember my visit to Stonehenge some years ago. While it was stunning to see in person a site whose construction began more than five millennia ago, it would have been especially memorable to have been there last weekend to mark the winter solstice.

This prehistoric structure frames the rise of the sun on the summer solstice and its setting on the winter solstice. Knowing when the seasons were changing would have been vital for farmers and animal herders, so marking this yearly cycle may be one reason Stonehenge was constructed.

So, what is the winter solstice we just experienced?

The axis of our planet tilts 23.5 degrees. As a result, during Earth’s year-long solar rotation, the northern hemisphere will eventually be at its furthest point from the sun. This occurred Saturday at 4:21 a.m. ET, making December 21 our shortest day and longest night. In six months, our planet will be on the opposite side of our solar rotation, at which time our hemisphere will be closest to the sun, giving us our longest day and shortest night.

If our planet had no tilt, we would have no seasons. Why would this be so catastrophic?

Scientists tell us that on such a planet, the regions further to the north and south would be too cold to be habitable, so humans would have to congregate near the equator. In the tropical regions, however, unrelenting rainfall would erode soil in areas cleared for farming, rendering tilled land infertile for crops. In arid regions, life would be even more difficult to sustain.

Our existence would be threatened by disease pathogens that thrive in warm, humid environments. As it is, winter protects us from what one expert called “a long, nasty list of tropical diseases of humans, crops, and livestock.”

If our planet’s tilt was more or less, our seasons would be drastically changed, disrupting if not preventing life as we know it. And so, our planet’s exact tilt is just one example of the anthropic principle, the fact that our existence depends on very precise parameters. Other examples include our atmosphere, our magnetic field, our location in the solar system, our solar system’s place in the galaxy, and even the color of our sun.

“When the fullness of time had come”

Last Friday we discussed the surprising manner of Jesus’ coming. Today, let’s think about its timing. Here we discover that the anthropic principle applies to Christmas as well.

Jesus came to earth to die for our sins (Romans 5:8). However, since God is not bound by time, Jesus’ death could atone for all of humanity’s sins whenever he died and whenever the sins occurred. Why, then, did he come when he did?

Paul reported, “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son” (Galatians 4:4). In the era when Jesus was born, Roman roads facilitated the later expansion of the church across the Empire. Greek was so universal that Christian leaders and the New Testament books they produced could be understood by multiplied millions. The Pax Romana ensured a peace that enabled missionaries to spread the faith. A universal hunger for truth and meaning opened the way for the good news of God’s love.

Never before or since were conditions so perfect for a faith to take root and grow to universal significance.

When you’re waiting on God

A God who can make a planet that tilts at just the right angle to support life is a God whose power you can trust with your needs. And a God who can enter the planet he created at just the right time is a God whose timing you can trust as well.

Are you waiting for God to answer your prayers? Does it seem that he is slow to do what you need him to do? Then ask yourself these questions:

• Do you believe your Father is all-knowing? Then he must know what is best for you.
• Do you believe he is all-loving? Then he must want to do what is best for you.
• Do you believe he is all-powerful? Then he must be able to do what is best for you.

If his timing is not yours, it must be the case that his timing is better than yours. We are therefore wise to accept his invitation:

“Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9).

The reason is simple: It is always too soon to give up on God.

Always.

Monday news to know:

• Germans mourn the 5 killed and 200 injured in the apparent attack on a Christmas market
• US Navy shoots down own plane as fresh strikes target Houthi rebels in Yemen
• Nissan, Honda announce plans to merge, creating world’s No. 3 automaker
• Rickey Henderson, baseball’s all-time stolen base leader, dies at age 65
• On this day in 1823: the poem “A Visit From St. Nicholas” is first published

*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.

Quote for the day:

“We shall not grow weary of waiting upon God if we remember how long and how graciously he once waited for us.” —Charles Spurgeon

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To comprehend God “is altogether impossible”

Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are stuck in space. When they arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) last June, they were supposed to return home in eight to ten days. However, the vessel that transported them developed so many problems that it returned to our planet unmanned, leaving them marooned. Now NASA is reporting that the capsule that will bring the stranded astronauts home won’t launch until late March 2025 at the earliest.

All this to transport two humans 250 miles from the ISS to our planet. That’s the distance from Dallas to Houston.

Now imagine traveling from heaven to earth. If you were Jesus, how would you have done it?

How I would have come at Christmas

Before time began, it was the Father’s plan to send his Son into the world to die for our sins (Revelation 13:8 NIV). But to fulfill this purpose, Jesus could presumably have come in any way he wished and died in any way he chose and inspired the prophets to predict his incarnation accordingly.

I know what I would have done if I were Jesus.

I would have come as an adult, bypassing the helplessness of infancy and the frustrations of adolescence. I would have come as royalty, or at least as a person of means and reputation. I would have died in the least painful and most dignified manner possible, perhaps by beheading as a Roman citizen. I would have risen from the dead so publicly and spectacularly that those who executed me would be stunned and my divinity would be obvious to all.

Jesus did none of these things. He chose the exact opposite, in fact.

He entered humanity as a tiny fetus and was born to peasant parents in a cow stall and laid in a feed trough. He grew up in obscurity and lived as an adult in relative poverty. He arranged to die in the cruelest, most demeaning and tortured manner ever devised. He rose from the dead to appear only to his devoted followers.

“The information’s unavailable to the mortal man”

As surprising as was his Incarnation, those who know the Bible should not be surprised.

God chose a herdsman to leave his home, “not knowing where he was going” (Hebrews 11:8), travel seven hundred miles to the west, and become the patriarch of the Jewish people. He chose to wait until this man and his wife were elderly to bless them with the son that would continue their line. He chose a man whose name meant “deceiver” to father twelve sons who would become the twelve tribes of Israel.

He chose a teenager enslaved in Egypt to save his people from starvation and a fugitive criminal to lead them from Egyptian slavery to the Promised Land. He chose to lead them into that land through a flooded river and by marching around a fortified city until it fell. He chose a shepherd to slay a giant and become the forebear of the Messiah. He chose a locust-eating desert dweller to prepare the way for that Messiah.

And so it goes today:

God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even the things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are (1 Corinthians 1:27–28).

As Paul Simon sang,

God only knows
God makes his plan
The information’s unavailable
To the mortal man.

For what purpose? “So that no human being might boast in the presence of God” (v. 29).

What I told my Muslim tour guide

We worship a God who is three and yet one. We place our faith in One who is fully God and yet became fully man. We trust a book that is divinely inspired and yet humanly written. We believe God is sovereign and yet we are free.

In one of his sermons, St. Augustine (354–430) famously noted: “To reach to God in any measure by the mind, is a great blessedness; but to comprehend him, is altogether impossible.” He explained:

Do you think that you can comprehend a body by the eye? You cannot at all. For whatever you look at, you do not see the whole. If you see a man’s face, you do not see his back at the time you see the face; and when you see the back, you do not at that time see the face.

How much less can we understand the Almighty God of the universe? As Augustine said, “If you can comprehend, he is not God.”

I once spent several weeks in Turkey doing research for a book I wrote on the seven churches of Revelation. My driver and guide was completing a graduate degree in history and archaeology at the time. While not devout in his Muslim faith, he was closed to mine. The reason was that, to his academic mind, Christianity is illogical. He wanted a faith he could understand.

I responded with Augustine’s suggestion that if our finite, fallen minds can truly comprehend an infinite, perfect God, by definition he is not God. If he is who he is and we are who we are, there must be mystery to our understanding of him. This is “a feature, not a bug,” as a software engineer would say.

“The immortal One for those who are mortal”

You may not be able to understand why God seems to be working in your life and world as he is. But could you choose to believe that the incomprehensibility of God’s nature is reason to trust him more and not less? That his ways, because they are “higher than your ways” (Isaiah 55:9), are better? That his love revealed in his suffering Son, because it is nearly beyond imagining, is the gift you need most today?

In the second-century Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus, we read in chapter 9 that the Father “gave his own Son as a ransom for us, the holy One for transgressors, the blameless One for the wicked, the righteous One for the unrighteous, the incorruptible One for the corruptible, the immortal One for those who are mortal.”

Why did he act in such a surprising, seemingly contradictory way? His purpose was “to lead us to trust in his kindness, to esteem him our Nourisher, Father, Teacher, Counselor, Healer, our Wisdom, Light, Honor, Glory, Power, and Life, so that we should not be anxious.”

Why do you need to “trust in his kindness” today?

Friday news to know:

• US government shutdown looms after House rejects Donald Trump-backed funding bill
• With guilty verdicts, rape victim’s ordeal in France becomes a message of hope
• Appeals court disqualifies Fani Willis from prosecuting Georgia Trump case
• US files murder charge against Mangione that could bring death penalty
• On this day in 1963: Berlin Wall opened for first time

*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.

Quote for the day:

“God’s love is like an ocean. You can see its beginning, but not its end.” —Rick Warren

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Why we need more than a divine avatar

A church in Switzerland has created a computer-generated AI Jesus. St. Peter’s Chapel in Lucerne, ironically the nation’s oldest church, now has cutting-edge technology that enables people to talk with an AI version of God’s Son. When you enter a confessional booth, a lifelike avatar on a computer screen offers advice based on the Bible and is available in more than one hundred languages. Around nine hundred conversations between people and the machine have been registered so far.

However, visitors are warned against sharing personal details and informed that their interactions with the avatar are at their own risk.

Of course, the real Son of God already knows every detail of our lives (cf. Luke 5:22; Hebrews 4:13). Interactions with him are not a risk but a blessing beyond compare (Hebrews 4:16).

And there’s the fact that we need a God who will not only give us advice but actually act in our lives and our broken world on our behalf.

“They know how to play dead for a shooter”

Billionaires are building nuclear bunkers in preparation for the destruction of mankind. One is surrounded by a lake that can be transformed into a ring of fire to protect its occupants. At a time when global nuclear weapons spending has surged to $91.4 billion, you can understand the concern.

But bunkers can’t protect us from the global mental health crisis “engulfing the world’s workplaces,” or sinking high-rise condos and luxury hotels, or Vladimir Putin’s desire to “usher in a new international system that affords Russia the status and influence Putin believes it deserves,” or the proliferation of school shootings.

At the beginning of the school year, one teacher found a seven-year-old boy lying in the hallway as another student showed him what to do if a shooter entered their classroom. “When do we practice playing dead?” the boy asked.

“They can’t even tie their shoes,” the teacher said. “But they know how to play dead for a shooter.”

“We never saw anything like this!”

In Mark 2, we find Jesus “at home” in Capernaum (v. 1). Here four men brought a paralytic, but the crowd gathered to hear Jesus was so large they could not get near him. So they went up on the roof, made an opening, and lowered the man on his bed to Jesus (vv. 1–4).

When he saw their faith, he forgave the paralyzed man’s sins (v. 5) and then said to him, “Rise, pick up your bed, and go home” (v. 11). With this result: “He rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all” (v. 12a). In response, “They were all amazed and glorified God, saying, ‘We never saw anything like this!’” (v. 12b).

Let’s recount what Jesus did in this remarkable episode:

• He welcomed the man brought to him.
• He forgave his sins (this is the only time he did this with regard to physical healing, so we must not think that all illness is the result of sin).
• He healed the man so completely that his paralysis was gone and his atrophied legs were immediately able to walk.
• His miracle brought glory to God.

What Jesus did for this man, he can do for any of us (cf. Hebrews 13:8). Our problem is that many of us relate to him more as an avatar who gives advice than as a King worthy of our complete trust and obedient service.

“The mystery of new birth shone upon us”

Consider what Jesus gave up when he left his glory in heaven to take on our fallen flesh. Remember the abject humility of his birth and the horrific suffering of his death.

He had already given us his authoritative word, containing his guidance for every dimension of our lives. As Pope St. Leo the Great (c. 400—461) noted, he could then have taught humanity “by appearing to them in a semblance of human form as he did to the patriarchs and prophets.” However,

Unless the new man, by being made “in the likeness of sinful flesh,” had taken on himself the nature of our first parents, unless he had stooped to be one in substance with his mother while sharing the Father’s substance and, being alone free from sin, united our nature to his, the whole human race would still be held captive under the dominion of Satan. The Conqueror’s victory would have profited us nothing if the battle had been fought outside our human condition.

But through this wonderful blending, the mystery of new birth shone upon us so that through the same Spirit by whom Christ was conceived and brought forth we too might be born again in a spiritual birth; and in consequence the evangelist declares the faithful to have been “born not of blood, nor of the desire of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12).

People who “turned the world upside down”

Now we have a choice to make.

• We can ignore the Christ of Christmas, as many are doing in our secularized society.
• We can treat his birth as a tradition to be remembered and then returned to the attic for another year.
• We can ask him to forgive our sins and save us from hell, then fulfill occasional religious duties but otherwise live as we wish.
• We can seek his advice for our problems, then do what seems best to us.
• Or we can submit every day to him as Lord, then obey his word in the power of his Spirit, whatever the apparent cost to us personally.

Here’s my point:

“Part-time Christianity” is a contradiction in terms because “part-time lordship” is a contradiction in terms.

When people see Christians sold out to Christ, believers who follow their Lord whatever the cost, whatever he asks, whatever it takes, our world cannot remain the same.

Such people “turned the world upside down” in their day (Acts 17:6). Such people will do the same again in ours.

When last did it cost you something significant to follow Jesus?

Thursday news to know:

• Fed signals plan to slow rate cuts, sending stocks lower
• House Ethics Committee secretly voted to release Matt Gaetz ethics report, source says
• Court records point to troubled home life for Wisconsin school shooter
• Honda and Nissan say they are exploring merger
• On this day in 1998: President Clinton impeached

*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.

Quote for the day:

“Nothing is impossible for the people of God who trust in the power of God to accomplish the will of God.” —David Platt

Denison Forum