The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is a national establishment dedicated to artistic excellence, funding local arts projects that engage communities in collective cultural experiences. With the assistance of the ever- and omni- potent YouTube, they put themselves on the map in recent years with an initiative they called “Random Acts of Culture.” Call it a cultural experiment in the transformational power of the arts—Mozart in the mall, tango in the airport terminal, or Puccini at the farmers’ market—the result was art in unusual places, wide-eyed children and startled shoppers, culture interrupted by culture.

The idea was simple. Gather a group of talented artists in a particular city—a string quartet from the Charlotte Symphony, the Opera Company of Philadelphia, or two gifted dancers—and set them loose from the concert halls to stage a performance in the street. Or, as it were, in the shoe department. Shoppers at a very crowded shoe sale in Miami were startled as one by one their salespeople suddenly turned into characters from the French opera Carmen—shoe boxes in hand.

Yet one of these intruding bursts of creativity caused the most commotion by far. In October of 2012, the Opera Company of Philadelphia brought together over 650 choristers from 28 participating organizations to perform a Random Act of Culture in the heart of a busy Macy’s store in Philadelphia. Accompanied by the Wanamaker Organ—the largest pipe organ in the world—the Opera Company and throngs of singers from the community infiltrated the store as shoppers, and burst into a pop-up rendition of the Hallelujah Chorus from George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah” at high noon.

The reactions on the faces of singers, shoppers, and salespeople are worth the YouTube visit alone—which has been replayed over 9.3 million times: people with shopping bags in tow stop to raise their hands, gadgets and phones are pulled out of pockets and purses to record the moment, the busywork of a crowded mall in action otherwise stopped in its tracks by words that make it all seem so small.

The kingdom of this world

Is become the kingdom of our Lord,

And of his Christ, and of his Christ;

And He shall reign forever and ever,

Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Random Hallelujahs →

Experts mark the absence of desire as a sign of dis-ease. This lack of desire or enjoyment in what was formerly pleasurable or enjoyable is one of the chief symptoms of depression. For example, distress can be so great for an individual that she cannot eat. The typical desire for preparing and eating food disappears under great duress. During those times, individuals can have an abundance of food, but no desire to eat or feelings of hunger.

Of course, there are other times where out of a matter of principle, for special focus or discipline, one might routinely abstain. Ironically, desire often increases and can feel all-consuming when one willingly chooses to abstain. And perhaps this heightened focus hints at the experience of those who deal with deprivation and near-starvation. Despite not having any means to satisfy real hunger, the gnawing pangs for food grow louder and louder.

The experience of hunger and its absence serves to illustrate the complicated nature of human desire—desire that is often unwieldy and seemingly beyond one’s control. Coping with our innate desires is hard enough, but then there are societal values and pressures that blur the line between genuine need and want. Regardless, desire alerts us to a deep hunger or longing that resides at the core of human beings. These longings often reveal a restlessness even where there is abundance.

Arguments from desire are often invoked as evidence for the existence of God. The argument states that every natural, innate desire in us corresponds to some real object that can satisfy that desire. But within humans exists a desire which nothing in time, nothing on earth, and no creature can satisfy. Therefore, something exists that is more than time, earth, and creatures to satisfy this desire. This “real object” is the being people call “God” or “a life with God forever.” Indeed, Saint Augustine, who was no stranger to unwieldy desire, confessed that “Thou awakest us to delight in Thy praise; Thou has made us for thyself and our heart is restless until it repose in Thee.”(1)

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Hunger and Thirst →

In Mere Apologetics, Alister McGrath points out that “one of the most familiar criticisms of Christianity is that it offers consolation to life’s losers.”(1) Believers are often caricatured as being somewhat weak and naïve—the kind of people who need their faith as a “crutch” just to get them through life. In new atheist literature, this depiction is often contrasted with the image of a hardier intellectual atheist who has no need for such infantile, yet comforting, nonsense. This type of portrayal may resonate with some, but does it really make sense?(2)

Firstly, it is helpful to define what we mean by a “crutch.” In a medical setting, the word obviously means an implement used by people for support when they are injured. The analogy implies, therefore, that those who need one are somehow deficient or wounded. In a sense, it is fairly obvious that the most vulnerable might need support, but as the agnostic John Humphrys points out, “Don’t we all? Some use booze rather than the Bible.”(3) As this suggests, it is not so much a question of whether you have one, but it is more of a question of what your particular crutch is. This is an important point to make, as people rely on all kinds of things for their comfort or self-esteem, ranging from material possessions, money, food, and aesthetics to cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, and sex. Rather than being viewed as signs of weakness, many of these are even considered to be relatively normal in society, provided they don’t turn into the more destructive behavior associated with strong addiction. Nevertheless, many of these only offer a short-term release from the struggles of life and they sometimes only cover up deeper problems that a person might be suffering from. To suggest, therefore, that atheists are somehow stronger than believers is to deny the darker side of humanity, which is only too apparent if we look at the world around us. As McGrath explains:

“[I]f you have a broken leg, you need a crutch. If you’re ill you need medicine. That’s just the way things are. The Christian understanding of human nature is that we are damaged, wounded and disabled by sin. That’s just the way things are.“(4)

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – A Crutch or a Cross →

Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) popularized the concept of “a paradigm shift” in the realm of scientific thought. While many of us may not be familiar with Kuhn or his book, we have likely experienced the duck/rabbit optical illusion used by Kuhn to demonstrate the way in which a paradigm shift could cause one to see the same information in an entirely different way. Kuhn described a paradigm shift as that which opens up new approaches to understanding that would never have been considered valid before.

The word “epiphany” offers another way to speak about paradigm shifts. To have an epiphany is to have the proverbial light bulb go off in one’s head, as a new idea changes the way in which one sees or understands information. The lights are “switched on” when understanding comes. The English word epiphany comes from a Greek word meaning “manifestation or appearance.” An epiphany is that “a-ha” moment that comes as a result of new vision—of blindness being turned to sight. It is, to borrow from Kuhn’s description, an experience of a paradigmatic shift in view. An epiphany thus reorients, reorders, or transforms our view from one way of looking at the world to another.

In the Christian tradition, the season of Epiphany is a season for new sight, new vision, and paradigm shifts. The season commemorates the arrival of the foreign magi at the birthplace of Jesus. Magi (not three kings of the orient as sung in the famous hymn) were a caste of wise men specializing in astrology, medicine, and natural science.(1) As the Gospel of Matthew records it, these wise men “saw his star in the east,” and recognized that this young child was worthy of worship as King.(2)

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Insight for the Blind →

“I didn’t even know he was sick.”

In public spaces the day after news of pop icon David Bowie’s passing became public information, it was a common sentiment. It was the sentiment of flabbergast, as if death seemed irreconcilable with a persona so large. It was a sentiment that seemed to fit with my own most vivid memory of Bowie, trapped somewhere between fantasy and reality, with those eyebrows and that hair and the gaze of the Goblin King in Jim Henson’s 1987 film Labyrinth.

He died three years ago. But I still remembering being struck by how many times I heard the statement. “I didn’t even know he was sick.” “I didn’t even know he had cancer.” It is the honest shock of a public so accustomed to the knowledge of everything and anything filed away in public realms of accessible information and social media over-sharing. The shock of the death of an icon is compounded by the shock that we somehow missed the immensely personal news of his diagnosis, followed by the shock that we didn’t know because it actually wasn’t trending news, that we didn’t know because that he didn’t actually share it in the first place.

There are times when we are given glimpses of the status quo and invited to see it somewhere beyond “life as usual.” If ever so briefly, like fish learning to see the very water in which they are submersed, it is a gift if we will receive it. We live in a world of news feeds that never stop offering us something on which to comment, something to forward or post, tweet or retweet, something to fleetingly consume like ravenous furnaces burning through information in kindling-like segments at a time. We are expected to share everything with friends defined by our social media circles, people who, in the original sense of the word, are likely closer to strangers. What once would have been understandably and guardedly private is now fodder for sharing on public walls, “walls” we are so at home with that we fail to question how they are changing the very people they contain. Our own walls included, we seem somehow less able to imagine what might exist on the other side.

An unlikely, counterintuitive practice of prayer called the examen may offer to train our eyes to see beyond the barrage of public news-feeds which invite us to imagine that we can know everything, have a right access anything, and a need to share it all. I say unlikely because in a world obsessed with a public domain for sharing self-made profiles and walls of endless information, prayer, or any such habit that smacks of religion, is strictly restricted to private realms, stored quietly somewhere behind our public personas. Prayer as a solution is further unlikely because by the world’s standards it is at the very least unproductive, if not crazy: What utility does prayer serve? What information is gleaned? And with whom are we sharing if it’s not actually made “public”? But I also say counterintuitive because the examen is a practice that looks backward on the day as a way of learning to see presently. Quite counterintuitively, we listen to our lives by coming “in secret” to the one who sees the public and the private—the one for whom there is no division between these realms in the first place.(1)

First practiced by Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Christian Jesuit movement in the fourteenth century, the examen asks two questions at the day’s end, though these questions can be asked in various ways: Where did I most experience consolation today? Where did I experience desolation? What was the most life-giving encounter today? What was not life-giving? For what was I most grateful today? For what was I least grateful? Conjuring the word “examination,” the word examen comes from Latin and refers to the weight indicator on a balance scale. The word itself conveys the idea of an accurate assessment of the true situation and the hope that over time and in the quiet repetition of withdrawing, Christ, self, and neighbor come more openly and truly into focus. Prayer indeed sets aside the demand for utility and the lure of publicity to quietly and wastefully be present with the God of abundance. The examen is a means of listening to and looking after the places where this God is at work giving life, which is what the Father has done abundantly in Christ, and conversely, those areas that are drawing us away from God’s life-giving presence. It is a means of silencing the barrage of public information and the temptation to share ourselves in a way that draws attention. Prayer fills us instead with a quiet gratitude, so that we learn to tend closer to these spaces privately and corporately, and in turn, to bring the very countenance of the one who gives life back into the public domain.

In the words of the late David Bowie, I know something is very wrong/ The pulse returns for prodigal sons/ I can’t give everything away.” Thankfully, we were not meant to give everything away. Mercifully, there is one who has shared so abundantly of himself that it is worth silencing our public clamor to listen more intently for these signs of life. The very human pulse of the Son of God brings us back to ourselves and into the kind arms of the one who sees most clearly.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) “Do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly” (Matthew 6:5-6).

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Being raised in India while my wife, Margie, was raised in Canada, I have learned that sometimes words and ideas can get lost in translation, even with those closest to you. Often when I am with Indian friends or colleagues, one of them will make a remark in Hindi that elicits fits of laughter among those of us who understand the language.

Margie will invariably ask, “What did he say?” I attempt to translate the humor, knowing very well her predictable reaction: a blank stare followed by, “But what was so funny?”

Language and culture have that unique capacity to open a world of imagination and a wealth of memory. Even though I left India several decades ago, there are some concepts the Hindi language captures for me that English cannot.

Similarly, the same word may mean different ideas to different people. To a professor of philosophy, “reason” may mean a sound argument. To a high school teacher in India, “reason” may mean cultural respect for one’s own ancestral beliefs.

So, whether we are expressing humor or discussing ultimate issues, we are wise to heed the psalmist’s injunction: “Set a guard over my mouth, LORD; keep watch over the door of my lips” (Psalm 141:3). “The tongue has the power of life and death,” wrote Solomon (Proverbs 18:21). A few verses earlier he cautions, “To answer before listening—that is folly and shame” (verse 13).

With this biblical wisdom, we must keep in mind that behind every belief is a believer and behind every question is a questioner. The belief is part of the worldview, and the worldview is not always well scrutinized by reason. Cultures carry huge connections to the past. Respect must be given.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Think Again: An Indispensable Prerequisite →

Driving to work one day, a commercial on the radio offered the compelling thought of “recess time” for adults. Immediately, memories of school came to my mind: the daily struggles of learning and discipline, math and reading, tests and exercises. “Was the strain of school any different from the chores and deadlines that bombard you today,” the advertiser seemed to ask effectively. “And yet, the refreshing reward of afternoon free time and recess: Where has that gone?” In fact, the commercial’s invitation was to a steakhouse that promised the delight of recess for those craving a break, though it certainly prompted the thoughts of much more. The nostalgic use of my own memory was powerfully utilized to urge me not to miss out on life itself, via missing out on recess, store-bought relaxation, and steak.

The world of advertising continues to woo us with packaged worldviews and lifestyles, and this time of year the packaging is particularly eye-catching. We are led to believe that if we buy this product, experience this item, or go to this place in this vehicle, then, and maybe only then, we will really live into this new year.

I do not doubt that there are people who would claim to be satisfied by the pursuit of materialism as a way of life. Nonetheless, we have an abundance of evidence clearly stating the futility of pursuing these ends. If we are purely material beings with our lives confined to the years we have on earth, then perhaps living for pleasure might be a legitimate goal. Yet it seems that the human spirit cannot be reduced to mere matter. Such a contrast is seen in the movie Chariots of Fire when the vision of life modeled by Harold Abrams—who lives for success in this world alone—is set in sharp relief by Eric Liddel, who runs for the glory of God and in running feels God’s delight. In our best moments, we often recognize that we are somehow destined for higher, greater, more enduring things.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Love Stories →

The Christmas season as most of us know it has drawn to a close. All the preparations and fanfare of Christmas fade into the calendar of another year. But the church calendar, a reminder of a different rhythm within the world around us, offers the countercultural suggestion that we take the Christmas story with us into the New Year. Six days into our new calendars, after trees have come down and lights are put away and the ambiance of Christmas has dimmed, Epiphany is celebrated. Hardly dim in significance, the feast of Epiphany, which was Sunday, commemorates the events that first revealed Christ’s identity to the world: the magi’s adoration of the Christ child, the manifestation of Christ at his baptism, the first miracle at the wedding in Cana, among others.

The arrival of the magi to the birthplace of Jesus was the first of many windows into the identity of the child born to Mary and Joseph. “After [the magi] had heard [Herod] the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother, Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.” (1) As it had been foretold, nations came to his light and kings to the brightness of his dawn; they brought gold and frankincense and worshiped him.(2) A new mystery was revealed in Jesus, and the story continued to unfold before the world.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Christmas Continued →

Returning to graduate school in mid-life has reintroduced me to the importance of asking questions. There are the all-important pragmatic questions that involve the mechanics and the specifics of various assignments. Should one use a particular style guide in writing papers, for example, or what material will be covered on the next exam? There are the questions of curiosity about a particular topic or subject, and there are research questions intended to take a student deeper into the minutiae of her course of study.

I often find that questions beget other questions, and many are not as easily answered as when I first began “formal” education. Instead, I am often led from one question to another on this journey of inquiry that is only tangentially related to the original question.

When this happens, I wonder whether I am in fact asking the “right” questions that would generate answers. So, perhaps inquiring into the motivation behind the questions is an even more important task. Do I simply ask out of curiosity? Am I asking in order to fill my head with as many possible answers as there are questions? Or might it be that I continually ask questions as a way of blocking answers I do not want to hear or receive?

Noise often serves as a distraction from truly listening. Perhaps fearful of listening to the tangled thoughts within me, I can sometimes fill my days with the noise of constant movement and activity, so that I rarely pay attention or tune my ears to the stirrings of my own heart and mind.

Silence can be disruptive, as I found out intimately when I lost my husband several years ago. Days would go by without my having spoken audibly to anyone, save my two dogs. I was struck by how loud the silence had become in my own life.

Yet, I was not without sound during this period of my life. I began to pay attention to all the sounds that made up my day-to-day existence. The din of traffic noise, airplanes, and nautical sounds from the harbor all made for a symphony of sound. Because I wasn’t speaking out loud to anyone, I was able to intentionally listen to a whole new world of natural sounds. I heard the wind in the trees and the soft patter of my dogs’ feet as they walked across the hardwood floors. I listened for the distinctive sounds of a variety of birds as they went about foraging for food or calling for a mate. At the time, I did not realize how unique it was to be able to truly listen because I was by myself nor would I have viewed it, as I now do, as a gift.

Paying attention to the world around us and asking questions are some of the wonderful qualities of being human. Anyone who has spent even a small amount of time around young children knows that asking questions about every possible subject preoccupies their early verbal expressions.

Whenever I begin to fret about the volume of my questions or the apparent lack of answers for them, I recall a conversation I once had with a colleague when I began my first position after seminary. We were discussing the nature of heaven. Like many, I had insisted that it would be a place where all questions would be answered and all that was unclear would be made clear immediately upon arrival.

I will never forget his response to me. “Oh no,” he replied. “I don’t think it will be that way at all. Otherwise, there would be no more discovery or learning; no more wonder.”

Instead, he mused about how heaven would be a place of endless discovery and learning. The impediments of finitude being removed, heaven would be very much as C.S. Lewis envisioned in his novel The Last Battle. The inhabitants would be taken “further up and further in” for eternity. My friend believed that moving “further up and further in” would involve questions, imagination, and discovery, because the capacity for learning would be limitless and endless.

Interestingly, the kingdom of heaven revealed by Jesus looks a great deal like this. It might come as a surprise—even to those who claim to be Christians—that Jesus asked more questions than he answered, at least as his life is recorded and revealed in the gospel narratives. According to author Martin Copenhaver in his systematic study of the questions of Jesus, Jesus asked 307 questions. Furthermore, he is asked 183 questions—of which he answers three.¹ Think of that!

It turns out that asking questions was central to Jesus’s life and to the way he taught those who followed him. More than using didactic teaching, Jesus often explored the reality of the kingdom by asking questions. Other times, he told stories and used metaphors. Far from presenting easy answers, Jesus often left questions unanswered or his teaching unexplained.

But Jesus did not ask questions or leave them unanswered in order to be mysterious or enigmatic. His questions took his listeners deeper into wonder, discovery, and into discomfort:

Do you wish to get well?

What do you want me to do for you?

Who do you say that I am?

Why do you call me, “Lord, Lord” but do not do what I tell you?

Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?²

It turns out that asking questions was central to Jesus’s life and to the way he taught those who followed him.

Significantly, Jesus’s questions went straight to the heart of the matter. They were piercingly intimate and vulnerable, as when he asked his disciples if they wanted to “go away” after he gave the very complex teaching about consuming his body and blood as recorded in John 6. Far from requiring immediate answers, Jesus asked questions to prompt careful and considered reflection, often inviting wonder and amazement: Who then is this that even the wind and the seas obey him?

Jesus even asked the question that resounds on the lips and in the hearts of humans throughout the ages: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And through his life, death, and resurrection, he ultimately answered the deepest questions of our minds and hearts.

Surely, there is a time to put away endless questions and to rest. There is a time to pause and simply to be grateful for the human journey of discovery. But when questions arise and they are not easily answered or dismissed, there is a space for them as well. Likewise, Jesus’s questions invite us closer to the One who created us to ask in the first place.

¹ See Martin Copenhaver, Jesus Is the Question: The 307 Questions Jesus Asked and The Three He Answered (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2014), xviii. Copenhaver tallies eight direct answers from Jesus but notes, “whichever count you go with, it is an astonishingly small number.”

² See John 5:6; Mark 10:36, 51; Matthew 16:15; Luke 6:46; Matthew 7:3.

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The opening lines of A Tale of Two Cities have given the literary world one of the greatest precursory statements of all time. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…” These famous words of Charles Dickens mark some of the best-known lines of literature, skillfully reflecting the novel’s central tension between opposing pairs and the ebbs and flows of an era.

In this occasion of the New Year we, too, are inclined to pause and reflect, to look back and look forward with thoughts and words that help us sift through the stories unfolding before us. Significant dates and holidays, birthdays and anniversaries, naturally lend themselves to times of reflection, the first of the year being perhaps the most confronting date (and certainly the best marketed) that calls us to reflect. That we have before us the month that marks another beginning of another year is unavoidable, even if merely seen as time to buy a new calendar or join another health club.

Armed with resolutions and lofty goals, many stare into the 365 days ahead of us with hope and expectation, sometimes with fear, sometimes with determination, other times with excitement. And we look at the days behind us with a careful eye for what is past, at times with nostalgia for all that has gone by, or heaviness for all we longed to see turn out differently, but hopefully with wisdom to carry into days to come. What were the year’s successes and failures? What will I accomplish this year? Where have I been? How far have we come along?

But the New Year is also a time to ask perhaps with a greater sense of existential angst, “Where am I going?” Or maybe even “Where did we come from?” In the pages of one major newspaper on New Year’s Day were articles discussing several up and coming self-improvement, self-discovery books for the New Year. In between advice for learning to embrace your life fully and tips for rehabilitating your sense of style, the author herself noted the inconsistency of the well-marketed, self-help world of reflecting. “If all these books are out there,” she asked, the question remains: “Why aren’t we well?” Such are inquiries worthy of the season.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Best of Times →

Shankar Vedantam is the host of NPR’s show The Hidden Brain. The show explores the unseen, largely unconscious, cognitive processes that often shape our decisions, impact our emotions, and inform our thinking. Vedantam began his exploration into the social sciences by examining research on implicit bias—and it was from this study that he wrote his book on the subject—also called The Hidden Brain. Psychologists posit that implicit biases are influenced by experience and are often formed as a result of learning associations between qualities and categories including race and gender.(1)

There are many ways in which implicit biases function in our lives. Confirmation bias, for example, is the tendency to search for, interpret, focus on, and remember information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions.(2) People tend to react more favorably to information that supports their own point of view. Another example of a more insidious bias is the fundamental attribution error in which an observer ascribes to a subject fundamental or inherent deficiencies rather than to situational contexts that might also be at work. In addition, the observer is more likely to attribute his or her own deficiencies to circumstances or situational contexts, rather than to his or her own personal short-comings.

Many authors attribute the fundamental attribution error to a lack of empathy or the inability to take another person’s perspective. How does this cognitive error play out in real life? In a CBS News article from 2016, Stephanie Pappas reported on the widespread tendency to blame, rather than to empathize with individuals, when accidents happen.(3) She cites the horrific news story of the two-year old who died by alligator attack while playing next to a pond at Disney World. While she notes that there was some initial sympathy for the parents, the overall tone quickly moved to blame them for negligence. Clearly, it was their fault that their son had died. People ignored the numerous reports of the parents being right next to the child and of the father’s desperate attempts to pry his son from the alligator’s jaws. Rather than looking at broader circumstances or explanations—namely, that accidents do happen—most blamed the event on the inherent flaws of the parents.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Confirmation Bias  →

I remember the mixed feelings of setting up the nativity scene at home for Christmas. My mum was always so excited that she made a special appointment for us every year, and she would come up with creative ideas on how to build up Joseph and Mary’s cave. As my twin brother and I grew up, she let us help her in making the river and the sky more realistic, or in better securing the angel so it wouldn’t fall from the mountain. One of my favorite parts was the task of carrying the magi figurines every day closer and closer to the manger. For my brother and me, it was a special time and we used to fight for the responsibility because it made the story so real.

But I mentioned that I had mixed feelings, and that is because my dad didn’t like this tradition of ours one bit. Every year I saw his face, filled with worry for us, keeping a distance from these plastic dolls as if they were something dangerous, as if somehow they would put us all in trouble. I couldn’t understand why he told us we shouldn’t focus our attention on the scene or the images, why he was so worried we would end up worshiping that baby plastic Jesus. I was shocked to hear him say so, and I kept asking myself: Why would I worship a plastic thing? I knew that was not Jesus.

I knew this, but I also knew that his anguish was real.

Years later at art school, we studied artists in history who illustrated and decorated churches since the early times of Christianity. As some of you know, in Spain, there are Catholic churches in almost every town. Many of these buildings are ancient, and whenever I went to visit one I admired with wonder all the artistic finery. I couldn’t help but connect my childhood memories, those marvelous structures, and the emptiness my local church seemed to have in comparison. Added to this, while I learned more and more history of my country, some of this imagery became loaded with the civil war memories, and the scars of war that as a country we are carrying still. So, yes. I still have mixed feelings of wonder, terror, and sadness.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – On Creativity   →

A New Year’s Reflection from Ravi Zacharias

Henry Frances Lyte, at least on this side of the Atlantic, may be a name that only great lovers of hymns will recognize. He is the author of the famous hymn “Abide with Me.” Very few hymns have merited a whole book on the background of their writing. “Abide with Me” is one of those. I am indebted to the author of an old volume that tells the story for the numerous facts he has culled.¹

The first time I heard this hymn I was a nine-year-old boy standing by the graveside of my grandmother, who died in her seventies. Little did I know then that I was listening to words that had such a solemn and powerful history. I don’t know what it was about the hymn that gripped me even then, but I recall wiping away tears hearing “In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.” I was not fully comprehending but grasping just enough to know we were in need of a Presence and of comfort.

Lyte was a natural poet. Having lost his parents early and been cared for by the headmaster of the school, who became his guardian, he was tenderhearted and his emotions ran deep. It is an incredible story. At age seven, he was orphaned when both his parents abandoned him, each for different reasons: a father who turned his back on responsibility and a mother who left to make a living. His poetic genius began to surface early, as he longed to belong. He recalled bedtime as a child being tearful, as he wished for even the shadow of his mother to pass by. Here are the first four lines from an early piece. (The whole poem is beautiful.)

Stay gentle shadow of my mother stay:
Thy form but seldom comes to bless my sleep.
Ye faithless slumbers, flit not thus away,
And leave my wistful eyes to wake and weep.

One can imagine the groaning of a child spurning his orphaned reality.

At age sixteen, he penned a masterpiece, “To a Field Flower.” He was fascinated by the rose and the tulip, but his adulation remained for the lingering primrose that withstood the choke of winter and beamed at the dawning spring:

Hail, lovely harbinger of spring!
Hail, little modest flower!
Fanned by the tempest’s icy wing
Dashed by the hoary shower.

Thy balmy breath, thy softened bloom,
Was ever welcome here;
But at this hour of wintry gloom,
Thy smile is doubly dear.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Passing and The Abiding →

In the days following of Christmas, for many the mood is something like the brilliant lights we have just unplugged. Guests go home. Decorations come down. Celebrations cease. Life resumes with a little less fanfare perhaps. Poet W.H. Auden describes the letdown of Christmas almost too well—reminding me even of things I hadn’t considered until my five year old son collapsed into a pool of tears beside our Christmas tree, horizontally resting on the curb beside the trash bins. For my son as much as the poet, the dismantling of Christmas is a lamentable affair:

Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,

Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes…

There are enough left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week—

Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,

Stayed up so late, attempted—quite unsuccessfully—

To love all of our relatives, and in general

Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again

As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed

To do more than entertain it as an agreeable

Possibility, once again we have sent Him away…

The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,

And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware

Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension…(1)

For Auden, in the days after Christmas, we step down from the heights of the holiday and along with our colored lights return to dimmer realities: daily life and its monotony, despairing headlines, another year of wearisome failures, blind spots, and missteps. Writing in 1942, Auden’s sense of the dismal reality of life after Christmas was likely heightened by the uncertainties of war and the certainty of violence. For many, Christmas indeed serves as a moment of respite in the midst of harsher realities that promise to recommence. Still for others, the season itself is disheartening and the aftermath is more of the same. Regardless, the picture W.H. Auden paints is one in which many can enter—at five or ninety-five.

Yet Auden’s attempt to describe life after Christmas is far more than an offer of depressing poetry. Auden reminds us that we come down from the heights of Christmas in order to embrace again the world in all of its brokenness and finitude, in order to receive the Child whose arrival was not marked by lights and decoration but the slaughter of the innocents at Herod’s orders and a few witnesses in an unknown stable. Auden reminds us that the time after Christmas is the time when Christ can step into the thick of our lives as he intended. Writes Auden:

To those who have seen

The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,

The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.

The countercultural Christmas story that sits at the heart of all our holiday efforts begs us to see it as far more than a peak event in December. Christmas is an annual reminder on the church calendar that God is on the move and was on the move long before we knew it. In fact, it was precisely into our dismal, empty, post-festive reality that the Child came near in the first place.

In the bleak moments of late winter, Christmas is not anti-climactic; it confronts us all the more. It is our startling reminder that God has not forgotten, though in the thick of our empty routines, despairing headlines, and blinding self-interest we may forget the Child. Yet here, in the quiet and empty days after celebrations have ceased, the sights and sounds of the human God among us can better be noticed and more authentically received. If Advent brings the world’s attention to the sounds of one who stands at the door and knocks, and Christmas marks the culmination of that knocking in the cry of a newborn king, then the days thereafter usher us further into the presence of a God who not only knocks and draws near, but has opened wide the doors of heaven and calls us further into the kingdom where God himself wipes away every tear.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) W.H. Auden, Collected Poems, ed. Edward Mendelson (New York: Random House, 1991), 399.

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The first Christmas after my father passed away, I remember sitting in my parents’ home on Christmas eve, wanting to have some time alone to think about my dad. Being the father of a young family myself, it had a been a day full of frantic activity getting ready for Christmas. Christmas music was playing, sweet and savory aromas of cooking and baking were wafting from the kitchen, and our children were chasing each other throughout the house. So many signs of life surrounded me. Yet, I could not shake the reality of a profound absence. My father was not there.

I decided to go for a walk. It was a cold December evening and a thin layer of frost covered the sidewalks. With each step there was a crunch and crackle that came from the ground. As I walked I wanted to speak thoughts about my dad that I had not said, but I just did not know how to say the words. I wanted to talk to my dad. I wanted him to be there with me. Without thinking, I began speaking in a quiet voice to my dad. “I miss you, Dad.” I continued. “I bet that if you were home right now, you would probably be out here walking with me, hey?” Then it just flowed naturally. “Dad, you would be so happy if you were here. You would love seeing all the kids. And I know you would look after the hot apple cider!”

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The floor contains the remnants of torn wrappings, boxes, and bows. The stockings hang lifeless from the mantel, empty of all their contents. Leftovers are all that are left of holiday feasting. Wallets are empty and feelings of buyer’s remorse begin to descend and suffocate. On the morning after Christmas, thus begins the season of let down.

It’s not a surprise really. For many in the West, the entire focus of the Christmas season is on gift-giving, holiday parties, and family gatherings, all of which are fine in and of themselves. But these things often become the centerpiece of the season. Marketers and advertisers ensure that this is so and prime the buying-pump with ads and sales for Christmas shopping long before December. Once November ends, the rush for consumers is on, and multitudinous festivities lead to a near fever pitch.

And then, very suddenly, it is all over.

In an ironic twist of history, Christmas day became the end point, the full-stop of the Christmas season. But in the ancient Christian tradition, Christmas day was only the beginning of the Christmas season. The oft-sung carol The Twelve Days of Christmas was not simply a song sung, but a lived reality of the Christmas celebration.(1) In the traditional celebrations, the somber anticipation of Advent—waiting for God to act—flowed into the celebration of the Incarnation that began on Christmas day and culminated on “twelfth night”—the Feast of Epiphany.

For twelve days following Christmas, Christians celebrated the “Word made flesh” dwelling among them. The ancient feasts that followed Christmas day all focused on the mystery of the Incarnation worked out in the life of the believers. Martyrs, evangelists, and ordinary people living out the call of faith are all celebrated during these twelve days.

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God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen is one of my favorite carols of the Advent season.

God rest ye merry gentlemen

Let nothing you dismay,

For Jesus Christ our Savior

Was born upon this day,

To save us all from Satan’s power

When we were gone astray:

O tidings of comfort and joy,

Comfort and joy,

O tidings of comfort and joy.

This old English carol reminded Christians that dismay and the darkness of sin were not the final word. Rather, the Advent of Jesus had delivered them from the “domain of darkness” and transferred them “into the kingdom of light.”(1) And yet, the tune is set in a minor key. While no expert in music, I love the juxtaposition of the minor notes and tones with uplifting lyrics, for it reminds me of the reality that joy is often mingled with sorrow. This is true of life, but also true of Advent.

The longing and expectation that begins the Advent season, turns to joy as the arrival of the Christ child approaches. Christians rejoice for the tiny baby who will be King. Here is joy enfleshed, and our lives belong to his rule and reign. And yet, many who are familiar with this carol, even those who sing its verses, may still feel the power of evil over them or feel that they have yet to find their way to the manger of Jesus. Some find it difficult to enter into the joy and victory that Christmas proclaims.

For many in our world today, it is difficult to rejoice when the predominant experience is that is a world in crisis. Many desperately long to enter into the joy promised long ago to humble shepherds: “Behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which shall be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Messiah, the Lord.”(2) But, for one reason or another, they still feel trapped by adversarial powers.

Those first recipients of the announcement heralding the birth of the Messiah knew it signaled the end of exile and darkness, for the coming of the Messiah meant a new age for the people of Israel. We hear this promise sung in psalms: “When the Lord brought back the captive ones of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with joyful shouting; Then they said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them.’”(3) The Messiah would gather those who had wandered, and would be light to those in the darkness. Great things will be accomplished for the people as a result of the Messiah’s advent.

Yet, these great things were not accomplished without tears of sorrow and mourning. For in this same psalm that heralds God’s deliverance, joy and sorrow are inextricably linked: “Those who sow in tears shall reap with joyful shouting. He who goes to and fro weeping, carrying his bag of seed, shall indeed come again with a shout of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.”(4) Indeed, the sowing and the seed are the tears of the exiles, tears that bear a mysterious harvest of joy. Talitha Arnold reflects on the mystery of suffering turned to joy: “The natural power of God to turn seeds into grain would be miracle enough. But Psalm 126 makes an even greater statement. The seeds are not ordinary, but seeds of sorrow. The fruit they bear is not grain or wheat, but shouts of joy.”(5)

In spite of a world easily consumed by sorrow and sadness this season, those who anticipate the arrival of the source of all joy recognize that the harvest of joy is sown in tears—tears that are redeemed by the one who “for the joy set before him endured the cross and suffered its shame.”(6) Jesus, the joy of the world, was not immune to tears. The “tidings of comfort and joy” would be that God enters our suffering and is not removed from it. God enters into humanity as the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. God makes a dwelling place with the exiles of this world every Advent Season offering deliverance and salvation.

Joy is often elusive even as it is sought after with great energy. But perhaps we look in the wrong places and in the wrong ways: “This is no jingle-bells joy brought with a swipe of a credit card,” Arnold continues. “The seeds of this joy have been planted in sadness and watered with tears. This is the honest joy that often comes only after weeping has tarried the night.”(7) Tidings of comfort and joy come in a person, according to the Christian gospel, a person who sowed both tears of joy and sadness himself. How poignant that these tidings of comfort and joy are issued from this Man of Sorrows! Yet it is Jesus who can bring joy from tears and fill hearts with gladness at his coming. Weeping may last through the night, but joy indeed comes in the morning.

Margaret Manning Shull is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Bellingham, Washington.

(1) Colossians 1:13.

(2) Luke 2:10-11.

(3) Psalm 126:1-3.

(4) Psalm 126:5-6

(5) Talitha Arnold, Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Ed. David Lyon Bartlett (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 60.

(6) Hebrews 12:2.

(7) Arnold, 60.

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According to a national organization dedicated to the study and aid of mental health, holiday stress is a widespread occurrence that plagues more of the population every year, for more time each year. “Americans are stressed during the holidays, we’ve long known this,” said David Shern, president of Mental Health America. “However, on January 2, when a person may expect the stress let up, they instead find themselves feeling down, physically ill, or anxious. This is because stress takes a serious toll on a person’s overall health—both physical and mental.”(1) And the phenomenon is hardly unique to America.

If we could somehow miraculously transport someone from the time of the Old Testament into this conversation and he or she listened to us describe the stress we feel as we move closer and closer to Christmas, they would concur. We would of course first have to explain what Christmas is—namely, the remembrance of the birth of the Messiah, the day God came among us. But at this explanation, they would immediately understand. In fact, they would find it completely remarkable if anyone should not face with stress, awe, and trembling the thought that God is coming, that God is here.

Of course, whatever our religion, we are well aware that this is not why we are stressed at Christmastime. According to Shern, we are stressed at the approach of Christmas because of finances, because of family, because of the absence of family, because of over-indulgence, because we have too much to do, or because we have too little to do and feel the pointed edges of loneliness. For so many of us, the thought that Christmas is coming is indeed one that invokes fear, trembling, and attention, though perhaps for unfortunate reasons.

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