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Humans Like Us – Ravi Zacharias

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The 12th of January 2012 saw an India deeply shocked and embarrassed by a certain footage released by the British Newspaper The Observer, which showed half-clad Jarawa tribal women and children enticed to dance and sing for tourists in exchange for food and trinkets. Who are the Jarawas we may ask? The Jarawas are the tribal inhabitants of the Andaman Islands situated a few miles from southeast India. With an existing population of about 250-400 individuals, they are the descendants of one of the four ancient Negroid tribes who were stranded on the Andamans because of rising sea water. Apparently, this particular community still lives in complete isolation, cut off from any education, health care, or development.

Minutes after this footage from The Observer, a huge public outcry followed as newspapers, TV anchors, and people from various walks of life came forward to express their outrage at human beings treated “like zoo animals made to dance for food.” Television channels were abuzz with debates and discussions on this issue of “human safari,” as it was termed. It was interesting to observe the various reactions and responses sparked off by the issue: some NGOs demanded the immediate closure of Jarawas territory to tourists, others wanted the government to ensure that the Jarawas continue to be cocooned in seclusion and isolated from the mainstream population to protect them from disease and cultural degradation.

What is it about this issue that rankles so, and raises such a storm of protest? I think the answer is succinctly put by Swaminathan Anklesaria Aiyar, a noted columnist who responded with an article in the Times of India: “Jarawas are human beings… just like us.”(1) The Jarawa issue was disturbing simply because it is about “human beings just like us.” Pertinent questions may arise: What is so special about being human? What is so great about being “us”? If we believe that mankind is just another species of animal, then why should we worry ourselves when human beings are treated like one? As for those who believe that everything is maya, or illusion, there is absolutely no reason for protest, for if everything is an illusion, then the Jarawas too are an illusion. They are not real; so the question of how they are treated or mistreated does not arise.

The biblical worldview gives a contrasting response to the Jarawas and the question of what it means to be human. The Bible asserts that human beings are created by God and in God’s own image. This fact of being specially created by a personal God gives humanity both worth and purpose. We recognize somewhere in our very beings that a human cannot be treated like an animal simply because he or she is more than this. He is different! She is special!

As King David reflects on the mystery of being human in Psalm 8:

When I consider your heavens,

the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars,

which you have set in place,

what is mankind that you are mindful of them,

human beings that you care for them?

You have made them a little lower than the heavenly beings

and crowned them with glory and honor.

In the outcry heard around the nation and indeed, around the world, I believe there are echoes of the knowledge of this reflection. God has made us a little lower than the heavenly beings. God has crowned us with glory and honor.

Tejdor Tiewsoh is a member of the speaking team with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Shillong, India.

(1) Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar, “Jarawas Are Human Beings…Just Like Us,” Times of India, 15 January 2012.

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Surprised by Suffering – Ravi Zacharias

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Gayle Williams was a 34 year-old foreign aid worker serving among the disabled in a country where humanitarian work is both needed and dangerous. Williams was killed as she walked to work, targeted by a militant group because they believed she was spreading Christianity.

Elsewhere, a young medical student at a prestigious university described in detail the hostility he confronts daily as a Christian. He spoke of students and friends who deride the possibility of possessing both faith and intellect, medical professors who actually apologize when the language of design inadvertently slips into lectures on the body, and the isolation that comes from trying to stand in the shadows of this increasingly antagonistic majority.

When confronted by the stories of those who live their faith among people who hate them for it, I am confounded, inspired, saddened, and thankful all at once. The death and murder of Gayle Williams startles those at ease in their faith to reflection. The pervasive opposition in the lives of believing university students awakens even seasoned believers to their own apathy. How courageous is the believer who follows Christ among those who hurl insults and hostility? How treasured is the Bible that must be buried in the backyard for protection? How sacred is the faith of one who is willing to die for it?

For those of us who live in far less hostile environments, news of persecution is foreign, frightening, and difficult to fathom. Their experiences bring the words of the early church to life in a way that many of us have never considered. When the apostle Paul wrote that nothing will separate us from the love of Christ—neither “trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword”—he was referring to struggles that were dangerously real to him and the people to whom he was writing. “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies” (2 Corinthians 4:8-10). Peter, too, encouraged believers in their troubling situations. He urged them to stand firm in their convictions regardless of their affliction; he reminded them that discomfort and suffering was a sacred part of following the wounded one. “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ” (1 Peter 4:12-13).

The apostles’ words do not take away the injustice of brutal murder. But they do assuage the shock of its occurrence. Jesus told his followers to expect persecution; in fact, he said they would be blessed by it. “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matthew 5:11-12). Peter’s words encourage the suffering not to see their painful trials as strange or out of the ordinary, but as something that further marks them as believers and unites them in even greater intimacy with their leader. Persecution may be always jarring, unfair, or lamentable, but it is not strange when it happens to those who follow Christ. Perhaps it is stranger when it is not happening.

Mark Twain once said, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.” For those of us who live the faith we profess without challenge, trial, or risk, reflection may well be appropriate. Is it possible that we have so shut ourselves up in Christian circles that we have closed ourselves off from the world and hence any chance of suffering for Christ? Is it possible that we are so at ease among the majority that we avoid venturing out as the minority among those who might hate or hurt us? Certainly we experience hostility and persecution indirectly. But how we are personally interacting with the angry, the lost, and the broken masses Jesus once wept over is another thing entirely. How effectively we live as “the salt of the earth” that Jesus described depends on our place and posture within it. Surely salt that remains content within the shaker has lost its saltiness.

The struggles of Christian students on university campuses, the sufferings of Christian aid workers across the world, and the daily trials of believers who live courageously in dangerous places are stories that frighten and sadden us.  They are also stories that depict what can happen when the salt of the kingdom is allowed to season the earth. Gayle Williams is said to have been the hand of Christ among some of the world’s most forgotten. “Remember the words I spoke to you,” said Jesus to his disciples. “‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also” (John 15:20). And then he was led away like a sheep to the slaughter.(1)

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

(1) Isaiah 53:7

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Timeless News for the Time Bound – Ravi Zacharias

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Most of us, if we’re honest, live by the clock. The alarm sounds and we are off, watching the minutes slip by. Time-sensitive deadlines drive our days. We have appointments and meetings, we eat at a certain time, and the day ends by a certain time. Bound to our timepieces, it often seems our every moment is synchronized and controlled.

In contrast to the “objective” measures of time marking seconds, minutes, and hours, there is also a “subjective” experience of time being “fast or slow.” Another year has come and gone, and it seems for those of us who are growing older that our experience of time passes by more and more quickly. Most of us feel our vacation time as ephemeral and fleeting, while our work week plods slowly by—and yet both are marked by the same objective measurements of time. How is it that our subjective experience of time is so different from what our watches and clocks objectively mark out for us, second by second, hour by hour?

This question of our subjective experience of time is one that ancient philosophers and theologians pondered. Their philosophical and theological musings bequeathed to us many perplexities regarding the human experience of time. Saint Augustine, for example, wrestled with the fleeting character of our human temporal experience. He was rightly perplexed by the experience of apprehending the present at the moment it recedes into the past. He wrote, “We cannot rightly say what time is, except by reason of its impending state of not-being.”(1)

Regardless of the perceptual and philosophical difficulties with understanding the nature of time, what seems most crucial for human beings is the significance of events that happen in time, moment by moment, hour by hour, and day by day. Seeking to reclaim this emphasis, theologians have tried to understand the nature of time by what takes place in time—a narrative of unfolding events.(2) These theological discussions involve God’s engagement with time. Is God a wholly atemporal being, outside of time and history? Or is God genuinely engaged with time and revealed through an unfolding story of historical disclosure?

The biblical writers give witness to a God who progressively unfolds saving acts within history as they experienced them. The divine plan of salvation that Christians believe culminates in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ is called salvation history. Yet, God did not, for example, reveal every aspect of salvation to Abraham or to Moses. Instead, the biblical writers give witness to the God who works within and through the temporal events of history to reveal the plan of redemption. We see this unfolding in God’s commissioning of Moses prior to the Exodus:

“I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty (El Shaddai) but by my name ‘the Lord (YHWH)’ I did not make myself known.”(3)

Within the long ministry of the prophets as well, a God is revealed who gradually discloses what will take place. Isaiah presents the God who “proclaims to you new things from this time; even hidden things which you have not known. They are created now, and not long ago: and before today you have not heard them” (Isaiah 48:6-7).

For Christians, God’s decisive revelatory action in time is in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. While there are many glimpses, sign-markers, and hints pointing towards a messianic redeemer in the Old Testament, ultimately God chose to enter a particular time as a human being to live life among the time-bound.

The significance of those time-bound events continues into our time, and indeed into eternity. And through the unfolding of time, humans can grow in their understanding of who God is and what God has done through Jesus, the Messiah. Indeed, as Jesus spoke with his disciples, he suggested that there would be more to learn and more to reveal through the work of the Holy Spirit: “I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.  But when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own initiative, but whatever he hears he will speak; and he will disclose to you what is to come.“(4)

The witness of Scripture suggests that the events of our lives reveal this ongoing work of the Spirit. Sometimes, we apprehend the significance of those events in the present time. Other times, it is only through the lens of hindsight as events recede into times past that we understand God’s action. While time might move slowly for some or quickly for others, while minutes and seconds and hours are filled with appointments, meetings, and all the events that make up our time-bound existence, the Spirit invites us to look around to see how God is working through what might appear to be ordinary events in the march of time.

As another year recedes and a new year unfolds, those who follow Jesus declare that God entered time to enact the new creation in Christ’s life, death and resurrection. As we grow in our understanding of that timeless act, the events of our temporal lives act as sign-markers for eternity. And while we often see the significance of our time-bound events “through a mirror darkly,” Christians continue to live each day in hope of that time that will come when “all things are subjected to Him…that God may be all in all.”(5)

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

(1) Augustine, Confessions, XI, 14.

(2) Colin Gunton, cited in John Polkinghorne, Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 120.

(3) Exodus 6:2-3, Italics mine.

(4) John 16:12-13, Italics mine.

(5) 1 Corinthians 15:28.

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Creaturely Gifts – Ravi Zacharias

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At the very first “show and tell” of my kindergarten career, I was faced with a moment of decision. We were seated in a circle, one by one offering the class our name and our favorite color. Oddly, it seemed as though there was an unwritten rule emerging around that circle. All of the girls, without exception, were declaring unanimously that “pink” and/or “purple” was their favorite. I was new to the idea of classmates and wanted these people beside me to be my friends. But I didn’t like either of these colors. Getting more and more anxious with each passing declaration, I decided to tell the truth. “Orange and green,” I avowed incompatibly. My response was met with giggles from boys and girls alike. Yet somehow this embarrassing spectacle only sealed my affection for the obviously unloved, underdog colors.

So when I found the pitiable orange plastic day lilies in the tiny green velvet flowerpot, I knew I had to buy them. My five-year-old eyes saw the beauty in the rejected knickknack, lost on a table full of junk, bearing a tag marked twenty-five cents at a garage sale. When I got them home, I dusted off the crispy petals, proudly wrapped a ribbon around the pot, and presented the flowers triumphantly as a gift to my dad.

Twenty years later, cleaning out the belongings of my father after he had passed away, I found the unsightly plastic flora still perched upon his desk. Looking at the tacky flowers, covered again with dust, still bearing the small ribbon, I recalled the joy of finding the orange treasure, the excitement in handing over twenty-five cents to claim it as my own, and the hard decision I made to give it away. Brushing my fingers over the green velvet pot, I recalled the pleased expression on my dad’s face as he placed it on his desk and told me he would keep it there always. And then I remembered a detail in adulthood that the eyes of the child overlooked: The quarter that purchased these flowers was his own.

Christianity is often thought of as a set of principles that people struggle to follow, earning their way into God’s favor with self-denial and obedience. But this is looking at God as we might look at a gumball machine or a bank. We cannot earn our way to whatever prize we have our eye on—even if the prize we seek is God. The shiny quarters we proudly offer, belong, in fact, to God.

Indeed, in the Christian imagination every faculty we have—from our ability to think or move to our ability to praise or seek Father, Son, and Spirit—is given to us by God Himself. As the apostle Paul declared among the idols of Mars Hill, “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else” (Acts 17:24-25). We are embedded in God’s creation; we are creatures within it. We cannot escape our creaturely vocation or our creaturely end. Everything we do is fixed within this drama of creation.

As such, we cannot possibly earn our way into God’s presence, for we cannot give the maker of heaven and earth anything that is not in a sense already God’s own. “It is because of [God] that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.  Therefore, as it is written: ‘Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.’” The tattered gifts of faith and obedience we offer were purchased with God’s own flesh and blood. As hymnist Stuart Townend has written:

How deep the Father’s love for us,

how vast beyond all measure

That He should give His only Son

to make a wretch His treasure!

How great the pain of searing loss;

the Father turns His face away,

As wounds which mar the Chosen One

bring many sons to glory.

At the time, the thought didn’t strike me at all: I borrowed a quarter from my dad to by him a present. Technically, he bought himself an ugly dust-collector. But it was nonetheless a five year-old’s sacrifice of love, and one he held onto all his life. How much more so God the Father treasures his children’s sacrifice of praise.

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

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The Best Intentions – Ravi Zacharias Ministries

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How far can we get on good intentions? According to one survey conducted among a diverse group of men and women, thirty percent of those who make New Year’s resolutions admit not keeping them into February. Just one in five continues his or her resolution for six months or more. Apparently, we don’t get very far.

We meet life with intentions to succeed, intentions to be a good person, intentions to live life to the fullest. Yet however many ways we might interpret success, goodness, or full-living, our good intentions have certain aspects in common: the hope to improve, the idea of becoming something more than what we are at the moment, the expectation that one should reach his or her potential. It is as if there is an image implanted in our minds that upholds the idea of something we could be or might be—some even use the language of even being meant to be. But there is all too often a tragic side to best intentions. When they are not fully realized, there is usually a sense that it is we who have gotten in the way.

Great minds from Augustine to G.K. Chesterton saw clearly that the most verifiable truth of the Christian worldview is certainly the depravity of humanity. It can be observed across countries and languages, at any time and within every decade, from barbaric accounts of depravity in far away places to more accepted forms of depravity close at home. We close our eyes to reality where we refuse to see the same story repeating itself again and again. We might euphemize the thought of sin into neurotic myth, outdated opinion, or church propaganda, but it has not been euthanized. Observe for a short time at any playground and you will note quickly amongst even the youngest that something is amiss. If we were to truly observe our hearts, motives, and wills, we would hardly find them good and consistent leaders to follow.

The Christian worldview recognizes the recurring story of a disappointed and disappointing humanity. Not only do we miss our own intentions, we miss the intention of one we faintly recognize within us; we sense in our createdness the greater mark and glory of the creator disappointingly out of reach. The one who spoke to the dejected Eve in the Garden of Eden and to the defiant David through the prophet Nathan is the present one beside whom we, too, stand in contrast. We can step no closer to that standard by our own intentions than a foolish king can order the stars to bow before him. To look at the Son is to find that even our best intentions are made of straw.

Yet looking at Christ, we not only see our humanity beside a perfect human, we find this perfect human moving toward us in mercy, giving us a bigger picture of the good and the fullest, and ushering us into the possibility of holding more than we ever imagined. Where we are honest about our limits and shortfalls, we can truly grasp the beauty of Jesus and the unimaginable depth of a Father’s love. It is in Christ where we find that God moves the blur of sin to give us the picture of all God intended. And here, we find the Christian worldview not only coherently offers the diagnosis, but also the cure.

The late Christian songwriter Rich Mullins alluded to the bigger pictures of God when he observed of his own life: “What I’d have settled for/ You’ve blown so far away/ What You brought me to/ I thought I could not reach.” In the intentions of God, we find that where we would have settled, where we would have been content with success or goodness, the Father moves us far beyond. Where we would have fallen beyond reach, the Son took our place. “God who is mighty,” proclaims the psalmist, “has done great things for me.” In the coming of this New Year, might we recognize a similar story in our own lives.

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

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Resolution and Mission – Ravi Zacharias Ministries

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“Make a New Year’s resolution to give up an old habit,” proclaims a billboard put up by a fledgling newspaper trying to woo away readers from a more established paper. This is the time of the year when the very word “resolution” catches our attention, and the advertisement was cashing in on the sentiment.

Resolutions clearly vary in depth of meaning. You can have a new resolution every new year if you would like. Most resolutions are short-term and can therefore be more easily evaluated than overarching values or life purposes. But even if one is successful every year in keeping a resolution, does that mean that one can, towards the twilight years of one’s life, say one has lived successfully? I’m not sure we would go as far as to say this.

In the early chapters of the Gospel of Mark, Jesus shows far more than resolution to live a particular life. Overwhelmed with the pressures of popularity to the extent that “the whole city gathered at the door,” Jesus did two things (Mark 1:33). In response to the people before him, he first met all of their needs. He healed their diseases and cast out their demons. But then, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went away to a secluded place to pray.

Immediately upon finding him, his disciples gave him what seems like an exaggerated report: “Everyone is looking for you!” they exclaimed (1:37). Gently and confidently, Jesus set the course, telling them his plans on fulfilling his mission. “Let us go somewhere else to the towns nearby, so that I may preach there also; for that is what I came for” (1:38). Popularity did not distract him. The demands of the crowds did not prevent him from focusing on what he needed to do. Jesus knew his mission in life, and every action worked toward this end.

Everyone in this world has some form of a mission statement, though often it is not formally stated. Many have implicit mission statements to make money or to become powerful or to be successful or to optimize pleasure. Though many of our goals or resolutions are not necessarily wrong in and of themselves, they become empty when elevated beyond what the accomplishment itself can provide. Success in the stock market does not make for a successful life. There is a vast difference between a resolution and a mission statement. We were meant for far more than any accomplishment of our own can provide.

If you look in the mirror of God’s Word, you will find that God not only has a plan for life itself, but a plan for your life. John reports, “When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life’” (John 8:12). Jesus gives us the only mission statement that extends beyond this life and into the next.

A clearly expressed mission statement may go against the grain of our natural inclinations and thinking. But having a clear purpose in mind helps to expose our unvoiced, inadequate mission statements and verbalize the larger existential purpose of life and the direction God has set before us. We may sometimes struggle to remain on track, but we walk not alone. As someone has said, “There is joy in the journey.” And I might add, for the follower of Christ, there is also a sense of fulfillment at the journey’s end.

Why not take the time this year to articulate a mission statement for your life? This could well be the resolution that leads to the one who revolutionizes all of life.

Cyril Georgeson is a member of the speaking team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Delhi, India.

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Prayer for a Future Me – Ravi Zacharias

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While thoughts and resolutions for the year ahead are crossing many of our minds, Matt Sly and Jay Patrikios are still thinking 30 years into the future. Sly and Patrikios are the minds behind the 2002 website “Future Me” that allows people to send messages to themselves years or decades from the time they were written. In the year 2015, a man named Adam is set to get an e-mail from himself that asks, “Do you still write? Do you still draw? Does Radio Shack still exist?” Sly explains the rationale: “We want people to think about their future and what their goals and dreams and hopes and fears are. We’re trying to facilitate some serious existential pondering.”(1)

A quick overview of some of the publicly-posted messages shows people doing just that. Some are pondering dreams they hope to have accomplished by the time they hear from themselves in the future: “I hope you are moving up in your job… I also hope you are making more responsible choices.” Others are taking it as a moment to remind themselves what they were up to years earlier or record what they hope will be beyond them in the future: “I hope you’re better because as I’m writing this letter, you’re doing terrible.” It is a time capsule wrought in an e-mail, readily drawing in participants all over the world. At the very least, it extracts in many a sense of intrigue. At most, sending words to future selves seems to draw a sense of nostalgia, accountability, apprehension, or hope.

I used to keep a journal that mostly held thoughts and events consumed with present days. I seemed most prone to write in it when something was happening or had just happened, when something was on my mind or on my heart at present. But there is one page far in the back that differentiated from the others. In scattered sentences now crammed on a page full of thoughts I speak to days far ahead of me: “Remember that you wanted to be the kind of woman that grows old gracefully.” “If you ever become a parent, I hope you will be the kind who can say ‘I’m sorry.’” “When it’s time to let go of certain freedoms, take it with poise.” “If it’s ever your turn to face disease, remember that you wanted to do it with faith; you wanted death never to scare you more than resurrection gives you hope.” While I like to think of these mental notes as prayers for the future—and many of them are—many of them more closely resemble a listing of fears, an anxious warning at what I might forget or what might go wrong. Though I am looking ahead, it is as if I am still looking behind me.

In an essay titled “Please Shut This Gate” English author F.W. Boreham describes signs carefully placed by landowners throughout the landscape of New Zealand. “Please shut this gate,” was a message one could read often throughout his countryside, signs placed by fence owners intent on keeping some things from wandering away and some things from wandering in. Depicting this common scene, Boreham then draws a parallel to the importance of shutting similar gates in our own lives, closing the door that keeps things both in and out. He writes, “[W]hen Israel escaped from Babylon, and dreaded a similar attack from behind, the voice divine again reassured them. ‘I, the Lord thy God, will be thy rearguard’ (Isaiah 58:8). There are thousands of things behind me of which I have good reason to be afraid; but it is the glory of the Christian evangel that all the gates may be closed. It is grand to be able to walk in green pastures and beside still waters unafraid of anything that I have left in the perilous fields behind me.”(2)

Whether looking down roads to the New Year or the coming decades, it is the gift of the follower of Jesus that there are gates that may be closed. We need not worry about the future, nor look to resolutions or future me’s with fear of failing, nor tremble at what Christ has put behind us—or in front of us. In the words of a seventeenth century Puritan: “To suppose that whatever God requireth of us we have power of ourselves to do is to make the Cross and grace of Jesus Christ of none effect.”(3) Christ has written a message across the future to be delivered to our laboring souls each new day. As he went head first into the shadows of self-giving, he cried, “It is finished,” forever offering a door to shut, forever promising the strength to shut it. In this New Year, one can say in hope and in light: Christ has gone before us, he walks among us, he is our rearguard, he is our strength.

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

(1) Matt Sly and Jay Patrikios, Futureme.org.

(2) F.W. Boreham, “Please Shut This Gate,” The Silver Shadow (New York: The Abingdon Press, 1919), 118-119.

(3) John Owen, Works of John Owen: Volume 3 (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1862), 433.

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The Bread of Life – Ravi Zacharias

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Grain, water, salt, leavening agent, honey. These basic ingredients have fed humanity for millennia. Combined in innumerable ways, they form bread. As a basic food, bread has everything necessary to sustain life, which is miraculous given the simplicity of its elements. For the majority of ancient people, bread was the centerpiece of most meals. The classic texts of antiquity, including the pages of the Old Testament, detail its prevalence and use. Enjoyed alongside sumptuous feasts or the sole item for a meal, the baking and eating of bread has been a food tradition regardless of economic class or status. Bread baking has such a long and important history that even the British Museum houses loaves thought to be 5,000 years old.(1)

I became interested in bread a few years ago when I was introduced to artisan bread baking. Artisanal breads are generally loaves that are hand-shaped, rather than put into a baking pan, and they do not utilize commercial yeast for leavening the loaf. Instead, loaves are carefully shaped by hand, and naturally occurring yeast is captured and used for leavening which requires much more time than commercial baking processes. Though a much slower process, the satisfaction that comes from the hearty, complex loaves makes artisanal baking worth the wait.

When I began baking in this manner, I remember being in awe that such simple ingredients could make something that tasted so wonderfully complex, and that was so deeply satisfying for hunger. For me, it gives endless delight to bake and share a loaf of bread with friends and with those in need. For how miraculous that something so simple and so basic could sustain and delight something as complex as human life.

Given its rich and long history, and the ubiquity of bread around the world as a basic food source, it is no surprise that one would find it as a prominent illustration in the teaching of Jesus. In the gospel according to John, for example, bread is a portion of the meal that was used in a great feeding miracle.(2) Barley loaves—five to be exact—nourished and sustained 5,000 weary travelers following around after Jesus and listening to him preach and teach. After being miraculously nourished and satisfied by such simple and meager elements, the people desired to seize Jesus and make him their king!

Like many of the crowds that followed, this one missed the point Jesus was making in using common elements, like bread. He had not come among them simply to serve as their miracle worker, but to reveal the life that was offered in the breaking of the bread to feed them.

So he tells them a story from the history of Israel. Like them, the ancient Israelites were fed when they were hungry. Manna, literally “what is it” in Hebrew, sustained them as they wandered in the wilderness after their exodus from Egypt. In this time of utter hunger and desperation, the children of Israel were sustained by this simple food that fell from heaven. But Jesus issues a sober reminder that the forefathers and mothers of Israel who ate manna—and those who now experienced the miracle of the loaves—would not be satisfied for long.

The simple sign of the bread was intended to point them all toward something else. To those listening to Jesus, the bread was a physical sign of the reality that the bread of life was now in their midst. “Truly, truly, I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread out of heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world.” Jesus declares to them that he is the bread of life. Those who eat this bread will never be hungry again. Indeed, those who eat this bread will never die.(3)

Later, Jesus would again break bread with his twelve disciples. He would insist that it would be through his breaking, through his death on the Cross, that the bread of life would be given for the world. The manna, the barley loaves, and the bread at the Last Supper all point to the deeper reality that new and unending life comes as a gift from God who is at work among us, nourishing and gifting the world with bread from heaven—Jesus, the Messiah.

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

(1)Stephen Holloway, “The History of Bread” accessed from Food History at http://www.kitchenproject.com, 1998-2004.

(2)This story occurs in all four gospel traditions. John 6:1-14; 27-58. See also Matthew 14:13-21; Mark 6:31-44; Luke 9:11-17.

(3) See John 6:1-14; 27-58.

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Journey of Arrivals – Ravi Zacharias

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“As for me,” said American writer E.B. White, “I en­joy liv­ing among ped­es­tri­ans who have an in­stinct­ive and ha­bitu­al real­iz­a­tion that there is more to a jour­ney than the mere fact of ar­rival.”(1)

Under typical circumstances, the beloved author of Charlotte’s Web would not have presented me with much pause here. The pause of agreement, yes, for his is the kind of thought with which I deeply resonate. Particularly in the segments of life where we are comfortable with our divided realms, we lamentably fail to see the great gift of the collective whole; end triumphs over means, destination over the journey, heaven is divided from earth, the spiritual from the physical, the present from the eternal. White’s words fit aptly upon any soapbox addressing the paradox of a kingdom that is both present and approaching, a kingdom found both along the way and in our final arrival—a mystery Jesus championed again and again, in his storytelling and in his own coming and going. In the kingdom he espoused, the journey toward it is not a matter of merely arriving one distant day at the gates of pearl, but rather finding the pearl of great price in our midst even now and seizing it for all eternity. Under typical circumstances, I would have enlisted E.B. White’s voice in one of my favorite sermons and kept moving.

But I happened to read this quote as I watched live coverage of 33 Chilean miners emerging from a two-month journey of being trapped beneath the earth. For them, the journey was indeed astounding, but the arrival was everything.

Over seventy years ago from a pulpit in London, Dietrich Bonhoeffer described the image of a man trapped after a mining disaster: Deep in the earth, dark as night, the man is cut off and alone. The supply of oxygen is limited. Food, water, and options are scarce; silence and fear are not. He knows his situation, and he can do nothing but wait. Writes Bonhoeffer, “He knows that up there, the people are moving about, the women and children are crying—but the way to them is blocked. There is no hope.”(2) But what if just then, in the distance, the sounds of tapping are heard—the sound of knocking, the sound of friends, the sounds of drills, rescue capsules, and deliverance? This, said Bonhoeffer in December of 1933, is the hope of Christian Advent: the coming of a deliverer, the drawing near of God to humankind, the arrival of Christ our rescuer. Like the Chilean miners, elated at the arrival of Manuel Gonzalez, the rescuer sent 2,040 feet underground to coordinate the procedure, Christ’s arrival into our dark world matters most profoundly. His descent assures our ascent.

But his arrival is not the end of our waiting. The journey continues. “Can and should there be anything else more important for us than the hammers and blows of Jesus Christ coming into our lives?” asks Bonhoeffer.(3) Indeed, no. Yet even with the hope of Christ in our midst, Advent teaches us how to wait and to watch, how to experience the journey expectantly, though we remain in the dark, though we find ourselves impatient pedestrians anxious for new scenery. We learn to be pedestrians bent on arrival, but alert on the journey nonetheless: “When these things begin to take place,” instructs Christ, “stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (Luke 21:28).

The world is of course still dark and lonely. But in it every day and each new year is the startling hope of a rescuer in our midst. “There are actually 34 of us,” wrote Jimmy Sanchez from underground, who at 19 years old was the youngest trapped miner, “because God has never left us down here.”(4) The signs and sounds of this hope are all around:  sounds of God’s reign in unexpected places; signs of Christ in fellow pedestrians; the sounds of saints who have gone before us, and now stand on the solid surface of our hope.

The story of Advent is a journey of arrivals. The word itself, from the Latin adventus, means arrival, approach, coming. And it is this storied mystery we are invited to proclaim: Christ has arrived. Christ walks among us. Christ assures our own arrival is near.

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

(1) E.B. White, One Man’s Meat (Gardiner, Maine: Tilbury House Publishers, 1997), 108.

(2) Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christmas Sermons (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 89.

(3) Ibid., 96.

(4) Tim Padgett, “Chile’s Mine Rescue: Media Circus and Religious Revival,” Time Online, October 12, 2010, http://www.time.com/, accessed October 19, 2010.

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Which Virgin Birth? – Ravi Zacharias

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A while back I received an email from a friend of mine, a retired Princeton University professor, in which he detailed some of his objections to Christianity, and in his last line—as if to trump all other considerations—he wrote, “Nor can I believe in a virgin birth.” No further argument. As if to say, it would be crazy to believe in such a thing.

It did make me think, why is it so often the virgin birth that we have the hardest time accepting? Why not Jesus walking on water? Why not him multiplying the loaves?

Maybe it’s because we’re happy for God to do what he wants with his own body, and we’re happy for him to give us gifts, but we get offended at the thought of a miracle that inconveniences us, that has a claim on our lives, that requires us to respond “I am the Lord’s servant,” as Mary did (Luke 1:38).

I thought to write back to my friend with reasons why perhaps he could believe in a virgin birth. But then I realized, he already does. In fact, every person is committed to a virgin birth, whether they realize it or not.

We find one virgin birth in Chapter 1 of Luke’s Gospel:

“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:38).

Admittedly, this is out of the realm of the ordinary. But what exactly is the alternative?

My colleague John Lennox recently debated another Princeton professor—Peter Singer—who is one of the world’s most influential atheists. John challenged him to answer this question: why are we here? And here’s how Peter responded:

“We can assume that somehow in the primeval soup we got collections of molecules that became self-replicating; and I don’t think we need any miraculous or mysterious .”(1)

And I remember thinking, How does us somehow getting self-replicating molecules in the primeval soup not count as a mysterious explanation? That sounds a lot like a virgin birth to me.

Or take the brilliant Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking’s latest attempt to propose an atheistic explanation for our universe: “. . . the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.”(2)

Is that any less miraculous of a birth than the account from Luke Chapter 1?

We live in a miraculous world. Regardless of whether you are a theist, an atheist, or an agnostic, there’s no getting around that fact. It’s not a matter of whether we believe in a virgin birth, it’s just a matter of which virgin birth we choose to accept.

We can believe in the virgin birth of an atheistic universe that is indifferent to us—a universe where “there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.”(3) Or we can believe in the virgin birth of a God who loves us so deeply that he came to be born among us and to live beside us, to call us “family” (Hebrews 2:11) and “friends” (John 15:15), and to give himself the name “God with us” (Matthew 1:23; Isaiah 7:14).

There is a depth of relationship that is only possible between people who have been through the worst together— those who have been there in each other’s suffering, those who have fought through disaster side by side, those who have sat beside one another in devastation with nothing left to say other than “I know exactly what you’ve been through, and I still love you and I still believe in you.” Because of Jesus, that depth of relationship is possible with God. That is what we celebrate at Christmas.

Growing up near New York City, one of my most vivid memories of Christmas is of homeless people begging on the street corners. And I would give some change if I had some. Imagine someone who offers to trade his home for a cold street corner, who instead of giving a few coins sat down on the street corner himself and handed over the key to his home.

At Christmas, Jesus literally comes and lives in our home—with all of its suffering, sin, and shame—and he shows us the home it will be, the home he is preparing—an eternal home where “[God] will wipe every tear from [our] eyes,” where there will be “no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Revelation 21:4).

The way we accept this gift is with simple words: I’m sorry. Thank you.

I’m sorry for the times I’ve hid from you. I’m sorry for the times I’ve run from you. I’m thankful that you didn’t give up on me, but were willing to make even the greatest sacrifice in order to be with me. I want to be with you too, wherever that leads, not only this Christmas but always.

Vince Vitale is a member of the speaking team with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Oxford, England.

(1) “Is There a God,” Melbourne, Australia. 21 July 2011.

(2) Stephen Hawking, The Grand Design (New York: Bantam, 2010), 180.

(3) Richard Dawkins, A River Out of Eden (New York: Perseus, 1995), 133.

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Nativity Scenes – Ravi Zacharias

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I have always insisted that my position on December birthdays is that its proprietors are easily neglected. (As a kid, I thought it was a clever way of inspiring sympathy and presents.) We are over-shadowed by Christmas decorations in November and over-looked in December by relatives busy with Christmas errands and office parties. And yet, I have always secretly loved it. On the day I was born, the world was awake, decking the halls, and a great number of them were looking to the birth of another infant. The spirit of Christmas seems a part of my own, the birth of Christ a part of my identity, reminding me each year that I too was born, that I was fragile, that I was held. For those born in December (and for any who remember their own beginnings in the scenes of Advent), the season offers a time of contemplating infantile beginnings, a lesson in what it means to be human, like no other. Stories and celebrations of one’s birth are juxtaposed with a nativity story told long before we were born and one that will continue to be told long after us.

In fact the story of Christianity is a story filled with nativity scenes. In these stories, we are told of a God who is present before we have accomplished anything and longing to gather us long before we know it. Thus David can pray, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” And God can say to the prophet Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” And those who witnessed the miracle of Elizabeth and Zechariah can rightly exclaim God’s hand upon the child before that child could say his own name: “The neighbors were all filled with awe, and throughout the hill country of Judea people were talking about all these things. Everyone who heard this wondered about it, asking, ‘What then is this child going to be?’ For the Lord’s hand was with him.”(1)

In a world where significance and identity are earned by what we do, by what we have accomplished, by what we own, and Christmas is about the lines we fought, the lists we finished, the gifts we were able to secure, the kingdom of God arrives scandalously, jarringly—even offensively—into our captive and often content lives. In this kingdom, a person’s value begins before she has said or done the right things, before he has accumulated the right lifestyle, or even thought to make the right lists. In this kingdom, God not only uses children in the story of salvation, not only calls us to embrace the kingdom as little children, but so the very God of creation steps into the world as a child.

Children are not usually the main characters in the stories we tell, yet the story of Christmas begins and ends with a child most don’t quite know what to do with. Here, a vulnerable baby in a stable of animals breaks in as the harbinger of good news, the fulfillment of all the law and the prophets, the anointed leader who comes to set the captives free—wrapped in rags and resting in a manger. Coming as a child, God radically draws near, while at the same time radically overthrowing our conceptions of status, worth, power, and authority. Jesus is crowned king long before he can sit in a throne. He begins overturning idols and upsetting social order long before he can even speak.

If truth be told, perhaps I feel a certain delight in celebrating births and birthdays at Christmastime because it is the season in which it is most appropriate—and most hopeful—to remember our fragility, our dependency, and the great reversal of the kingdom of God: For God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.(2) Advent, like childhood, reminds us that we are in need of someone to hold us. It also reminds us that, like the baby in a Bethlehem stable, we too are somewhat out of place, longing for home in the midst of it. The image of a tearful baby in a manager is a picture of God in his most shocking, unbefitting state—the Most High becoming the lowest, the face of God wrapped tightly in a young girl’s arms.

How true that to be human is to be implicitly religious, for even within our most deeply felt needs for love and refuge, we are reminded that there is one who comes so very far to meet us. Inherent in our most vulnerable days, whoever we are, is the hope that God, too, took on the despairing quality of fragility in order to offer the hope of wholeness. In our most weakened states of despair and shortcoming, Christ breaks in and shows the paradoxical power of God in an unlikely nativity scene. Glory to God in the lowest, indeed.

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

(1) cf. Psalm 139:13-14, Jeremiah 1:5, Luke 1:65-66.

(2) 1 Corinthians 1:27.

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The Twelve Days of Christmas – Ravi Zacharias

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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.

Far from being simply an alternative to the way in which Christmas is currently celebrated or an antidote to post-Christmas ‘let down,’ understanding the early history and traditions of Christian celebrations can reunite the world with the true focal point of the Christmas season. ”The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us; and we beheld his glory…and of his fullness have we all received, and grace for grace” (John 1:14-16). Far more than giving gifts or holiday feasts, the joy of Christmas is that God came near to us in Jesus Christ. The Incarnation affirms that matter matters as God descends to us and adopts a dwelling made of human flesh. Far from a let down, we have the opportunity to be lifted up and united to God through Jesus Christ.

A simple poem by Madeline Morse captures the calling of the twelve days of Christmas:

Let Christmas not become a thing

Merely of merchant’s trafficking,

Of tinsel, bell, and holly wreath

And surface pleasure, but beneath

The childish glamour, let us find

Nourishment for heart and mind.

Let us follow kinder ways

Through our teeming human maze,

And help the age of peace to come.(2)

Living out the mystery of the Incarnation is a daily celebration.  The celebration began on Christmas Day.

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

(1) Edwin and Jennifer Woodruff Tait, “The Real Twelve Days of Christmas,” Christianity Today, August 8, 2008.

(2) Madeline Morse from the compiled readings by Rebecca Currington, Remember the Reason: Focusing on Christ at Christmas (Honor Books: Colorado Springs, CO, 2007), 7.

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Into the World as We Know It – Ravi Zacharias

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Garrison Keillor’s description of Aunt Marie is one I have not been able to shake this season. Repeatedly, she has come to mind in discordant moments of Christmas preparation, somewhere between errands at the mall and lyrics that put a stop to them. “Long lay the world in sin and error pining,/ Till he appeared, and the soul felt its worth.” No description of the Incarnation more readily makes the common stressors of Christmas seem less important. And yet, Aunt Marie, with her “fat little legs” and “her heavy, fur-collared coat,” has made a serious attempt to wrestle me back down to a sad, human, earthly reality. Keillor writes:

“She knew that death was only a door to the kingdom where Jesus would welcome her, there would be no crying there, no suffering, but meanwhile she was fat, her heart hurt, and she lived alone with her ill-tempered little dogs, tottering around her dark little house full of Chinese figurines and old Sunday Tribunes. She complained about nobody loving her or wanting her or inviting her to their house for dinner anymore. She sat eating pork roast, mashed potato, creamed asparagus, one Sunday at our house when she said it. We were talking about a trip to the North Shore and suddenly she broke into tears and cried, ‘You don’t care about me. You say you do but you don’t. If I died tomorrow, I don’t know as you’d even go to my funeral.’ I was six. I said, cheerfully, ‘I’d come to your funeral,’ looking at my fat aunt, her blue dress, her string of pearls, her red rouge, the powder on her nose, her mouth full of pork roast, her eyes full of tears.”(1)

Christmas has reminded us what many of us already know: that the world is waiting, groaning for more, longing for redemption, for peace on earth and goodwill to humanity, for release from darkness and sin and loneliness and disillusionment, for God to come near to the world as we know it. Like Aunt Marie, this waiting is sometimes fraught with discomfort; we wait, and we sense a lonely, earthly reality. But Advent forces the experience of waiting into a different light. Our waiting need not be dehumanizing, dispiriting, as waiting often feels.

The New Testament describes it quite differently—not as a difficult means to a better end, but as part of the promise itself. Eugene Peterson writes, “Waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.”(2) Waiting itself is, of course, a reminder that we are earthbound.

But so is Christ.

The Christian’s celebration of Christmas is the assurance that we wait with good reason. “The word became flesh,” wrote John, “and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). God did not merely come near, he became flesh that could touch weaknesses, experience loneliness, and encounter the lowest moments of being human. He came to be with us, to move through us, to work within us. He came as small and vulnerable as humans come, getting close enough to bear the scars of our outrage and near enough to prove he would stay regardless. He came far nearer than Aunt Marie—or most of us—are yet able to recognize. “That is what incarnation means,” writes Frederick Buechner. “It is untheological. It is unsophisticated. It is undignified. But according to Christianity, it is the way things are. All religions and philosophies that deny the reality or the significance of the material, the fleshly, the earthbound, are themselves denied.”(3)

God became one of us, not to erase every shadow or to undo the difficulties of humanity, but to be with us in the midst of it, to transform our spectrum of darkness by bearing a truer depth of light, and to enlarge us with the joy of expectancy until the fullness of time when every hope has come to pass.

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

(1) Garrison Keillor, Leaving Home (New York: Viking, 1987), xxi-xxii.

(2) Eugene Peterson, The Message, Romans 8:24-25.

(3) Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words (New York: Harper Collins, 2004), 169.