Category Archives: Christmas

Deliver Us

Posted on by
1

All right, the same Andrew Peterson album I just mentioned has one of my other favourite “Christmas” songs too.  Oddly enough, it isn’t actually sung by Andrew either.  (Sorry Andrew, don’t read too much into that.)

This one’s sung by Derek Webb, and it’s been on me since I posted back HERE apparently.  The video below is a “raw-er” version than the polished CD track, but it’ll get you the basics.

Deliver Us

Our enemy, our captor is no Pharaoh on the Nile.
Our toil is neither mud nor brick nor sand.
Our ankles bear no callouses from chains,
Yet Lord, we’re bound.
Imprisoned here, we dwell in our own land.

Deliver us, deliver us.
Oh Yahweh, hear our cry,
And gather us beneath Your wings tonight.

Our sins,they are more numerous than all the lambs we slay.
These shackles, they were made with our own hands.
Our toil is our atonement and our freedom Yours to give.
So Yahweh, break Your silence if You can.

‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem
How often I have longed
To gather you beneath My gentle wings.’

Labour of Love

Posted on by
1

This has been one of my favourite Christmas songs the past couple years. It’s from an Andrew Peterson album called “Behold the Lamb of God”; the song’s titled “Labour of Love”.


It was not a silent night
There was blood on the ground
You could hear a woman cry
In the alleyways that night
On the streets of David’s town

And the stable was not clean
And the cobblestones were cold
And little Mary full of grace
With the tears upon her face
Had no mother’s hand to hold

It was a labor of pain
It was a cold sky above
But for the girl on the ground in the dark
With every beat of her beautiful heart
It was a labor of love

Noble Joseph at her side
Callused hands and weary eyes
There were no midwives to be found
In the streets of David’s town
In the middle of the night

So he held her and he prayed
Shafts of moonlight on his face
But the baby in her womb
He was the maker of the moon
He was the Author of the faith
That could make the mountains move

It was a labor of pain
It was a cold sky above
But for the girl on the ground in the dark
With every beat of her beautiful heart
It was a labor of love
For little Mary full of grace
With the tears upon her face
It was a labor of love

Merry Christmas: Ready to Rage?!

Posted on by
1

Recent article from the bulletin at church…

You know those words that hit hard and cut deep? The kind that you sense the world needs more of?

Kaj Munk spoke such words.

Born in Denmark in 1898, he went on to become a playwright and pastor. During World War II, his intense and outright criticisms of the Nazi movement led to his arrest and execution. Sometime prior to his death, he spoke these words:

“What is, therefore, our task today? Shall I answer: “Faith, hope, and love”? That sounds beautiful. But I would say—courage. No, even that is not challenging enough to be the whole truth.

Our task today is recklessness. For what we Christians lack is not psychology or literature… we lack a holy rage—the recklessness that comes from the knowledge of God and humanity.

The ability to rage when justice lies prostrate on the streets, and when the lie rages across the face of the earth… a holy anger about the things that are wrong in the world. To rage against the ravaging of God’s earth, and the destruction of God’s world. To rage when little children must die of hunger, when the tables of the rich are sagging with food. To rage at the senseless killing of so many, and against the madness of militaries. To rage at the lie that calls the threat to death and the strategy of destruction peace. To rage against complacency. To restlessly seek that recklessness that will challenge and seek to change human history until it conforms to the norms of the Kingdom of God.

And remember the signs of the Christian Church have been the Lion, the Dove, and the Fish… but never the chameleon.”

Christmas season is a time of merriment, joy, peace, and more. Somehow the word “rage” hardly seems appropriate. Yet the coming of Christ signifies an act of God driven by dissatisfaction with a current state of affairs. His children dead in their sins, destroying themselves and each other—something needed to be done.

And so the greatest “invasion” of all time was set into motion, one in which we are redeemed and then recruited.

Ready?