Each year from 1923 to 1943, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote elaborate letters from Father Christmas to his four children, with hand-drawn illustrations and characters including, of course, elves. After 1938, Tolkien addressed only his youngest, Priscilla, as her three older brothers had left the household. By 1943, Priscilla was 14, and Tolkien knew this would be…
The prophet Micah wrote, “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, Though you are little among the thousands of Judah, Yet out of you shall come forth to Me the One to be Ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting. … And He shall stand and feedHis flock In the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord His God; and they…
Throughout John, Jesus has been talking about things of heaven and of the Spirit. He tells Nicodemus that to see the Kingdom of God a person must be born again, which is a complete (and painful) transformation of the senses and heart. Heaven is where the Father’s perfect will is done, and we pray that…
John gives us another one of his timestamps in the first verse of Chapter 20: “Now early on the first day of the Sabbath-week, while it is still dark, Mary the Magdalene comes to the tomb … ” It is the day after the day of rest, our equivalent of Monday morning, when work starts…
In John 19:30, after Jesus takes his final drink of watered-down wine, he said, “‘It has been completed.’ And lowering his head he delivered up his spirit.” The body of the Son of God broke down, and his breath stopped. After this, John’s words become specific and formal, even forensic. In John 19:35, he speaks…
A week after Jesus was born, Mary and Joseph brought him to the Temple for circumcision, and Simeon prophesied over the infant: “Look: This one is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and a sign that will be spoken against – and your own soul a sword will also pierce –…
The first part of John 18 has two pairs of characters, set on different sides of a hasty nighttime trial that is fishing for an excuse to send Jesus to the Roman authorities. On one side of Jesus’s trial are two high priests, Annas and Caiaphas (18:13), and on the other are the only two…
Ask and you shall receive: the disciples had asked Jesus how to pray, and he gave them the Lord’s Prayer in response to their request. But Jesus had other prayers recorded in the gospels, the longest of which is John 17. These prayers are windows into the indescribable relationship between Heavenly Father and Son, given…
In John 14-17, Jesus speaks in the form of a Jewish Farewell Discourse, but as usual, Jesus challenges and transforms the genre. For example, previous discourses never featured an allegory like the “I am the true vine” section in John 15. Previous Jewish discourses were all about the impending absence of the father-figure, but to…
The first food consumed on the moon’s surface was communion bread and wine, and the first scripture read (silently) was John 15:5. Buzz Aldrin was a Presbyterian elder, and his pastor had consecrated elements Aldrin took on Apollo 11. Once they had landed safely, before Neil Armstrong’s “one small step,” Aldrin ate this first meal:…
