in the Latin advent directly translates to 'coming' or 'the coming', henceforth my post means the coming revelation. be it the jolly season of the big fat man in red, pavlova and the generosity of kiwis spending over 1 billion dollars over the past month on presents i thought it necessary to do a little background research. whilst browsing the trade me threads i came across the term 'saturnalia' and a person saying that anyone who celebrates Christmas is deceiving themselves and actually celebrating this event. Saturnalia is the feast at which the Romans commemorated the dedication of the temple of the god Saturn, which took place on 17 December. Over the years, it expanded to a whole week, up to 23 December. this struck me and made me want to go deeper into the origins of Christmas. Christmas is effectively the conjoined term for Christ's mass, hence the reason we give and love in this season because we are massing for Christ and therefore it 'should' be our most humble and holy time of the year for us, however thanks to the hefty and reliable commercialism and consumerist ways of our society, this is not the case. The prominence of Christmas Day increased gradually after Charlemagne was crowned on Christmas Day in 800. Around the 12Th century, the remnants of the former Saturnalia traditions of the Romans were transferred to the Twelve Days of Christmas. so its safe to assume that Christmas is today's most updated and accurate version of saturnalia, however in the same sense it is not celebrating the same thing as saturnalia is. so what is Christmas actually celebrating? firstly it asks us to remember the birth of Immanuel (Jesus of Nazareth) albeit not the actual date (according to the roman and Jewish calendars back then the 'actual' date found by many researchers is august 15) the idea is that Jesus was beyond the worth of a birthday and that everyday was a day of glory for him, hence at the end of the year we take time to look back and thank Jesus for all he is done. in the more practical and simple terms Christmas (to those that don't consider themselves spiritual) is about giving, not for the sake of being acknowledged or for the sake of wanting something in return but simply giving from our hearts, giving from love to those that need to know that we care, those less fortunate. all over New Zealand cities have mission dinners (or lunches) on Christmas day and they only way these events are possible is through the generosity of the city itself (in the form of donations to the food bank and tithes to the ministry (tithe being the donation of money for a cause.) however in saying this we must relise that the idea of giving directly relates to the basis of Easter. Jesus gave his all, gave his life and took all our suffering and pain that we rightly deserve, in taking to much abuse and humbly giving his life to those that wanted it he gave it to all of us, saint Nicholas (more commonly recognised as Santa Claus in today's society) was a bishop of turkey. He was born during the third century in the village of Patara. He had a reputation for secret gift-giving so this is where the idea of giving came from, it came from a christian, therefore in being known for his gift giving the one thing that remained in saint Nicholas' mind was Jesus. so i ask you, and with all discernment.
do you really know what you are celebrating? what is the real reason of happiness within this season?
its a season full of generosity and loving, who are we doing it for? obviously the first answer that comes to mind is each other, but if that be the answer why don't we all sit back and just expect it to be handed to us with a silver lining, nobody asks for presents yet we all conform and think we must satisfy one another with our gifts, we obviously don't do it for ourselves otherwise we would halt presents altogether and dwell in our greed and selfishness, we're not doing it for the other person as they don't ask for anything, so deep down. what is the purpose to it all? why do we continue this ritual known to us as Christmas. effectively it is Christ's mass, regardless of your beliefs and your background, if you partake in the gift giving and the indulgence of lights and festival then we are all really coming together for Christ's cause in life which was to give and to love.
It is the advent of our society.
many blessings and best of wishes for all your holidays to come.
much love
Dan
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Love is God
quite recently i have been getting a bit too slack on my spiritual side of life, on the other hand i have really been enjoying the holidays, then on the other hand my love life is a bit confusing (my feelings for someone mainly) don't get me wrong a relationship is the last of my worries but i suppose (seeing as i live in the moment) we will just have to wait to see whats happening on that side of things..
wow, Christmas is here... time just fly's these days and it seems like yesterday that i was doing my round of shopping and feeling blessed to be giving out of my heart (not for the sake of Christmas, and its materialised ways) and out of the simple love i have for my friends and family, i feel i have really grown this year, and most of all it has been a year of recovery and regeneration. As i walked around the hutt thinking about what to buy for certain people, i felt a sense of divinity, a sense of pure generosity and love, surely if i had enough money i would have been there all day and forgotten completely about work that night, but hey that's life. once again words fall terribly short of describing what i felt, but without a doubt it was a spiritual time for me.
i feel big parts of my life continuing to grow and improve and i am certain it is due to my closeness to the lord, there is no doubt in my mind now that link hutt city church is my home (spiritually) and i intend to sow seeds there and dedicate myself to bringing more people into this wonderful community within this church. i certainly feel that ever since i first when to this church god has been softening my heart and humbling my mind, i always liked to be the 'glass half full' kind of person but only recently have i found that it has become a way of living for me.
This morning in Church Paul talked about knowing god, and it struck me that all though i know god to some extent, my focus lately has been in having knowledge about him rather than knowledge for him.I feel constantly challenged by god and the impartation of his word into my life and its truly an enlightening thing to know that no matter how much i improve my relationship with him, there will always be something more i can do to make it better.Paul also mentioned that once we know god, that is what we will be doing for eternity and that truly knowing god is our key to heaven rather than the declaration of our acceptance of Jesus being our saviour. (well that second part is my conclusion anyway)
OK now for the depth of my post, Love is God- that is my adaptation of the all too famous 'god is love' i find that when we say it this way it explains a lot of the queries raised such as 'no love is a universal reasoning and feeling and therefore if you are concluding that if you don't know god you don't know love' i have heard this argument being fought at so many times and i think saying "love is God' links into the idea that god is within every one of us and that when we love, we are being godly in the sense that that love in itself is god and that when we love we feel an inner sense of divinity and grace throughout us, for to love is to be like god and therefore to be like god is to love.
(my thoughts are very scrambled this evening as i have been meaning to post for a while but had net problems so therefore am trying to put to many thoughts into one post)
another observation recently is that we as humans are finely tuned to impressing one another, whether it be on a humble level of impressing someone with your athletic skills or your academic skills, right through to the almost pornographic sense of impressing someone at a party to try and 'get lucky', to some degree we are all looking for some satisfaction, i myself get this satisfaction when someone acknowledges how caring i am or anything really to do with my persona. this idea of being impressed or impressing someone is not one to be taken lightly, because like with other things, it can be a godly attribute to us or it can be used by the devil to send us into the ground and destroy what little self esteem we may have. for example; by acknowledging that someone has impressed you and telling them, they may either A. take it to heart and continue to strive to do well at what it was they were doing, thus being the godly side, or B. take it to their mind and get arrogant about it and begin to think 'oh why should i listen to you, you're not as good as me' and that type of attitude, thus being the evil (not sure about that use of word) side to things. the essential thing, in my opinion, is to live in the moment, striving at where you passion lies and take everything said comprehensively to the heart, for it is there that you will find a true meaning to what is being said and it is important to use your mind for your thoughts but at the same time get a healthy balance between your minds thoughts and what your heart is pulling you to do.
i think i have addressed the majority of the thoughts that have been roaming my mind the last week or so and if its really important, I'll add it later.
Blessings and much love
Dan
wow, Christmas is here... time just fly's these days and it seems like yesterday that i was doing my round of shopping and feeling blessed to be giving out of my heart (not for the sake of Christmas, and its materialised ways) and out of the simple love i have for my friends and family, i feel i have really grown this year, and most of all it has been a year of recovery and regeneration. As i walked around the hutt thinking about what to buy for certain people, i felt a sense of divinity, a sense of pure generosity and love, surely if i had enough money i would have been there all day and forgotten completely about work that night, but hey that's life. once again words fall terribly short of describing what i felt, but without a doubt it was a spiritual time for me.
i feel big parts of my life continuing to grow and improve and i am certain it is due to my closeness to the lord, there is no doubt in my mind now that link hutt city church is my home (spiritually) and i intend to sow seeds there and dedicate myself to bringing more people into this wonderful community within this church. i certainly feel that ever since i first when to this church god has been softening my heart and humbling my mind, i always liked to be the 'glass half full' kind of person but only recently have i found that it has become a way of living for me.
This morning in Church Paul talked about knowing god, and it struck me that all though i know god to some extent, my focus lately has been in having knowledge about him rather than knowledge for him.I feel constantly challenged by god and the impartation of his word into my life and its truly an enlightening thing to know that no matter how much i improve my relationship with him, there will always be something more i can do to make it better.Paul also mentioned that once we know god, that is what we will be doing for eternity and that truly knowing god is our key to heaven rather than the declaration of our acceptance of Jesus being our saviour. (well that second part is my conclusion anyway)
OK now for the depth of my post, Love is God- that is my adaptation of the all too famous 'god is love' i find that when we say it this way it explains a lot of the queries raised such as 'no love is a universal reasoning and feeling and therefore if you are concluding that if you don't know god you don't know love' i have heard this argument being fought at so many times and i think saying "love is God' links into the idea that god is within every one of us and that when we love, we are being godly in the sense that that love in itself is god and that when we love we feel an inner sense of divinity and grace throughout us, for to love is to be like god and therefore to be like god is to love.
(my thoughts are very scrambled this evening as i have been meaning to post for a while but had net problems so therefore am trying to put to many thoughts into one post)
another observation recently is that we as humans are finely tuned to impressing one another, whether it be on a humble level of impressing someone with your athletic skills or your academic skills, right through to the almost pornographic sense of impressing someone at a party to try and 'get lucky', to some degree we are all looking for some satisfaction, i myself get this satisfaction when someone acknowledges how caring i am or anything really to do with my persona. this idea of being impressed or impressing someone is not one to be taken lightly, because like with other things, it can be a godly attribute to us or it can be used by the devil to send us into the ground and destroy what little self esteem we may have. for example; by acknowledging that someone has impressed you and telling them, they may either A. take it to heart and continue to strive to do well at what it was they were doing, thus being the godly side, or B. take it to their mind and get arrogant about it and begin to think 'oh why should i listen to you, you're not as good as me' and that type of attitude, thus being the evil (not sure about that use of word) side to things. the essential thing, in my opinion, is to live in the moment, striving at where you passion lies and take everything said comprehensively to the heart, for it is there that you will find a true meaning to what is being said and it is important to use your mind for your thoughts but at the same time get a healthy balance between your minds thoughts and what your heart is pulling you to do.
i think i have addressed the majority of the thoughts that have been roaming my mind the last week or so and if its really important, I'll add it later.
Blessings and much love
Dan
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