Auld Lang Syne

I've always been a fan of Robbie Burns...even if he was a bit off his trolley. See this for an example.

Robbie Burns enters my life every year at the tail end...around midnight on December 31. There is an intense sorrow that pervades this song and yet, it is sung at some of the biggest parties ever thrown. I've never been able to handle that. Here's the 411 for those of you not "in the know."

"Auld Lang Syne" is Gaelic and roughly translated it means "Old Long Ago." We would now say something along the lines of the "Good Old Days." The song had been sung as early as the beginning of the 18th century and Robert Burns came along and put it altogether and we sing his version to this day. Must of been one of his best laid plans...

The basic premise of the song is that should all our old friends be gone, dead, or forgotten, should all we have been gone, we'll hold hands together and take a "cup of kindness" and drink to auld lang syne . Though we be left with naught, we drink to the good old days. We being me and my "trusty friend." It is a song that express a deep longing and love for what has gone and the warm memories we have of it...and at this time of year, nostalgia suits me.

So here's to the good old days. Take a cup of kindness, gather those you love and drink, to auld lang syne. And if you see a guy leaving the fray at midnight when the band strikes up...leave him be. He's probably touched and crying and doesn't want anyone to see. He's OK. He'll come back...he always does.

Happy New Year.

A Decidedly Presbyterian Christmas

Being Reformed in my faith and theology has led me to best express my personal relationship with Abba Yahweh in the context of a PCA congregation. Each successive year brings a different nuance to the celebration of the Christ-child. This year, it has been a realization that the Gloria, while annuncitory as it may be, is a reaffirmation of God's love specific to the Remnant of Israel, bought in Christ.

"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests." or as is also a majority translation, "among [men] [those] with whom He is [well] pleased."

As one of those on whom his favor rests, that must mean that in me is he well pleased...and that is a gift that, even should I want to, I would be unable to regift.

What Child Is This?

I love the progressional awareness of this hymn.

The first stanza asks the titular question followed by the realization that this enfant is Christ, the King, whom shepherds guard and angels sing. Note that the shepherds are guarding the Shepard. I find some comfort in knowing that Christ was in need of protection as a child.

But this protection was to vanish. Nails, spear shall pierce him through, the cross be borne for me, for you. The second realization was that this child was to die...a horrible death. While I don't think that those present were aware of this at the time, Mr. Dix certainly was. Imagine looking at a new born child and knowing the humiliation and ridicule and ultimate death that awaited the child. What should be our reaction to such joy tempered by such eventual sorrow?

So bring him incense, gold, and myrrh. Raise a song on high as the virgin sings her lullaby. Hail Hail the Word made flesh, the babe, the son of Mary. While I did mix the verses together, I did not, I don't think, mix the message. Our reaction to the Nativity should be one of unmitigated adulation! Even with a view to Christ's Passion, we are to be celebratory in the cattle stalls because of what we know will happen at Golgotha.

That the man who changed the face of human history would be born in such a fashion is a testament to divine condescension. Be not mistaken; however, for in her arms in the swaddling clothes rested the Lion of Judah. Good Christians, fear, for sinners here, the silent Word is pleading. For both in his state of exaltation and humiliation is Christ simultaneously our Prophet, Priest, and King....and a wonderful one at that.

Wonderful Counselor or Wonderful, Counselor ?

Isaiah 9:6.

A verse we hear much about during this Christmas season, it is a prophetic announcement of Christ eight centuries (give or take a week) before the fact. Here Isaiah lists the titles and names of the Savior and the first, most famous of them all is this "Wonderful Counselor." Which I had never really thought about until today.

My bible (WEB) translates the verse as two different words; "Wonderful" comma "Counselor" - not "Wonderful Counselor." So I did some research and it appears there is a divide...some translations (KJV, NKJV, WEB, RSV, ASV) call Christ both wonderful and a counselor, but not a "wonderful counselor" while other translations (NIV, NASB, ESV) call him indeed a "Wonderful Counselor." Even the NIV allows for a mistranslation by putting a footnote that reads "also Wonderful, Counselor." I would tell you what The Message says, but I only looked in legitimate Bibles.

All of this left me with a conundrum. Which is it and why does it matter? Hebrew punctuation is only slightly less confusing than tort law and tax reform, but suffice it to say (with no exaggeration) that there are more punctuation marks in Maesoretic Hebrew than there are letters in our alphabet.

I think it is more important that Christ be wonderful as well as being a counselor rather than simply being a wonderful counselor. To be wonderful encompasses all that he is. He is a wonderful prophet, a wonderful priest, and a wonderful king if indeed he is wonderful. Being wonderful infuses all that you are with a quality of magnanimousness. If he is simply a wonderful "no comma" counselor, perhaps he is not a wonderful king? Just a thought...

I'd keep the comma if they asked me...but they won't.

"You know him?"

I know you.

You know me.

Cognitively, I know a lot of things. If I touch the stove top when it is red, I will get burned. Two of anything added to two of any other thing will result in four somethings. The square root of sixteen is four. Apples grow on trees. Peanuts do not. Spanish is spoken in Mexico. English is spoken in America. French is spoken in France.

These things are known to me, either through empirical study or causal physiological experience. I know these things through repetition and experience. They are cognitive and definable objectives. With this, am I comfortable.

What then does it mean to know another bundle of cognitive knowledge and experience? How then can I say I know another person? What is there to know about them, either through empirical study or physiological experience? What they want? Whom they love? Where they like to go? What they believe? How can I know these things?

I must interact. I must engage. You read a book. You touch quartz. You disect fetal pigs. To learn we must invade...so in some sense to know someone is to invade them. It's easy enough to cut open a pickled pig, but another person is different. They must open up to you and allow you in. That is the begining of knowledge.

It is then cultivated in a life long interaction of invasion and concession; a battle of attrition for some and a pyhrric victory for others.

Knowledge of another.



The only good war.

Firelight at Night

I've been sick going on about a month now and finally am getting over it...only, apparently, having given it to my wife. Some NyQuil and a cough drop later, she passed out on the sofa. As I descended from the study, in the glow of our Christmas tree and dwindling fire, I saw her on the sofa, wrapped in a fleece throw, with the dying firelight dancing on her face and I fell in love all over again.

I rebuilt the fire, turned on some Christmas music for her to sleep by, kissed her on the forehead and returned to the study to work again. It's strange to be a husband. I was just getting accustomed to being a boyfriend...

"My heart knows, and I weep..."

Love is not an emotion.

Love is an action chosen, not an emotion felt. It is neither fleeting nor flimsy. It is the highest, most lofty of aspirations. It connects those who experience it on a level that transcends any other human transaction. To love someone is singularly the most painful, difficult, honorable, and rewarding thing you can ever do for another person.

If it was an emotion, it couldn't be commanded. Love your neighbor as yourself. It rings hollow if it is simply a feeling.

And those whom we love... do they know it? And even more than that....do they know how hard it is for us sometimes...and do they know that deep down...in our darkest heart of hearts...sometimes....we wish we didn't.. so our heart wouldn't hurt for them?

People come and go in the maelstrom that is my life. There are people in my life for whom I would go to war. They sit on a shelf of importance hung only a little below God and country...so to speak. They are the people who define who it is that I am and how it is that I am to be remembered. For them and with them will I uproariously laugh and bitterly cry. For them would I end, so that they may begin.

Tonight...alone in the dark, I added another person to that shelf....and I wept. I wept at the pain from the heart of God. I wept at the beauty of the love of God and I wept as a sense of utter unworthiness and inablility washed over me as my Father in Heaven told me to love his broken child. Sanctification is tough sometimes.

What you don't read in the thirteenth verse of Corinthians is that love will make you vomit. Love will keep you up nights. Love will make you want to hate. Love will make you pronounce it through gritted teeth. But it will also hold you when you are weak. Prop you up when you fall. Spur you on when you lag behind and embrace you when you are lonely. It encompasses every area of our psycho-spiritual being...and because of that, takes the most of our efforts.

Love.



Get some.