Dickens on the death of a young person

The following words from Charles Dickens (in Oliver Twist) help me on this, the first anniversary of my nephew's death:

"It is not always the youngest and best who are spared to those that love them; but this should give us comfort in our sorrow; for Heaven is just; and such things teach us, impressively, that there is a brighter world than this; and that the passage to it is speedy."

Boehner and Reid ... A Word from G.K. Chesterton

With his typically larger-than-life insight into contemporary affairs, G.K. Chesterton said this ... roughly a hundred years ago:

"The present chaos is due to a sort of general oblivion of all that men were originally aiming at [viz. happiness] ...  There is nothing that so much prevents a settlement as a tangle of small surrenders ... This dazed and floundering opportunism [of politicians] gets in the way of everything. If our statesmen were visionaries something practical might be done." (from What's Wrong With The World)

The "other" Christmas text

Most of the time, the gospels of Matthew and Luke comprise our go-to texts for the Christmas story. That was certainly true for me when the Navs were gathered for our year-end Christmas party, and I'm sure it'll be the text(s) our family reads on Christmas eve.

However, I've been meditating on 2 Corinthians 8:9 recently, and it's become my new favorite "other" Christmas passage:

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that by His poverty, you might become rich.

Merry Christmas to all the poor-made-rich because of the One who was rich-made-poor!

All Hope Gradually Abandoned

Acts 27 describes the Apostle Paul's transit to Rome to stand trial before Caesar. The ship he was on ran into very foul weather, a circumstance which Paul had dimly foreseen. After three days, the ships tackle had to be thrown overboard, and we read:

Since neither sun nor stars appeared for many days, and no small storm was assailing us, from then on all hope of our being saved was gradually abandoned. (Acts 27:22)

That phrase -- "all hope of our being saved was gradually abandoned" -- grips me. I've been there. I've worked with people who are there. I think our culture lives here. The darkness is great, the storm is unrelenting, and the threat is real. There's no prospect of help, because having a prospect means you can see something, some possibility, however unlikely, of a way out.

That's what hope means.

But all hope of our being saved has been gradually abandoned.

Then, a star appears over Bethlehem. (No one really even notices.) And a baby is born in a manger.