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Theological Thoughts
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Posted At: 9:01pm by Anna Joy
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I had to work Christmas Eve. My family decided to leave me at work and go to Montgomery for a Christmas Eve service. So, instead of going home and spending Christmas Eve alone, I decided to take my boss up on her offer and go to church with her........and, she's Episcopalian. They don't have a Christmas Eve service at the Lutheran church in town.
The service was "nice". Very liturgical. Our Liturgies are similar. Not the same, but fairly close. I was very impressed with all of it...
...up until the sermon. I half-way expected the sermon to be very liberal and very...un-Christian, but I still had my hopes up. He gets to the sermon, and the first five minutes of the sermon completely leave Christ out of it. No Christ. No Gospel. Devoid of all Christian content really...and then he got to Christmas. Christmas isn't about Christ at all. It's really about love. God's love for us, and then our love for eachother...
Now, true, God did give us His Son on Christmas. He loved us. But...there was no mention whatsoever of Christ, the Savior.
And that wrecked my night. What if I can't always express my love for my family because my brother's driving me up the wall, and my mom's being really annoying? What if I'm so sin filled I can't love my family or friends perfectly? If that's what Christmas is all about, I'm doomed. You're doomed. Everyone on this earth is doomed.
But, thankfully, that Episcopalian minister was wrong. Christmas isn't all about being with family, getting together with friends, and expressing love for your family and friends by giving them gifts. Christmas is about God becoming man in order to die on a cross to save us from our sins.
Hope you have had (and are having!) a Merry Christmas!
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Posted At: 8:13pm by Anna Joy
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I realized that it's been a year ago this week that I went to India for two weeks. I went with MOST Ministries out of Ann Arbor, Michigan to distribute eye glasses in Ambur, a "small" town (250,000), and Bombay, a city with 10,000,000. The trip definitely changed my perspective on a lot of things...
 I got off the plane in Chennai with two guards standing there with AK-47's ready to stop anyone they thought to be causing trouble, or anyone they thought might cause trouble. The people on the plane filed past them and headed towards customs. Checked out the passport and visa...and the United States was suddenly gone. No more English. No more American food. No more hot water. No sleep for the past 56 hours, and it's 3 in the morning. Time to pick up luggage... Luggage picked up. Board bus. Drive four hours to get to hotel. Get to hotel at 6 in the morning and don't have time to sleep... It's time to go get breakfast and get the run-down on the next week's events. Why didn't I listen to our group leader at the airport in Frankfurt?
The hotel room we stayed in was full of cockroaches and salamanders with the occasional spider lurking in the corners. It wouldn't have surprised me had the sheets on our bed never been changed. There was only hot water for thirty minutes in the morning, and you only had a couple of gallons of it. If you wanted a shower, you'd better make it fast...oh yeah, and don't get any of that water in your mouth. It might have parasites and/or raw sewage in it.
 It was a beautiful place. There were mountains and some of the most beautiful flowers you'd ever seen. Bananas and coconuts were growing around the city. The mountains were in what seemed to be random places, just jutting up out of the ground. It was an interesting sight.
The day after we got there, we had our first eyeglass clinic. The way the system works is interesting... There are different stations the test for different things and it's all very simplified. We would test for stigmatism, see if they needed reading glasses or glasses to see distances. They would then go from the testing station, to distribution to give them a pair of glasses, if we had their prescription. If not....there wasn't a whole lot we could do. From there, they would go speak with the pastor on hand who spoke Hindi or Tamil...if it was allowed. Evangelism, in certain Indian states, is outlawed. We weren't allowed to say anything, especially in the Muslim areas.
(I'll cut to the chase and stop boring you all, now :P).
 Sunday, we went to church in a small village about 45 minutes away from the town where we were working. I didn't really know what to expect... We got there, and took our shoes off because the church was holy ground. They used the Liturgy. Straight out of our Lutheran hymnal. It was the same exact service but in Tamil.
It amazed me. After all the talk about how contemporary worship is so important in a mission environment, this church, this small, Lutheran church, uses the Liturgy. Why?
They seemed to understand how important the Word of God is in their worship. Almost everyone in that church had the hymns they were singing memorized. They didn't have hymnals. They had no need for them. They had their hymns memorized! What a great way to cap off a week: a church service filled with Gospel! And so it should be here in the States. We have the freedom to worship as we chose here. There's no threat of extreme persecution if you go to church on Sunday. Not to mention that we have the Liturgy, and we're able to use it every week. God never promised that He'd be found in our emotions, or our music. But He did say that He'd come to us in His Word. Our Liturgy is FULL of that Word, even if we're down in the dumps. :)
If you like hot and spicy food, try to get your hands on some Tandoori Chicken, Indian style. I guarentee it will be one of the spiciest foods you have ever put in your mouth. (I couldn't eat it...they took my food away once I started crying and gave me ice cream.) Avoid the sheep soup, though...*gag*
Edited on: November 15th, 2005 7:28 pm
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