The Nativity Story: Movie

What follows are my thoughts about The Nativity Story, which I recently saw. I have not immersed myself in enough films to write a very good review, but here are the thoughts that I went away from the theater with ... I hope they can be helpful to you, the reader.

First off, I thought The Nativity Story was very good, especially considering that you come into the theater knowing the essentials of the entire story-plot before you have even the film.
It didn't seem to get too slow or drag at points (although ... I thought New World was pretty fascinating, too, and I think most of the movie-going world violently disagrees with me there. Mind you, I was having a whole load of fun searching out all the details of John Smith's battle gear in the midst of the infamously over-extended 10-minute "New Age-ey" nature scenes. But I digress ...)

Acting was very good, believable. The characters talk in pronounced accents - Middle Eastern, I guess - which might take a few minutes to get used to, but after a few scenes you don't even notice it anymore. And it seems better than having Americans and British roaming Judea (ever notice how Julius Caesar always has a commanding baritone and impeccable British accent?).

I thought the producers did a great job with the story of Joseph and Mary. You get a glimpse into what life was really like at that time, not just the romantic pictures that we see 2000 years later. We see that Mary, as a young Jewish girl anywhere from 13-16 years old, was arranged to marry Joseph - she did not love him, and she was saddened and slightly afraid at the thought of becoming the wife of a man she barely knew. We see Joseph trying to win the affection of his wife-to-be, and then his anguish when he thinks his fiancee has been unfaithful to him. We see the danger and the social hatred that Mary had to face because of being pregnant and unmarried. We see the struggle that she had to face as she tried to convince her parents and Joseph of the truth. And we see their love for each other grow as they struggle together toward Bethlehem. Really, the Nativity Story is largely about Mary and Joseph.

I was very impressed with the movie's depiction of Herod "the Great." The actor seemed perfect for the role, bringing to the screen an almost exact depiction of what history says about the tyrant. You see behind his cold exterior he remembers the death of his father by the Romans, and his own expulsion from Jerusalem during a rebellion ... this is a man who loves power and has resolved to never lose it. He goes to ruthless lengths to do this; the movie refers to his killing his wife and 2 sons (he drowned them as they bathed), because he was paranoid that they plotted against him (and, in all fairness, they probably were - he was a nasty king, and most likely a nasty husband and father as well). We also see his love of extravagance - the people are heavily taxed, above their tax to Rome, to finance his building projects. One scene sees him in Masada, building his famous palace-fortress-resort, where he instructs men to build a marble and gold layered pool. All in all, you go away from the movie with an accurate idea of who Herod really was.

Umm ... not so with the wise men. The producers opted for the traditional view of three magi with their traditional names (given to them in the Middle Ages). It didn't take anything away from the movie at all ... but historically, it could have been even more interesting! The wise men (unspecified number) came from the region of Parthia, Rome's most hated (and only undefeated) enemy, who had come into Judea decades ago, captured Jerusalem, and exiled Herod. So suddenly when a caravan of magi (king-makers of Parthia) arrived, probably with a heavily armed escort, Herod would have been extremely uneasy, especially as they told of coming to see a new King. Unfortunately, the movie does not go into this backstory - probably wise for the sake of time, but ... I kind of missed it.
Anyways, moving on.

It was really nice to see a wide-screen panoramic of what ancient Jerusalem would have looked like!

Music was really nice. The movie opens with the Judean night sky and a haunting rendition of "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" (one of my favorite hymns, by the way).

Well, I could go on longer, but it wouldn't be very helpful. Bottom line, I enjoyed the movie a lot, and I went away with a better idea of what it might have really been like for a Jewish carpenter and a young Jewish girl who were suddenly charged with parenting the millennia-expected Messiah, a prophet greater than Moses, a King greater than David.

Go see it!

If any of you have seen the movie and have any thoughts to add, I would be glad to hear what you thought about the film.

Andrew

Things I Love About Christmas ...

- Sitting in a warm dark room, watching snow falling outside, with a hot chocolate in one hand and a good comic book (Calvin & Hobbes, Sherman's Lagoon, Dilbert, Herman, Get Fuzzy, Zits, etc ...) in the other ... oh, and a purring cat on my lap.

- Macaroons, snowballs, shortbread, stuffing and gravy, truffles, and especially Mom's second-to-none chocolate chip cheesecake. Actually, Christmas food as a whole is something to look forward to all year ...

- Reflecting on the birth of Jesus - that the Son would put aside His rights as Creator and take on the nature of His created. On His humble coming.

- Getting to see everyone from each side of the family again!

- Having the excuse to sit and watch Charlie Brown and his "sad jazz" Christmas.

- Chinese food and "2001: Space Odyssey" at New Years (ok, not technically, Christmas ... but close!). This NYs, though, I'm thinking a back-to-back Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Any takers?

- Christmas charols, which generally tend to be my favorite hymns.

- Walking from the cold into a warm house that smells like apple cider

- Giving gifts

- Ok, fine, getting gifts, too ...

- Eggnog!

- Christmas lights and Christmas trees in a dark room at night ...

- The oh-so-welcome four week Christmas vacation (thank you, thank you, thank you, Dr. Haykin!!) ... oh the bliss of having nothing* to do! (*nothing being a relative term, of course)


[more to come!]

Delight in the Word

I have not exactly been a consistent and regular blogger!...

A couple nights ago I was struggling with a certain amount of frustration as I thought on how uncertain everything around me seemed. In school, in friendships, in church, in work ... the future seemed - and still seems - vague, uncertain, slightly forboding, and even, at times, bleak. Sometimes, like that night as I sat alone (in a dark room around midnight), the future before me did not appear to hold much hope or joy.

Thankfully, rather than continue on in these melancholy reflections late into the night, God turned my eye to my Bible which lay opened on the chair in front of me.

At that moment, I realized with overwhelming gratefulness that God and His Word do not change. God does not shift, He does not abandon me, He doesn't hold back when I call out to Him! Because of Christ, God has bound me to Himself with a covenant love that will never fade. And in Christ I will only ever see His good and perfect will more and more clearly.

God's Word is a wonderful gift to us. Among other things, the Holy Spirit uses the Word to ignite faith in our hearts. The Word builds us in the knowledge of our God and His will. The Word guides us as a lamp to our feet. By the Word we can guard our hearts for the righteousness that God calls us to. God's Word is a mountain which stands firm in the face of any storm we may face.

There is joy in communing with God in His Word and in prayer! How can a heart not be affected with joy when we read through the Scriptures with the eyes of the redeemed? Certainly, the Bible has laments and painful stories and convicts of sin ... but the central character to the Bible is Jesus Christ, who has victory over these things! The theme of the Bible is redemption, not sorrow, and that is a happy thing.

All this to say: if you struggle with joylessness, a lack of hope ... then you are not seeing your life as God sees it. One of the ways we can fight for joy is to immerse ourselves in the Word of God! Take less time listening to yourself and listen more to what God has to say!

Psalm 119 is a wonderful song of love for the Word of God. Do you delight in the Lord's testimonies? Behold wonderful things in His law? Are you strengthened from sorrow according to His Word? Do you trust in the promises of the Father? Do you love to walk in obedience to Scripture? Do you think about His precepts day and night? Do you long for God's commandments as water?...

There is joy and delight to be found in the Word of God. Thank God for your Bible as you read it next!

Glimpses of Joy

When I think of parts of my life that I really desire to grow in, the whole area of "joy" is something that often comes up in my thoughts. I am not someone easily described as "joyful" or "thankful" or "warm" - these are all areas in which only the Holy Spirit can help me grow and flourish in. So, kindly enough, God led me to an extended and in-depth study of Philippians, in which I realized only after I had begun that joy was a prominent theme. Reading through what God says about joy, and praying according to God's will for me to cultivate a joyful heart have both been a tremendous encouragement to my soul over the past couple months.

I have noticed four major sources of Christian joy through my readings over the past months. The first is of the kind described in Psalm 51 as the joy of our salvation. The second is joy in the Word of God (Psalm 119:111). The third, the joy of intimacy with God (Psalm 21:6). And finally, having "no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth" (3 John 4) - that is, the joy of seeing our brothers and sisters in Christ demonstrating the work of God in their lives by growing in holiness.

Lord willing, I hope to write some thoughts about each of these sources of joy over the coming weeks. May our God be glorified as we grow in our delight of Him and in what He has done.

Behold the Updates

There will be no shortage of huzzahs as I announce that finally my list of recommended links has been completely rehashed and updated (well, almost). Check out some of the new entries, and please let me know if I'm missing something good (or even half-decent). Cheers!

Happy News for Astro-Nuts

Those of you who have a fascination with extraterrestrial trivia (like me), will be happy to know that Earth has two moons.
We all know the Moon ("Luna" or "Selene"), which looks down upon earth with features that almost look dismayed; but we also have Cruithne ("Asteroid 3753" or "1986 TO"). Cruithne is a mere 5 kilometers wide, compared to the Moon's 3,476 kilometers, and orbits about a million kilometers away from Earth. As the Moon completes a full orbit around the Earth in 27 days, Cruithne takes the leisurely route, opting for an approximate 770 years.
Now, scientists have not yet officially classified Cruithne as a "moon" of Earth, calling it a "near-Earth asteroid" instead, but this is coming from the same type as just voted Pluto out of its planetary status that it has enjoyed since 1930. I am not a scientist, so call me a rebel, but I am going to continue classifying Pluto as a planet. I wouldn't mind adding Eris, Sedna, Quaoar, and others to the list of planets in our solar system either, but that would mean yet another remodeling of the world's astronomical museums, and goodness knows we don't want that again. But to me, Pluto is the ninth planet of the solar system, and Cruithne is the Earth's second moon.

We do not agree with everything that they believe, but the Amish can teach us a lot ...

There is a striking contrast between the horrific Montreal shooting a few weeks ago and the grotesque murders in Lancaster, PA, days ago:
Kimveer Gill, who coldly shot a girl he had wounded 9 times at Dawson College, brutally killing her (as well as wounding 19 others), was obsessed with violence, warning the world, "Anger and hatred simmers within me." He called himself the "Angel of Death," or online "Fatality666." He described life as a video game, "you have to die sometime" (and of course spent hours playing games with names like Super Columbine Massacre [why on earth are games like that even around and legal??]). He was an avowed atheist, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that he was into Satanism and demonic pacts.
On the other hand, Charles Carl Roberts IV might have seemed like one of the last people to commit such a disgusting crime as he did. According to his wife, he was a great father and husband. He probably held his family very dear. His father was a respectable police officer, and his wife a member of a Christian organization. Roberts himself was homeschooled. He would have seemed to all who knew him like a friendly milkman. There seemed to very little indication of his abuse of two of his almost-toddler female relatives when he was 12, his contemplation of molestation and suicide again, and his raging anger against God for the death of his infant daughter nine years ago.
Yet, in a strange and not-entirely-rational way (in both cases, priceless human lives were lost - both men are guilty of terriblwe crimes before God), I personally feel the most disgust and anger against Roberts over Gill. Both men embraced evil. But Roberts systematically, and psychopathically, selected 10 young Amish (haters of violence) girls, let the rest go free, and apparently planned to abuse each one before finally executing them. Even as I write, I struggle to even imagine how someone could be that evil, that remorseless, that immune and hardened to any trace of pity. How could he look on their tears and not feel relent? How could he plan this in his mind for months before? Just as he showed each of those girls no mercy, so he too will find that there is no mercy under the judgement of God Almighty. "It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God," for those who are stained by evil.

But enough of these men. Turn with me instead to the contrasts we can see between the offended of both shootings. The families of the people shot by Gill have, for the most part, turned down the apologies and condolences of Gill's mother.
But look at the Amish! Not only have their members expressed forgiveness through their grief of the horrendous actions that Roberts took, but they have even gone and reached out to and comforted the family of the man who killed their daughters and granddaughters and nieces and friends. "I hope they stay around here, and they'll have a lot of friends and a lot of support," said one Amish man of the family. Another said, "We want [the world] to understand how rich and deep our friendships and family relationships can be, and while we don't have insurance and we don't enjoy many modern conveniences, we have the richest treasure in the world and that is brotherly love."
What a fantastic attitude in this day and age - to trust God even after the most horrific of tragedies, to forgive the very person who has deliberately and hateful killed five young girls, and to reach out and comfort his family even in their own pain.
Who are these Amish? In centuries past, they stemmed from the Anabaptists (who are also connected with Baptists). They believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, the absolute inerrancy of the Bible, and other key Christian doctrines. They embrace humility and submission to God's will as cardinal virtues. They interpret the Bible very literally when it comes to integration with the world and technology. They prefer instead a life of simplicity, free from "godless" modern culture, taking a monastic approach to life. They have a very structured code of traditions that permeates through all of their culture and everyday life (something that is, on one hand, admirable in this day and age, but also in a very real danger of becoming like the codes of the Pharisees). It is my thought that there are times when they interpret the Bible wrongly, and mistakenly think (as many monks in past ages did) that they can escape from the sins of the world by seperating themselves from it. I fear that increasingly for Amish the temptation will be to depend more and more on the religion of their fathers and their cultural upbringing for salvation, rather than acknowledge their own sinful state and be justified and sanctified through Christ Jesus alone.
But despite this, many Amish are true believers in Christ, and so are my brothers and sisters. And I heartily applaud them for showing both us as Christians and the world as a lost people the meaning of forgiveness. Let us learn from the Amish.

The Beginning of the End ... Or Something Like That

Well, all you as-of-now nonexistant readers, welcome back to my blog, which I have now committed to trying to be consistent on throughout the Fall. As I read over my brother's blog, co-authored by a friend, I see that the utterly ridiculous is quite a popular medium for blogging. I debated going into a more comedic side of web-logging, but in the end I decided that if I (being me) tried to keep up an endless stream of nonsense humor, it would soon loss its humor, and soon after everything else that would recommend it. Alas, but 'tis true. So, while humor of almost any kind is hoped for in this blog, I will be experimenting with a variety of different styles, issues, topics, people, etc. You are welcomed into my wanderings. Feedback is not only very welcome, but needed. Who knows - you as a reader may shape this blog in a far better path than I could myself (as those of you who have witnessed my earlier successes and failures in blogging can well attest).
But now I must begone, for my Greek class begins soon, and I must race to Tim Hortons to grab a steeped tea for my prof (no, this is not the butter-up-to-the-teacher-with-an-apple-or-its-beverage-equivalent routine; its my job ... so there).
Stayed tuned for more of whatever this is ...