Over ten years ago, when I was working at Lexham Press, I had an idea. The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive had just come out, and I wondered: Why not edit Keller’s sermons into a commentary format? I drew up a proposal and sample and we sent it to Keller’s people, and they said no (they already had plans for what to do with his sermons; fair enough).
Then I had another idea: Why not do this with another famous preacher who is still popular but whose sermons are in the public domain? Thus was born the Spurgeon Commentary Series. I came up with a list of books that Spurgeon had preached on enough that his sermons could feasibly be adapted to a commentary format, and then started working through the list. I started with Galatians, then moved on to Philippians, 2 Thessalonians, 2 Timothy, Titus, Hebrews, 1 John, 1–2 Peter, and Jude. Four volumes were put into print, and we put a volume on Song of Solomon and Jonah up on preorder, but then I was put on other projects and the Spurgeon Commentary languished.
Now, the initial volumes have gotten a redesign from the incomparable Joshua Hunt, there is a new foreword from Geoffrey Chang (curator of the Spurgeon Library at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary), the volumes on 1 John and 1–2 Peter and Jude are in print for the first time, and the long-awaited (by at least a few people, probably) volume on Song of Solomon and Jonah will finally be out on February 4. I’m observing all of this from the outside, as it were; Baker Publishing Group acquired Lexham Press last year and is the publisher for these books, so I haven’t had a hand in bringing them across the finish line. All the same, it feels good to have this project realized after it was lying dormant for so long.
These books are great devotional commentaries to accompany your regular Bible reading. If you enjoyed the earlier volumes, or if you’re just looking for a solid devotional commentary, be sure to pick one up February 4!
I’ve recently realized that the last thing I put on this blog was a melancholy reflection on Christmas. Now, I’d like to put before you this Advent a painting by Albrecht Altdorfer:
Sitting in prison on the first Sunday of Advent 1943, German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:
November 28, 1943
My dear Parents,
Although no one has any idea whether and how letters are presently being handled, I nevertheless want to write to you on this afternoon of the first Sunday in Advent. The Altdorfer nativity scene, in which one sees the holy family with the manger amid the rubble of a collapsed house—just how did he come to portray this in such a way, flying in the face of all tradition, four hundred years ago?—is particularly timely. Even here one can and ought to celebrate Christmas, he perhaps wanted to say; in any case, this is what he says to us.
We could see this painting, and the state of the world at any given time, in two ways. The first is to look at how much has collapsed, to lament what is gone. And that is a legitimate way to look at the world, especially for someone in Bonhoeffer’s position. But the second is to focus on how the birth of Jesus came in wrecked circumstances. When the rubble reminds us that things aren’t the way they used to be, or the way they ought to be, the presence of the holy family reminds us that God has visited this place, is in it even now, and is renewing it. And we will see him renewing, renewing, renewing, if we look for him. Lord, give us eyes to see.
I’m weary this Christmas. Maybe you are, too. I’m weary of all the decisions I’ve had to make this year, figuring out how to navigate the pandemic, deciding on my own risk tolerance, trying to balance that with other people’s. I can only imagine what kind of weariness government officials and church leaders are feeling as they make decisions for others.
I’m weary of being alone. Not always. Sometimes I’m quite content. But this is will be the third Christmas since divorce proceedings started in the fall of 2019, and the second since I’ve been officially divorced. For all three of these Christmases, knowing how memories can be, I have tried to be away from home on December 25. It has felt like too much to watch the day approach from familiar surroundings, confronted with the difference between the way things used to be, and the way I hoped they would be, and the way things are. This Christmas, I decided to get out of town again. But while I will see friends while away, for much of the time I’ll be alone. I’m hoping the new setting by itself will keep my mind from being drawn to the lost past and future and focused on the given present and new possibilities.
I’m weary of holding things together, being responsible for the weight of my existence. When I was a child, Christmas with my family was a safe place. We would drive from our home in North Carolina to my grandparents’ house in Michigan for their annual Christmas Eve party. Everyone’s stockings, most of them handmade by my grandma, would be hung on the long mantel. We’d play games, eat appetizers, eat dinner, and listen to the story of the birth of Jesus. Then we’d open our gifts, from the youngest to the oldest, sing carols accompanied by my grandpa on the piano, and eat cookies and ice cream. Sometimes, later in the evening, a few would head out into the December chill for a late-night Christmas Eve service.
It has been over a decade now since the last Christmas Eve gathering at my grandparents’ house. My grandpa passed away in 2014, and my grandma is about to be ninety-six and is years removed from being able to host such a gathering. It’s only natural that one generation passes from the scene and another takes its place, and my brother and several of my cousins have indeed created their own traditions and celebrations. This time of year, though, it’s hard not to think of the kind of family I wanted and wasn’t able to have.
I’ve experienced an incredible amount of goodness, of course. I have good friends, a church community that loves me and values my gifts, and meaningful work. But it’s good to name grief, not just to myself but to others, and so I say that weariness and aloneness weigh heavy on me. Not all the time, but enough to drag my steps on occasion.
Maybe you’re feeling weary and lonelier than you’d like this Christmas, too. What do we do with it?
I like to remind myself that to those who are weary, Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). This God-man, who himself bore such incredible weight of expectation from a young age, grew up to offer us rest. He invites us to come to him and tell him, “This hurts. I’m tired. Will you heal me, please?” I don’t have to make my life make sense or come up with a grand plan for making meaning out of what I’ve experienced. I can rest by laying down my burdens and taking up his yoke of learning how to live as God made me to live.
Just rest, beloved. He knows you’re weary.
When I feel alone, I try to remember that “God sets the lonely in families” (Psalm 68:6). I don’t believe that another marriage is promised to me, but I do believe that God has made me, and all of us, for connection, for intimacy. Living in an individualistic society makes it awkward to admit that you can’t make it on your own, that you’re feeling the weight of having to make all the decisions for your own life plus reach out to other people if you want to spend time with them. When I have energy, I can manage to do the reaching out, put things on the schedule. But the weariness and the loneliness often go together for me because it’s when I lack the energy to make social interaction happen myself that I in turn feel the lack of it. When I’m not too weary, I try to turn loneliness to connection. There will always be an ache, a connection that I wish was there but wasn’t. Even when I’m weary, I can turn it to prayer. What must it have been like for Jesus to enter this world as a baby, unwelcomed by all but a few? To have his life on earth began in a lonely place, with his mom and stepdad and a few ragged outcasts looking on? To be unmarried in a society where it was more unusual than it is today? Doesn’t he know what it’s like to be lonely?
Look to his face, beloved. He knows you’re lonely.
During Advent, many of us listen to Handel’s Messiah, and especially the parts about Jesus’s birth. I have memories of listening to it during many Decembers, but a more significant memory came from my grandpa’s memorial service in September 2014. Several of us stood up and shared how generous and faithful a man he had been—an accountant, a loyal churchman, devoted to his family, always looking to help others, including playing the piano at retirement homes in his later years. At the end, as he had wanted it, we all stood in silence while the organist played the Hallelujah Chorus on the church’s massive pipe organ. Tears dripped from my chin as I said goodbye to the man my mom called the best Christian she’s ever known.
It was his gift to us, to take the end of his memorial service and make us think about how the kingdom of this world would become the kingdom of Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever as King of kings and Lord of lords.
And so, this merry weary Christmas, I want to take my weariness and aloneness to Jesus and tell him I don’t know how to deal with them on my own. I know they won’t last forever. Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow in a chipper mood, with higher energy and better ability to reach out to other people. I hope I do. But for now, I want to become so deeply aware of weariness and aloneness that, when I have turned to Jesus for company in them both, when energy and a sense of connection returns I can then turn to others to make them feel less weary and alone. I want to take my knowledge of tiredness and relieve others’ burdens, especially the poor. I want to take my knowledge of what it’s like to not belong and make others belong, especially the outcast. To look to the “new and glorious morn” with the joy that can only come from facing how weary the world can be. If you’re also feeling weary and alone this December 23, I hope you can, too.
I was alerted recently to this quote from a letter by C. S. Lewis to Dom Bede Griffiths from December 20, 1946:
It is one of the evils of rapid diffusion of news that the sorrows of all the world come to us every morning. I think each village was meant to feel pity for its own sick and poor whom it can help and I doubt if it is the duty of any private person to fix his mind on ills wh. he cannot help. (This may even become an escape from the works of charity we really can do to those we know).
A great many people (not you) do now seem to think that the mere state of being worried is in itself meritorious. I don’t think it is. We must, if it so happens, give our lives for others: but even while we’re doing it, I think we’re meant to enjoy Our Lord and, in Him, our friends, our food, our sleep, our jokes, and the birds song and the frosty sunrise.
As about the distant, so about the future. It is v. dark: but there’s usually light enough for the next step or so. Pray for me always.
I think about this regularly. I think about it whenever I get on social media. I thought about it last week, when so many people seemed to be fretting about the results of the presidential election. These things have major real-world consequences, of course. But “can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”
I want, in my own life, to never be afraid to help when I can, to take real risks to serve others who are in my sphere of influence. But I also want to draw a bright line between things I can do something about and things I must leave in God’s hands. And when I have left those things in God’s hands, I want to be free to enjoy the life God has given me without guilt, without feeling that worry in itself will help anyone. Even if this appears irresponsible to a great many people.
Elliot Ritzema 