Here is Deb’s and my online Christmas greeting for 2018. The background for this “card” comes from our study over the last two years of N. T. Wright’s remarkable works of New Testament scholarship, recovering the rich and many-faceted Jewish background of the Kingdom-of-God message about Jesus in the Gospels and in the letters of Paul. With this background in clear view, the promise of Yahweh to Abraham—to bless the whole world through his descendants—has everything to do with Christmas, and with our ongoing journey on the road of New Creation. Blessings, hope, and courage to all.

ABRAHAM AND ISAAC: THE PROMISE, an unfinished study in watercolor by Craig Gallaway, ©2018

THE PROMISE

Old Father Abraham heard God speak, “I’ll bless the whole world through your seed.”

And he believed, but could not see, how all of this would come to be.

How could all of this come to be?

Yet in a stable in the night, a babe was born to live and die;

And then to rise and set aright what Eden lost, our common plight.

What Eden lost, he set aright.

So now with justice, beauty, love, we lean into the Kingdom won

By Abraham’s many-great grandson; and learn to die before we die

Because we live in Him as one, who is the New Creation’s dawn,

The first born of the world to come.

The first born of the world, the life, the joy to come.

lyric by Craig Gallaway,  ©2018