Advent 2019

For Thanksgiving 2019 my family travelled to Thailand, a beautiful country in Southeast Asia.  A very special occasion beckoned our travel—namely, the wedding of our son, Steven, and his fiancé, Carolyn.  The wedding was very special for a number of reasons.  It was...

My sweetest memories of Christmas past are those when our children and my sister’s children were young, and our broader families would all get together at one of our homes for Christmas (which always involved a long trip, since we never lived very close to each...

Go ahead; call me biased.  But if you really want to experience Christmas, you have to spend it in the Philippines, where 105 million Filipinos inhabit about 2,000 of 7,641 islands.  There, Advent Season begins at the first “-ber” month, that is, Septem”-ber” 1, and...

Disclaimer: If you have children in your family who believe in Santa, please do not read this to them! Growing up in a Portuguese household meant that Santa would come to our house and deliver presents to everyone on Christmas Eve. Every Christmas Eve went the same...

In Exodus 1-2, Pharaoh decides on a plan to check Israel’s expansion.  He sketches an accusation based on a series of hypotheticals: “Were they to continue to multiply, and were enemies to come from some other direction, then if the Hebrews were to join with them,...

We count down the days, but what, really, does the Advent Season mean to us as Christians? Does it impact our lives in any meaningful way? We try to combat the commercialism of our culture with cute slogans, such as the reason for the season.  But we fail to...