Issue link: http://denverseminary.uberflip.com/i/1314061
17 A CERTAIN REIGN Isaiah 61:1-4 It is early Sunday morning in December and here I sit 9,600 feet high up in Breckenridge, a ski resor t in the Colorado Rockies. Soon I will be sharing in a worship service, but at this hour people are sleeping and everything is peacefully quiet. The lofty slopes around the town as well as its streets and houses are snow-covered; Christmas lights are still shining as they have been all through the night. So here I sit, pen in hand, grateful for this oppor tunity to draft my annual Yuletide greeting. Whoever you are, then, wherever you are, especially you who are far from Colorado, this communique expresses our prayerful, hear tfelt wish that God will bless you in the overflowing abundance of His grace throughout the new year that will soon be dawning. Because of the joyful mystery of Christmas our attitude can be—indeed ought to be—that of Karl Bar th, a titan of contemporary theology, who on December 9, 1968, had telephoned his godson Ubuck Bar th and quoted a hymn that speaks about our Christian hope. Later that evening his friend for 60 years, Eduard Thurneysen, called him. In their lifetime they had been through two global wars, the Nazi regime and the crises, the conflicts, the chaos of our turbulent century. Two old friends, they talked about the darkness of the world situation. Then in par ting Bar th said, "But keep your chin up. Never mind." And he added the ringing affirmation about Jesus that their countryman, Christoph Blumhardt, a spiritual dynamo, repeated and repeated. "He will reign." That night Bar th died in his sleep. So his last word will be mine, at least in this epistle, our affirmation concerning the Child born at Bethlehem, "He will reign." -VCG, 1994 DECEMBER 12