On this final Sunday of Advent, we approach Christmas Day with joy. Traditionally, when we think of joy at Christmas, we attach the idea in response to Jesus' arrival as the gift of salvation to humanity. On Christmas morning we exchange gifts and consider the surprise and delight to be joy. This is great for a season and a day, but what Jesus came to teach us—if we really take it to heart—offers a joyful motivation that can last a lifetime. If you examine Jesus' Kingdom parables, one in particular describes this joy: The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. ( Matthew 13:44) Imagine that! This guy sold everything he had—years and years of Christmas presents—for the treasure that is the Kingdom of Heaven. This is the infectious joy Jesus describes in the pursuit of God's Way. In the book Living God's Way , I've reimagined this scene from a curr

L-O-V-E. It feels redundant to write yet another musing on the topic, for two reasons: It’s been done—A LOT—and I just wrote a book about it. Love is (SPOILER ALERT) the essence of the Kingdom of Heaven, God’s Way. As we observe the various political aspirations in our world, they all have something in common: they seek control, empire, power. By contrast—in an act that could be woefully mistaken for weakness—God's Way chooses to lovingly serve. Love is the secret weapon of God’s Kingdom—a weapon forged to restore rather than to conquer. "When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace." —Jimi Hendrix Jesus' arrival as a middle-class infant also took the world by surprise. From the beginning, the local King Herod assumed his throne was under threat upon hearing the news from the Magi that a new king had been born. Later, John the Baptist and even Jesus' own disciples would be confused about why he wasn't more militant if he truly

As we consider peace in the Kingdom this week of advent, here’s what Jesus—the Prince of Peace—had to say as he prefaced his most famous oration on what living God’s Way is like: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” There’s that word I considered so often while writing Living God's Way—“children”… to such as these belong the kingdom of heaven. If you have kids, you know there are many times a day that they seem anything but peaceful. It’s as if they have a secret quota of petty arguments, teasing, yelling, and crying to fill. But what they do better than most adults is make up for it. They don’t hold grudges long, and morph from mortal enemies to BFFs faster than you can say “snack time”. That’s the kind of soul Jesus needs in his Kingdom—the kind that seeks to restore harmony, and doesn’t become distracted and distorted by discord. We see a glimpse of this peacemaking in the 1971 cinematic masterpiece Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factor