by Roseanna | Dec 5, 2024 | Ancient World, Holiday History, Holidays, Remember When Wednesdays
Today I’m happy to welcome a guest to the blog! Lana Christian is going to be talking to us a bit about the wise men and the lessons we can still learn from them today, as we celebrate the release of her novel, New Star.
Christmas preparations are underway. Soon venerated Nativity scenes will be pulled out of storage. As a child, I loved setting up our Nativity, nestling the Woolworth figurines in a cardboard box my dad had painted to look like a barn. Of course, the Wise Men were part of the scene, even though the Bible tells us they didn’t visit Jesus until He was about one-and-a-half years old.
There were logistical reasons for that delay. But I digress.
What the Bible doesn’t tell us is the risks the Wise Men took to find Jesus.
A quick Google search can get you a “master class” on how to take risks. Along with the expected advice of having a plan and overcoming fear of failure, standouts in taking “good risks” include: “what matters is how dangerous the risk is” and “start with small risks.”
In other words, don’t put too much on the line.
So we don’t.
We crave short-term results akin to the resolution we can find in a two-hour movie, a three-hour football game, four weeks on a new job. But life is harder … longer … full of doubts, uncertainties, and the dark, in-between times when we can’t tell whether our risk is worth it.
It’s a good thing the Wise Men didn’t have Google when they studied an elusive star that they ultimately linked with prophesies of the eternal child-king, Yeshua. Jesus.
They put everything on the line to find Him.
Although we don’t know where the Wise Men hailed from, the greatest body of evidence points to Persia, which was part of Parthia, one of the two largest superpowers at the dawn of the first century. There the Wise Men held privileged, influential positions within Magi society, serving multiple religions while adhering to their country’s official religion. A religion that influenced everything from their government and health care to ecology and sanitation practices.
The Wise Men did something completely countercultural and counterintuitive in seeking Jesus. They bucked their culture and religion … risked their reputations, careers, and even their lives on a politically charged pursuit with seemingly no chance of success. Why did they do it? To answer those questions, I spent three years researching and writing New Star.
The Wise Men can teach us a lot about taking risks.
- Align your convictions with God’s Word and stick to it—even if it means bucking the system (Proverbs 3:5-6).
- Don’t be afraid to think big (Isaiah 64:3-4).
- Do your part to prepare (research, weigh your options, test what you’re told)—but lean into God’s wisdom and guidance more than your own (1 John 4:1, Philippians 2:13).
- Have a plan; expect it to change (Proverbs 19:21).
- Walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7).
- Be confident in God’s ability (Psalm 25:4-5, Joshua 1:9).
- Setbacks can be God’s way of setting the stage for a greater victory that honors Him in ways you can’t imagine (Jeremiah 29:11).
- When God guides you, your destination is sure. He will accomplish His purposes (Isaiah 46: 10).
Chapter 2 of Matthew’s Gospel gives us twelve verses—a pencil sketch—of those well-educated foreigners. I wrote New Star so people can experience the Wise Men as 3D, real people before and after they find Jesus.
The Wise Men studied the stars and Hebrew writings. But finding Jesus was more than an academic exercise. They sought to know Him. That’s extraordinary because no other religion espoused anything like Judaism’s tenets. God honored those foreigners by making them privy to history’s greatest eternal shift.
Daniel 2:21-22 says if we are wise in the things of God, God will give us more wisdom and greater understanding. May that be true for us as it was with the Wise Men!
Lana Christian is an award-winning author in business and creative writing. In business, she garnered several APEX awards, a patent, a published book, and millions of dollars in grant money for clients. Years of writing manuscripts for physicians and researchers have made her an ace at research, which she leverages in writing biblical fiction. “New Star” is her debut biblical fiction novel and is the first in a series. Lana is an invited guest blogger and writes her own biweekly devotional blog, “Encouragement from Living History.” Since 2019, she has won six faith-based writing awards, including one from Baker Publishing Group for her short story about Lot. Her greatest desire is that readers have an immersive experience from her stories.
Learn more at LanaChristian.com
*This post contains affiliate links. See footer for explanation.
by Roseanna | Dec 14, 2023 | Ancient World, Holiday History, Holidays, Thoughtful Thursdays
One of my favorite parts about Christmas? The music. I love Christmas music. I love how it has this certain sound that labels it as such before you even hear the lyrics. It’s . . . bigger somehow. Fuller. Richer. Especially sacred Christmas music–I mean, I love “Rudolph” and “Jolly Old St. Nicholas” too, don’t get me wrong. But Christmas hymns are their own kind of beauty.
Which is why I laughed out loud when I learned the history behind our singing of them–a history that, fascinatingly enough, dates back to a rather famous heretic named Arius.
In the early centuries of the Church, there was a lot of debate, discussion, and outright war among Christians as they tried to wrap human minds around divine truth. I get it–we still have those same problems today. And one of the leading controversies centered around how it really worked that Jesus was both God and man.
Did He really exist eternally in heaven with God the Father? What does begotten mean? Was that baby born to Mary really God, or was it just the human nature born that day and the God-nature was imparted to Him later?
Trying to imagine GOD–the infinite, eternal, omnipotent God–being helpless chafes against how we otherwise understand Him. And this was a real stumbling block in those first centuries, when there was no single teaching on the matter.
Arius was the primary voice of a sect that believed Christ was not fully divine until His baptism, when the Spirit descended. That, they said, was the moment when He received a divine nature. Before that, He was just a man. They further believed that Jesus was not one with or equal to or co-eternal with the Father, but rather subordinate to Him like angels, a created being like we are.
At first, this argument was subtle and the differences more an interesting conversation than a cause for a rift. But it soon became a raging debate. Church leaders took sides. Politicians who had converted took sides. And as it was agreed that a council must be called to determine what the Church would teach, each side began their campaign to sway public opinion.
The Arians started writing songs. Hymns. Songs and hymns about how Jesus died as God but was not born as God. And guys, these songs were catchy. People started singing them as they went about their daily lives. Which meant that people were teaching that theology, whether they realized it or not. These songs were, quite simply, propaganda. And it was working.
So his opponents began doing the same. They began writing songs about how Jesus was born as God. Expounding on the miracles surrounding His birth. Emphasizing that He came to this earth as BOTH Son of God and Son of Mary.
Interesting side note–the man we now know as St. Nicholas, then Bishop of a town in modern day Turkey called Myra, was present at the council at which this was debated. There’s a story (whose truth can’t be verified) that he became so enraged at Arius’s argument that he actually struck him. Santa Claus hitting the anti-Christmas heretic. Too funny, right??
Anyway. Back to verifiable history. 😉
Up until this point in history (this debate raged in the early 300s until Arianism was eventually ruled a heresy by the Council of Nicaea in 325), Christmas was celebrated as a holy day, but it was given no more special attention than days like His Baptism, Transfiguration, etc. The highest of holy days was Easter, 100%. THAT was the day and week that Christians around the world really gave special attention to. But in order to emphasize this now-official understanding that Christ was fully human AND fully God from the moment His earthly life began, the holy day of Christmas was elevated to a level nearly as important as Easter. More songs were written to try to overwrite the catchy little ditties the Arians were still singing, and which were still pulling people away from the truth. It slowly began to move from being a solemn day of reflection to one of celebration, a grand feast.
It wasn’t long after the Council of Nicaea that Nicholas died, and he was soon named a saint. Stories began to emerge about people he had helped anonymously, money he had give secretly. Miracles were still happening as people asked him to intercede in prayer for them. His feast day was established on December 6, and to honor his memory, people began leaving anonymous gifts for each other and calling them “from St. Nicholas.” As time wore on, the feast day of St. Nicholas and the holy celebration of Christmas began to intertwine, thanks to their proximity, in part. But given how ardent St. Nick was about Christ’s birth signaling the coming of God among man, I imagine he smiled down from heaven over that.
And I like to think, too, that the angelic choirs continue to sing their own glorious songs of Christmas as the world celebrates this miracle. The one they sang to the shepherds, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace to people of good will!” must have been pretty catchy too. Have you stopped to wonder how we know what they sang to those shepherds?
It’s because the shepherds remembered. The shepherds followed Him. The shepherds were part of that earliest church, and they told Luke about that night. They told him the song the angels sang. That song has always, since those earliest days, been memorialized in the liturgy of the Church. All my life, I’ve sung Christmas songs that remember those words. And now my soul gets to soar with them nearly every week of the year, because the “Gloria” is part of every mass in the Catholic church, other than during Advent and Lent, when it’s removed…so that it strikes anew with all its glory when it’s brought out again on Christmas and Easter.
So sing of Christmas, my friends. Sing we now as those who fought for truth in the Church’s teaching sang then. Sing to teach the people who He is. Sing to remind your own heart. Sing to remember the glory.
by Roseanna White | Mar 28, 2018 | Ancient World, Holidays, Remember When Wednesdays
Tomorrow is the day many churches celebrate as Maundy Thursday–the Passover Thursday, the day Jesus shared the Last Supper with His disciples. Does your church celebrate this day with a meal?
Growing up in a United Methodist Church, we would have a Maundy Thursday dinner. It went something like this: ladies who signed up to help would bring a pot of beef stew. They were all mixed together into one giant pot, which made a rather tasty concoction. Plates of fruit and cheese were set out. Someone made unleavened bread. The pastor read through the Last Supper portion of one of the Gospels. There was optional foot-washing. The end.
After college, friends of ours had their pastor, who was a Messianic Jew, lead our Bible study through a Messianic Passover Seder. And it was quite simply, amazing. The actual seder meal, with the actual Jewish traditions included, shed
so much light on that portion of the Gospels! Suddenly everything Jesus said took on new, fuller meaning. His promises and claims are at specific points in the meal where He demonstrates that
He is fulfilling the Jewish law, the promises of the Prophets. If you’ve never participated in one of these, I can’t recommend it enough!
When Rowyn was a baby, we decided to do one at our church. I just found a free service guide online and printed it out, and we bumbled our way through. It was great, if not so great as the one led by someone who knew what he was doing. But we decided to do it again in 2012 and have made it an annual event.
Two years ago, my church decided to invest in actual Passover Haggadah booklets–these are little pamphlet style books for each person to have beside their plate. They have all the responsive readings and explain what each element of the Seder plate is for. Designed for English-speaking Christians, these little books have been a very welcome addition to our meal and are much easier to follow than the print-outs I’d found before. (We found them here.)
For our church, this meal has become a critical part of Holy Week. It’s when we focus on the history and how our Lord played into it. It’s when we remember the roots that He came from. It’s when we partake of a meal like He did with His followers.
Funny story. Two years ago, my mom was sick and couldn’t come to the meal. But my husband rigged some cameras in our fellowship hall and broadcast the event, and she watched from home. Now, there’s a portion of the meal where one of the kids is to get up and open the door, symbolically welcoming Elijah. When we got to this part, my mom’s door blew open. She thought it was pretty cool and texted us and commented on the website to tell us. But when she really got goosebumps was later in the service, when someone closes the door–and her door blew shut again all on its own. Just one of those little things that made her fully aware that she was part of us, even if too sick that day to join us physically.
This year, I’ll be again in charge of the Seder plate. I’ll be roasting eggs, making the apple clay (a mixture of raw apples, almonds, grape juice, and cinnamon I toss into the blender), baking unleavened bread, getting out the lamb bones I have in the freezer to roast, arranging bitter greens, spooning out horseradish, and mixing up salt water. All to make real to our church, as it’s made real to the Jewish people every year during Passover, how God delivered His people from slavery in Egypt all those years ago…and how Christ delivered us from slavery to sin on the cross.
by Roseanna White | Dec 7, 2016 | Ancient World, Holiday History, Holidays, Remember When Wednesdays
I don’t know how many times I’ve heard over the years that Constantine is the one who decided Christmas would be celebrated on December 25, because it was already a pagan holiday, and this would make it easier on his people to convert to Christianity. I pretty much believed this for years . . . until I looked it up for myself.
I had to look into this when I began my research for
Giver of Wonders. There are two different major holidays celebrated by Rome, which Constantine is accused of trying to integrate into Christmas, or vice versa. One of these holidays actually wasn’t even celebrated until
after the days of Constantine, when the date of Christmas was definitely set. So that rules that one out.
The other is Saturnalia, which had been celebrated in Roman culture for centuries. It was a festival of lights (does sound familiar…) and one of gift-giving (also familiar). So is there truth to that accusation? Did Constantine choose that date for Christmas and then integrate our holy day into a pagan festival?
Nope.
In reality, Constantine didn’t do anything but legalize what was already custom. The church had been observing the birth of Christ on December 25 for many years already by the time the emperor converted, and even by the time that date was canonized by the Council.
Why December 25th then? Those who study history and the Jewish calendar are pretty sure Christ could not have been born in winter. There were shepherds in the hills, after all, which wouldn’t have been the case in December. So what gives?
Well, I don’t know why those in the know ignored some very sound logic when determining the date. But here’s what I do know: they had a reason for selecting December 25 that had nothing to do with any pagan holidays. See, at that time in history, Dec 25 was the winter solstice (did you know the date of the solstice had moved??). That’s why the pagans celebrated on that day–it’s why pretty much every religion had a celebration on that day.
But Christians? Why did we?
Well, it’s because the Christian scholars and priests of that era (educated, it may be worth noting, in Greek and Roman schools–there were no Christian-only schools at the time) believed that the God who created the universe created it with order and symmetry. They believed, for example (as did their Greek and Roman compatriots) that important men had a star appear to herald their birth. (So it would have been odd if the Gospels hadn’t included this for Jesus!) They believed their lives and births were written in the very cosmos–which is pretty cool, really. Right?
Well they also believed that this symmetry extended to the length of their life as well, and that the best and most important men in history lived in a full number of years.
Um . . . huh?
It’s weird. I know. This belief certainly didn’t survive the millennia, LOL. But that’s honestly what they thought. That Jesus, as the greatest man ever, would have lived a whole number of years, no random months and days added on.
So that would mean born and died on the same day, right? And we know he died on Passover–which was, as it happened, the Spring Equinox. So he must have been born on it . . . right?
Wrong. Life was not counted from the date of birth–it was counted from the supposed date of conception. So the belief was that the Holy Spirit must have conceived Jesus in Mary on the Spring Equinox (March 25). Which meant that He would have been born 9 months later.
So our quick math scrolls that calendar ahead 9 months to . . . voila! December 25.
This, my friends, is the honest-to-goodness reason why Christmas was set on December 25, way back in the 200s, well before Constantine took power and converted to Christianity.
Now, did some of the pagan traditions–candlelight and gift-giving–work their way into the day? Perhaps. Though gift-giving on Christmas wasn’t actually that prevalent until centuries later. Gift-giving, in the 3rd and 4th centuries, was actually done on Dec 6–the Feast Day of St. Nicholas (yesterday!), to remember the saint who gave so generously of his wealth, and anonymously. Dec 6 was a day to give and have no one know who gave. But it was close to Christmas. And over the years, the traditions blurred together. Especially, honestly, after the Protestant Revolution, when Luther declared “No more feast days of saints!” The people weren’t willing to give up their St. Nicholas Day . . . so they began saying it was the Christ Child who gave gifts on his birthday instead (Christ-kindl in German, which is where Kris Kringle came from!).
So there we have it. It may not be the actual date on which Jesus was born–probably isn’t–but it was a date selected because the people doing the selecting believed that the greatest Man in history would have been conceived and died on the same day.
by Roseanna White | Nov 9, 2016 | Ancient World, Remember When Wednesdays
As a promised, a bit more about Giver of Wonders today. 😉
At the start of the story, my heroine Cyprus is twelve years old. In the very first scene, she experiences an accident that leaves her paralyzed–and the thoughts and fears are quick to bombard her. Her father–Roman by heritage but Greek by upbringing–will have no patience for her in such a condition, she knows.
She knows he loves her. But she’s just a child–and a girl, at that. In that society at that point in history, female children weren’t viewed as precious–not when they had a disability, certainly. They were possessions of the father, and their purpose was to bring him honor through their marriages. According to Roman law, a father can kill his daughter at any point in her life without consequence. It’s his right.
So Cyprus, suddenly unable to move, sees her life flash before her eyes–but not the life she’s lived thus far. The short, brutal life she knows is about to come.
She’ll die. Not from the fall that severed her spinal cord (not that I name it as such, LOL), but from what she views as the decision her father will have no choice but to make. It’s unthinkable that he’ll saddle himself and his wife with such a child for innumerable years. He’ll do what his Greek neighbors would expect him to do:
Kill her.
Because he loves her, she doubts he’ll be able to do it by his own hand, so he’ll do what most parents do in the face of an obviously imperfect child: leave her on a hilltop for the weather and wild animals to snarl over.
To modern, Western philosophy, this mindset is simply unthinkable. Because children are precious. They are a gift from God. We give them, in general, more consideration than adults–but this is a relatively new idea. As recently as a hundred years ago, families with any means still believed children were meant to be tucked away and cared for out of sight–and earshot–by hired help. Christmas celebrations were for the adults, not primarily the children. They would have considered this ancient mindset extreme, but they without the benefit of modern medicine and therapy and equipment probably would have also shrugged and said, “But I understand. What can they do? Wouldn’t it have been more merciful to end her suffering?”
Throughout the book, Cyprus’s father represents that Greek/Roman way of thinking–first for himself and only after that for his daughters.
So how are daughters to respond, especially in a world that thinks like he does?
How do you honor a parent who is not honoring God?
These are a few questions I dig into–quesitons I had no answer to going in, but which came to light as I wrote. And I do it by remembering something that would have been new and revolutionary at the time:
God values children, even daughters. He pours love and affection out upon them. The early Christian church did something unprecedented in history by taking in orphans and unwanted children and loving them. Teaching them that God loved them. That they were precious.
That mindset we take for granted today? That’s all thanks to God and Jesus. Which is why it’s pretty funny when the secular feminist today spouts nonsense about the Bible being anti-woman. Because honey, without the Bible and its mores, you wouldn’t have any rights to complain at all. 😉
Of course, the book would be pretty short if Cyprus’s father really killed her after chapter one. She ends up miraculously healed . . . but her father won’t accept that either. Because why would God waste a miracle on a third daughter? And so, in the years to come, Cyprus asks a new question:
Why did God heal her?
I think this is a question many of us relate to. Why did God move in that way in our lives? What was the plan, the purpose? How are we supposed to remember the feeling of peace and Joy when the world around us crumbles?
Good questions. It takes Cyprus many, many pages to arrive at an answer. And it’s one I pray will shed some new light on what love–selfless, God-given love–is really all about.
by Roseanna White | Oct 19, 2016 | Ancient World, Remember When Wednesdays
It’s only a week and a half until November. That means a week and a half until this releases…
In all the excitement of visiting England and seeing the settings for my Bethany House books, Giver of Wonders hasn’t been talked about much. But now, with November and release upon us . . . well, it’s time to talk about Christmas. =)
I wanted to write a Christmas book–that’s one of the reasons that I sat down, a couple years ago, and began this story. Except that it isn’t a traditional Christmas book. It’s set around 290 AD, well before recognizable Christmas traditions began. There were no evergreen trees lit up. No snow, certainly, where this takes place in modern-day Turkey (Lycia at the time). There were no stockings and tinsel and jolly elves in red.
But there were gifts. And they came down a chimney. And there was the man on whom the jolly elf in red was, loosely, based.
There were miracles instead of magic. There was Jesus and his birth, celebrated among the early church on the Winter Solstice (December 25 at the time). There was sacrifice, and there was family, and there was love.
It took me forever to write this book. Or at the very least, a year longer than I intended it to do. I struggled a bit to put my vision for who the real St. Nicholas might have been onto the page, and to do so in a way that stuck with my usual formula for a biblical novel. Because, of course, this story isn’t primarily about Nikolaos (as it would have been spelled in Greek…with English letters, LOL.) It’s about fictional characters Cyprus Visibullis and her sisters. Who are, in my version of events, the sisters around whom one of our most beloved Christmas traditions was born.
Because Nik gave more than gifts to children who really don’t need them. He gave gifts to those who needed them most, and he gave them anonymously. He gave hope to those who were lost. He gave life and healing to those who were broken and desperate.
Nikolaos was a man of God. And though my novelized version of him is probably pretty far from the real man who led the church in Myra all those centuries ago, I pray it gets to the heart of him. And to why he’s still celebrated today.
So though my focus hasn’t been on it much yet, I’m so excited to share Giver of Wonders with the world, and I look forward to talking about parts of it each Wednesday in the next month or so. It’s a Christmas story that you can read in any season. Because ultimately, it’s not about the day Jesus was born.
It’s about the love that ought to fill His followers all year.
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.