Table Of Contents
December
2021
Volume 65, Number 9
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About This Issue
The Gospels are silent about most of Jesus’ life on earth. Perhaps no time of year are we more aware of that than during Advent, when perennial questions resurface: When exactly did those Magi visit? What was Christ’s childhood like? His education? Did his family live in relative comfort, or in penury? At the center of all these questions is the void in what we know about Joseph. But what little information we do have offers a lot to explore. Our stories this month reexamine Joseph’s spirituality and the trade he passed on to his son. PLUS: Why there’s still plenty of Christ in Christmas.
Features
God entrusted his only Son to a man who could not provide as his culture expected.
Our popular imagining of Christ as a woodworker obscures a richer story.
Wet sifting brings us closer than ever to the world of Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Hezekiah.
Too often, our practices of intercession are thin to nonexistent. The Reformed tradition shows us how to revive them.
My journey from life on the streets to life in Christ.
Views
Video calls can supplement but should never supplant visits with incarcerated people.
Keeping a loose grip on people and possessions makes us more hopeful.
The poet said Christian institutions and community needed refreshing. They still do.
What a pair of seemingly contradictory psalms teaches us about telling the church’s story.
Whether or not this is the apocalypse, there are more important things afoot.
Reviews
If our movement is carrying reputational baggage, then we have no choice but to own it.
How the Bible’s doctrine of humanity gives us hope for reaching even the hardest of hearts.
Chosen by Lisa Wingate, author of “The Book of Lost Friends” and “Before We Were Yours.”
Their plight moved a (mostly prayerless) war correspondent to prayer and mourning.
Chosen by Gerry Bowler, author of “Christmas in the Crosshairs: Two Thousand Years of Denouncing and Defending the World’s Most Celebrated Holiday.”
News
It’s a new golden age of children’s books filled to the brim with theology—and imagination.
Most-played hits around the world celebrate love, snow, and chestnuts before getting around to Christ.
A bold new thesis proposed in extremist studies is based in testimony of Arab Christian pastors.
A study finds an increasingly rapid turnover time for church music.
More from this Issue
The Gospels don’t tell us what we don’t need to know.
The marketplace rewards scorn. CT has always sought a better way.
