Resource roundup: Christmas music

If you've been shopping any time lately you've quite likely heard some terrible recordings of Christmas music. It is amazing how badly it is possible to ruin perfectly good songs. Thankfully there is good Christmas music out there. Even better, you don't have to spend much (or in some cases anything) to get it.

My favoute Christmas album is Love Shall Be Our Token by High Street Hymns. You can download the whole album for whatever you want to pay (minimum US$1) Instrumental tracks are also available. The sheet music is free at their website.

Quite a few great artists have also been putting out Christmas music on noisetrade. All the music on noisetrade is free, but you can make a donation to the artist if you want to. Some I've enjoyed are

Sojourn
Aaron Ivey
Rebekah Antoine
Nathan Tasker
Culby X

Sleeping at last

If you have any other suggestions for good free or cheap Christmas music, please post them in the comments.

Book review: Robert Bogh- When the bottom drops out

When the Bottom Drops Out: Finding Grace in the Depths of Disappointment
Robert Bugh
Buy this book

In When The Bottom Drops Out, Robert Bugh teaches Christians how to think about and work through grief and serious disappointments.

One of the things that makes this book work so well is that it isn’t just theoretical knowledge about the topic but that what he teaches has been learned from his experience of his best friend and his wife dying. His reflections on these events are really moving. It also serves to demonstrate well why having good theology matters in practice.

What he shares of his personal story is complimented by extensive teaching from the bible about suffering. He shows how God is good and at work in the severe suffering of a number of biblical characters. He also addresses some misconceptions Christians have about suffering. I was particularly glad to read his arguments from the bible against prosperity gospel approaches to dealing with suffering as these are popular but can do immense harm.

Even if you are not suffering right now I think this is still a valuable book to read. It will help you have a good framework for when bad things happen in the future. It will also probably be helpful in learning how to be sensitive to those who suffer. He provides some hints based on what was helpful and unhelpful in his own experience.

The only critique I would make is that some of the retelling of the author’s story were a bit longer than they probably need to be, particularly towards the start of the book.

Overall, I thought it was a helpful and well written book that many will find quite helpful.


Review copy courtesy of christianaudio.com

Dealing with disappointment

Disappointment is a rather unfortunate fact of life. Sometimes it stems from the little things we would have liked to be different. Sometimes it comes from the pain of something deeply longed for not coming to pass. Sometimes it happens when we loose something good. Whatever the cause, it can be challenging to deal with it in a healthy way.

This week I was reading the story of Hannah in 1 Samuel 1. I think she has a lot to teach us about dealing with disappointment. I’ve found her example really helpful as I work through some disappointment of my own. Hannah was deeply disappointed because wanted children but was unable to have them. To make matters worse she had a bully in her household who cruelly mocked her pain and a husband who loved her but failed somewhat at sensitivity and tact. Pointing out how blessed she was to have him as a husband was probably not that helpful!

There is a number of things it would have been tempting for Hannah to do. She could have gotten angry with her bully or husband. She could have turned from God. She could have gotten bitter and complained to everyone about her situation. She could have followed her husbands suggestion and tried to pretend she had nothing to be sad about. We don’t have record of her doing any of those things.

Instead she took it to God is prayer. These weren’t nice, polite, disinterested prayers. We are told she wept bitterly in public. Someone watching her pray thought she must have been drunk! It would have had to have been some pretty intense praying for it to be confused with drunkenness!

I think her example here is incredibly freeing. If we are disappointed, we can be honest with God about it. We don’t need to bury our disappointment under attempts to act pious. While thinking positive is sometimes somewhat helpful, faith doesn’t require we pretend that we don’t have anything to be disappointed about. We can tell God exactly how we feel about the way things have turned out. We can cry if we need to. We can plead with him to change things. It is a lesson we also see in other sections of the bible such as Habakkuk.

Hannah also provided a good example in how she acted after she had poured her heart out for God. We read about how she was worshiped God, even prior to her prayers being answered. It is easy to worship when our prayers are answered and things are going well. It can feel like a bit of a stretch to worship while we wait for God to fix what we are disappointed about or when facing disappointments related to things that can’t be changed or fixed. Choosing to worship God even when we really don’t feel like it can help strengthen our faith and help correct our perspective if we are sinking into bad bad attitudes. More importantly, our choice to worship honours God.

God did answer the prayers Hannah prayed while disappointed and blessed her with a child. Regardless of whether our prayers get answered the way we hope, her example of passionate honesty with God and choosing to worship can help us journey well through disappointment.