I wish you a beautiful Christmas Day,
full of peace,
packed with goodness,
loaded with kindness,
festooned with mercy,
wrapped with compassion,
tagged with love
and given with
His
boundless
majesty.
Christ is born!
He reins!
He lives ... for all of us.
May you have His joy in your heart, no matter what your circumstances right now. His love surrounds us, we have only to reach for it and hang on when nothing else seems right.
His love and boundless grace sustain us, through the harshest struggles and deepest sorrows. He is there -- he will always be there.
Thank you, God, for sending your Son for all of us, the gift that keeps on giving, and fits everyone perfectly.
Merry Christmas!
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year
Christmas comes but once a year.
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat.
Go, tell it on the mountain!
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!
Joy to the world, the Lord is come.
How many song lyrics, poems or stories remind you of this Season of Hope, sometimes when we're months in front of or behind it? How often do words or phrases change our tune or outlook on the world around us? How powerful, the words we use, the words we hear, the words we read!
Those of us celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, know full well that Christmas is closer than we're ready for, just yet, as we're headlong and up to our eyeballs in preparation for our family celebrations. Those who celebrate simply, "Christmas" as a gift-giving observance, probably feel the same pull from family and social obligations, long lists of need-to-purchase gifts, baking, visiting, entertaining, and lack of rest.
When we look beyond the wrappings, peer past the decorations, focus away from the dazzle and the dollars, we have a very simple, poignant and melancholy... yes, melancholy ... remembrance of a baby boy's birth. Those of us who have given birth, or have held a newborn and known the joy and awe in the tiny form know a tad about the feelings Mary had as she cradled the newborn King.
God, our Heavenly Father, came to earth in the form of a helpless baby, born to poor, working class parents who had no hope of riches nor ever rise in rank in a class-oriented society. He came to give us a human example of Godly perfection. He came to show us that anyone could choose to do right and to believe whole-heartedly, as well as to give of his whole heart to everyone who needed even a glimmer of hope to go on in this weary world.
Jesus came to die. For a beautiful, glorious, grace-filled reason, but to die, nonetheless. Anyone who has a child or holds loved ones dear cannot fathom, cannot even try to imagine bringing that child into the world for the ultimate purpose of offering him as a sacrifice -- for everyone else on earth and everyone yet to be born. And the melancholy enters. No one pictures death in the face of a newborn, seeing the promise and potential there for future milestones, and comparing characteristics of family members in the small one's features. No one thinks of turning this child over to certain death ... having never done wrong himself. Yet, he came to live a godly example and ... to ... die.
He came for you. He came for me. He came for the family down the road whom you have never met. He came for taxi drivers, teachers, ditch diggers, doctors, world leaders, slaves, mothers, fathers, siblings, priests, mill workers, lawyers, tax collectors, businessmen, children and adults. He came for one and all, not just a few. He wants every one of us.
We need only give ourselves, and then watch and listen for the changes he makes within us, that help in making us new, help in making us more Christ-like.
We need only try with a mustard-seed-size faith -- if that's all we have to offer. We need only look to Him for guidance, for grace and for mercy. We will try and fail, we will persevere and suffer, we will work hard and glean little. We will continue on in this path of faith ... and find Him at the end, just as he was at the Beginning.
He came for you.
God bless you, and Merry Christmas!
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat.
Go, tell it on the mountain!
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!
Joy to the world, the Lord is come.
How many song lyrics, poems or stories remind you of this Season of Hope, sometimes when we're months in front of or behind it? How often do words or phrases change our tune or outlook on the world around us? How powerful, the words we use, the words we hear, the words we read!
Those of us celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, know full well that Christmas is closer than we're ready for, just yet, as we're headlong and up to our eyeballs in preparation for our family celebrations. Those who celebrate simply, "Christmas" as a gift-giving observance, probably feel the same pull from family and social obligations, long lists of need-to-purchase gifts, baking, visiting, entertaining, and lack of rest.
When we look beyond the wrappings, peer past the decorations, focus away from the dazzle and the dollars, we have a very simple, poignant and melancholy... yes, melancholy ... remembrance of a baby boy's birth. Those of us who have given birth, or have held a newborn and known the joy and awe in the tiny form know a tad about the feelings Mary had as she cradled the newborn King.
God, our Heavenly Father, came to earth in the form of a helpless baby, born to poor, working class parents who had no hope of riches nor ever rise in rank in a class-oriented society. He came to give us a human example of Godly perfection. He came to show us that anyone could choose to do right and to believe whole-heartedly, as well as to give of his whole heart to everyone who needed even a glimmer of hope to go on in this weary world.
Jesus came to die. For a beautiful, glorious, grace-filled reason, but to die, nonetheless. Anyone who has a child or holds loved ones dear cannot fathom, cannot even try to imagine bringing that child into the world for the ultimate purpose of offering him as a sacrifice -- for everyone else on earth and everyone yet to be born. And the melancholy enters. No one pictures death in the face of a newborn, seeing the promise and potential there for future milestones, and comparing characteristics of family members in the small one's features. No one thinks of turning this child over to certain death ... having never done wrong himself. Yet, he came to live a godly example and ... to ... die.
He came for you. He came for me. He came for the family down the road whom you have never met. He came for taxi drivers, teachers, ditch diggers, doctors, world leaders, slaves, mothers, fathers, siblings, priests, mill workers, lawyers, tax collectors, businessmen, children and adults. He came for one and all, not just a few. He wants every one of us.
We need only give ourselves, and then watch and listen for the changes he makes within us, that help in making us new, help in making us more Christ-like.
We need only try with a mustard-seed-size faith -- if that's all we have to offer. We need only look to Him for guidance, for grace and for mercy. We will try and fail, we will persevere and suffer, we will work hard and glean little. We will continue on in this path of faith ... and find Him at the end, just as he was at the Beginning.
He came for you.
God bless you, and Merry Christmas!
Ten Ways to Love: Give without Sparing
It's Christmas time as I hit the third on the list of Ten Ways to Love. One week until the day all of our Christmas giving hits the runway, unveiled for each recipient in a scattered havoc of boxes, bags, paper, ribbons and tags.
Give without sparing.
In tangible gift-giving, not sparing a cent or a thought or an opportunity happens without a lot of difficulty. Sure, we sometimes second-guess our purchases or choices or spending limits, because tangible is finite. The money we use has an end. Material goods go only so far.
To give without sparing in marriage, or in family relationships, or in friendship, has a very important, very intangible reckoning for us. We can't always see it coming from others (when it is) and others can't always see ours coming in their direction (when it is).
The Biblical focus of the lesson to Give without Sparing come from Proverbs 21:25-26 --
"The craving of a sluggard will be the death of him,
because his hands refuse to work.
All day long he craves for more,
but the righteous give without sparing."
Put this into the light of the day-to-day living of a husband and wife. It sounds a little strange, this "craving of a sluggard" angle from Solomon -- the wisest man who ever lived. Yet, when you view your husband, your children, your family, your friends as "needy" or "wanting" or as stated here, "craving," and you, the sole giver ... you martyr yourself. You become the judge of those you should love with all your heart, rather than suppose and assume and discipline toward the right. Your right.
Giving without sparing has nothing to do with gifts and mementos. It has nothing to do with greeting cards, pokes, pins or tweets. Status updates hold no importance when it comes to sparing nothing in love. Giving without sparing has everything to do with selflessness and putting oneself into a judgment-free zone. It means giving of yourself -- your time, your thought, your work, your energy, your sensitivity, your planning, your hopes, your tolerance, your acceptance, your prayers, your talents, your patience, your joy, and your heart to your God and your husband. Good things will filter down to your children from the top, and you will bless other family and friends with the peace and understanding you begin to develop through focusing on your Top Two.
To give, selflessly and fully, makes the greatest gift of all. Material possessions and the pull they have on our Want List will dwindle when our hearts fill, instead, with focused, purposeful acts of love.
Love is the only thing you get more of by giving it away. ~~Tom Wilson
Love. Let us give more of it!
Others in this series:
- Ten Ways to Love: An Introduction
- Ten Ways to Love: Answer without Arguing
- Ten Ways to Love: Enjoy without Complaint
- Ten Ways to Love: Give without Sparing
- Ten Ways to Love: Listen without Interrupting
- Ten Ways to Love: Share without Pretending
- Ten Ways to Love: Speak without Accusing
- Ten Ways to Love: Forgive without Punishing
- Ten Ways to Love: Pray without Ceasing
- Ten Ways to Love: Trust without Wavering
Christmas Tradition Expanded
Christmas baking -- almost done! We've finished baking the final batch of cookies and this week, I'll take on the yeast breads, teaching our daughter to bake loaves of cinnamon swirl bread that taste exactly right sliced, toasted, and spread with warm butter. I feel both anticipation and a few pangs of nervousness at passing along this tradition. Trial and error makes the best teacher in this, and errors often make for irritation when people work closely together in a small space. But we will persevere. Bread will bake. We will succeed, and our family will have the privilege of enjoying it with us.Today, though, I will work on cinnamon rolls. My husband and I have enjoyed this recipe for twenty-one years, after painstakingly working to copy the delectable rolls that go by a famous name ending in "bon" at shopping malls. For weeks (pre-Internet -- no Google, no Bing -- with actual, print copies of recipes gleaned from collections and books), we tried a number of dough recipes for the roll, moving between taste-testing at the mall to baking new batches to compare flavor and texture.
The filling came more easily, since we could watch the bakers at the mall bake shop in action while workers mixed and sprinkled a cinnamon-sugar mixture across the thickly buttered surface of the dough. Brown sugar. Key ingredient!
We purchased more rolls to verify our icing recipe, knowing that cream cheese played an integral role in the creaminess of the final product. Sugary icing would never do. Smooth and silky, owning the properties for melting into the layers of each roll, but not completely.
Within a few weeks' time, we did it! I do not recall the amount of cash we invested in our shopping mall roll purchases, or in restocking ingredients as we tried and failed, but divided by the 21 years of tradition that follow, the rolls paid for themselves long ago, in the thanks from family and friends receiving them each Christmas. I bake them, mainly, for the people living under this roof. But, first, I bake them for the man who helped me take each step, bit by bit, cup by cup, and taste by taste. We took a journey together, with a mission in mind, and we found success.
Each year since then, we look forward to these cinnamon rolls, fondly remembering the pounds we added to our waistlines in effort to compare and make a best match on a product we felt we must have, no question of failure. The end result varies little, no matter if the kneading went a little short or a little long. Yeast has occasionally failed and had to be proofed again. Once in a while, sugar scorches and darkens an edge on a single roll, but nothing that would cause someone to turn down a serving. One year, an entire pan of rolls met an untimely demise, courtesy of a late-night baking, as I crammed too many Christmas plans into too little time, and flipped a freshly-baked pan of rolls upside-down into the bottom of the oven. Overall, each year builds on those before it and we learn new tricks to producing a better product and new ways to share what we produce with others.
The traditions of marriage -- the love overtures -- remind me a lot of the making of the rolls. The early stages took trial and error, but we refused to quit. We figure out how to manage and maneuver around any snags or pitfalls. We keep comparing and finding new information or guidance, and we want an outstanding final product.
Sometimes, efforts don't meet our expectations, we fail at getting everything done in an order that allows for agreeable outcomes, we need to go back and start from scratch. When we feel we can't possibly improve or get around an obstacle, we check again and find new strength to continue. We persevere, no matter what.
When we follow the recipe, when we pay attention to the details, when we keep our eyes and heart focused on the end result, we find success. The successful outcomes give light to the times that we fall short -- we have memories of past successes and know we can produce the same thing if only we pay attention and take the right steps to get there.
And, just like a batch of cinnamon rolls, when we have a terrific outcome, everyone -- family and friends included -- shares in the enjoyment. Each of us must remember that though we meet difficulties and suffer the aftermath of poor decisions, the basic recipe remains. When we remember to return to it we can certainly tweak or twist the basics a little bit, but in the end, we know we have committed to getting a positive, wanted, hoped-for, anticipated end result that will give us something to look forward to every time.
Merry Christmas!
Ecclesiastes 4:9-12
Two are better than one, they have a good return for their work:
If one falls down, his friend can help him up.
But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!
But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!
Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone?
Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.
The traditions of marriage -- the love overtures -- remind me a lot of the making of the rolls. The early stages took trial and error, but we refused to quit. We figure out how to manage and maneuver around any snags or pitfalls. We keep comparing and finding new information or guidance, and we want an outstanding final product.
Sometimes, efforts don't meet our expectations, we fail at getting everything done in an order that allows for agreeable outcomes, we need to go back and start from scratch. When we feel we can't possibly improve or get around an obstacle, we check again and find new strength to continue. We persevere, no matter what.
When we follow the recipe, when we pay attention to the details, when we keep our eyes and heart focused on the end result, we find success. The successful outcomes give light to the times that we fall short -- we have memories of past successes and know we can produce the same thing if only we pay attention and take the right steps to get there.
And, just like a batch of cinnamon rolls, when we have a terrific outcome, everyone -- family and friends included -- shares in the enjoyment. Each of us must remember that though we meet difficulties and suffer the aftermath of poor decisions, the basic recipe remains. When we remember to return to it we can certainly tweak or twist the basics a little bit, but in the end, we know we have committed to getting a positive, wanted, hoped-for, anticipated end result that will give us something to look forward to every time.
Merry Christmas!
Now, I Can Say It!
The turkey has only a few bits hanging from the bones, we had some leftover mashed potatoes for a change (that never happens), and the pies have only a few slices remaining each.
So, here goes:
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
While you deck the halls and rock around your Christmas tree, remember to focus on The One who came so that you can celebrate in the first place.
Remember always, that he came as a baby, to a lowly birthplace and lived the life of a human being. Remember that he never did wrong -- he was blameless, without sin -- and he laid down his life, 33 years into it, for YOU, for me, for everyone.
He gives that same gift every day and paid his life for it. We can't repay a debt like that. We can only give our lives and hearts to him, to change for the better in our marriages and families and friendships.
Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.
Say it, mean it, and live it.
So, here goes:
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
While you deck the halls and rock around your Christmas tree, remember to focus on The One who came so that you can celebrate in the first place.
Remember always, that he came as a baby, to a lowly birthplace and lived the life of a human being. Remember that he never did wrong -- he was blameless, without sin -- and he laid down his life, 33 years into it, for YOU, for me, for everyone.
He gives that same gift every day and paid his life for it. We can't repay a debt like that. We can only give our lives and hearts to him, to change for the better in our marriages and families and friendships.
Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.
Say it, mean it, and live it.
The Best of Black Friday
.
Hi. My name is Amy, and I am a Black Friday shopper.
I rarely spend more than $100 that day (usually less than $50), including breakfast.
I don't stand outside on line in front of a store, hoping to be one of the first 14 shoppers to purchase a limited quantity item.
I don't plan a shopping strategy.
I don't have a team of friends and relatives, connected by cell phone, to report the success/failure rate of the waiting in line or of the strategy of the shopping.
I shop alone.
My goal: people-watching
While the term "Black Friday" refers to the day after
Thanksgiving, when merchants hope to turn their yearly revenue from "in the red" (profit loss) to "in the black" (profit gain), to me, it means a day to spread some cheer, share some good will, and maybe arrive home a few stocking stuffers or nifty gifts "richer" for my family. I like providing surprises. Black Friday usually allows for me to do that -- and in ways that have nothing to do with material goods.
I began my Black Friday jaunts in 1997. Through the years, I have found interesting ways to surprise fellow shoppers. From reporting the best (shortest) check-out lines hidden in the sporting goods' section of the store to giving someone else my place in line, my $10-off coupons, and my ability to distract their youngsters for a few minutes while they ease a special toy into a shopping bag, I have found my favorite thing to do is lend a hand in whatever way presents itself.
I have fun, feel satisfied and successful, and justify my getting up at 4:00 a.m. to pick up a cup of coffee at the convenience store and head out into the insanity that reins supreme. I hope to give someone a break or to calm a harried mother's jangled nerves. I hope to share the "God in my" and remind someone what the whole Christmas thing means. And yes, I do hope to find a bargain here or there, if I stumble upon one.
I enjoy the inky blackness of late November morning, and I feel a little sad when the sun does begin to rise. I like the darkness on this day, and I like being out in it with the crazies who "must buy" or ... or what? Self-destruct?
Something else stands out very clearly in my 15 years of Black Friday memories. The man I married waits for me. He remains at home, keeping watch over home and family, which I find very attractive. My husband does not feel especially comfortable in the kitchen, nor does he feel entirely capable of fielding kids' questions or meeting their needs-turned-demand when Mom isn't home. I'm his back-up, his helper, and his teammate -- when I don't mistakingly say something unteammate-like. I always hope he will stay asleep until I arrive home before 10:30 a.m., to catch up on what he rarely gets enough of, but usually, I hear from him well before 6:00. He checks on me, making sure I haven't been trampled to the ground at JCPenney, or caught in a melée at Target. Though, if those things happened, I don't know how he would rescue me, because he'd never find a parking spot.
He wonders what time I will finish, and asks if I'm enjoying myself. He has no concern about what I might spend, because he knows I don't spend much. He likes to be in on the surprises, and wears a little boy grin when I warn him to not look in this or that bag, knowing I have something tucked in there for him.
He looks out for me by cell phone from our bed or from our family room, reporting on the goings on at home when the children awake. He waits patiently, never asking for me to drop what I am doing to come home, except for one year when I needed to nurse our 6-week old baby half-way through the morning. Even so, he waited until the last possible minute to ask.
When I arrive home, he clears the scene so I can smuggle any bags or packages to appropriate locations, and listens to the stories I have to tell. My husband travels regularly for work, and in comparison, this is my time in the trenches. He does not "do" Black Friday, so hearing stories about lost tempers or frustrated shoppers or touching moments that sometimes occur in the frenzy of western Pennsylvania humanity, all out to shop together, makes him curious. I talk. He listens. We bond.
And, when it's all over, he helps get lunch on the table, tries to get me to take a nap (he's wildly successful at this), and pretty much makes me feel like this is my day. I feel closer to him, and he feels protective of me. We both win.
When people hear that I love (strong word, love) Black Friday, they don't often really understand the people-watching aspect, or the interest in wending through multitudes of tunnel-visioned humans who seem only to focus on that X-Box that the store ran out of 2 customers ago.
Add the fact that my husband and I connect because I am away, etc., etc., and I can ensure confusion in the listener. Mainly, explaining my heart like that would make me cry. This is why I write, instead.
So, yes. I love Black Friday. It brings out the best in people, if you look.
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