Cool and clear was the night
That shepherds watched their sheep;
Up in fields on yonder hills,
While in the valley Bethlehem lay asleep…
Archive | December, 2011
While Shepherds Watched
Gift or Giver?
When I was young, my mom used to take us to art shows. This may sound like a crazy idea to you — venturing out with five kids, age 12 and under, to a tent-city full of pottery, original paintings, fine glass and one-of-a-kind treasures. But she’d started when we were young — cultivating an appreciation for beauty and training us to keep our hands to ourselves — and we loved art show days.
Great Expectations
I’d wrap my arms around myself and pray, ‘Not tonight please, Jesus.’ Don’t come back just yet, Jesus – and don’t let us die yet either. There are too many happy things still to enjoy. And I haven’t tried that new box of watercolours.
here we come a-caroling
Winter was never my favorite of the seasons, but my family and I eagerly looked forward to the days after Thanksgiving when we would fill our long evenings with baking banana bread and packing up little bags of cheer to share with our neighbors near and far at Christmas time.
The nights were often windy and the cold was good at finding any little crack to creep into, even if you dressed up like a snowman with parkas and mittens and scarves.
In the fulness of time
Have you ever thought about the world Jesus was born into?
Of course, the set-up for His arrival began before the foundation of the world, but we can see precise pieces being set into place decades, and even centuries ahead of time…
home for the holidays
I’m looking forward to getting home, my husband sighed as he stretched in the driver’s seat.
I couldn’t help but agree with a tired but happy, “Me, too.”
We’d just been to visit my family. Back to where I used to call home.
But I’d noticed it even more than usual this time…
The Promise of the Manger
I wonder what it was like for Mary to hold her son in her arms and realise, somehow, that He was Emmanuel? I wonder what it was like for Him, giving up the glory of Heaven, sleeping in a manger?
The carols talk about the silent, starry night and the crib. I imagine the light of an oil lamp flickering around the rough walls of a shadowy stable and across the newborn face of a tiny baby.
Christmas Blues returning the ‘gift’ of singleness
Blues. Why is loneliness associated with blue? Why not red and green — the colors of the Christmas season that strikes loneliness into the heart of the most contented of singles? It’s a season of gifts, when a lot singles would rather return their ‘gift of singleness’.
a love of cross-culture travel
When I was eighteen, I went to India for two months… About eight months later, I moved to Thailand to assist an older missionary couple… Then, when I was twenty-two, I moved to New Zealand to live with some friends and help them with their four children five and under…
the one who says something random
In recent years, it’s been a few local “older women” who have reminded me that it’s okay not to do it all. It’s the ladies at my church who don’t know or care about my status online or even how clean my home is, but how happy my children are. It’s the online friends who have become real life friends that let me learn lessons along with them and speak courage into me when I don’t have it on my own.
