Hope

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It’s Still Christmas

Thursday, January 5th, 2012

     Some of you, eager to let go of the old and get on with the new in the New Year, are contemplating taking your Christmas trees down.  Maybe even…tonight!

     Don’t do it!

     Not yet.  It’s still Christmas!  Right up to Epiphany.

     This year will be different, if you hold on to what you found – the joy and the hope and the light – at Christmas.

     Well o.k., if your tree is a live one and really dry, with needles falling off all over the carpet, then at least, at least, keep a few Christmas cards around the house.  I’ve got one with the most beautiful image of Mary, her face aglow as she gazes down in wonder at the newborn Savior in her arms.  I think I’m going to keep this card out where I can see it all year long, with my other family pictures.  (Mary is part of God’s big family and so am I, so that makes us family.)

     Mary is not just a character in a treasured old story that I tell my kids once a year.  She’s alive in spirit with God because of His son, her Lord and Savior!

     Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, lives – now and into the New Year – in me.

     Is He alive in you?

His Gift in You

Friday, December 30th, 2011

     ‘God commissioned me “to present to you the word of God in its fullness…”,’ Paul says in Colossians (1:25).

     Imagine Paul presenting you with a gift.  Will you open it?  What will be inside?

     “…the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations…now is disclosed to the saints.” (vs. 26)

     Yes, you are going to open this gift…

     “…God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery…” (vs. 27)

     Glorious riches!  Yes, you are definitely opening this gift!

     “…the glorious riches of this mystery, which is…

                         Christ in you, the hope of Glory” !

     The hope of glory…the hope of glory…Christ in you, the hope of Glory!

    Thank you God, for this most wonderful and precious gift!

                         Come Lord Jesus!

Worthwhile

Tuesday, December 20th, 2011

     Every year, right about this time, in exasperation and exhaustion, I ask myself, ‘why do we do all of this anyway?’

     Do you know what I mean?  The shopping and the wrapping and the decorating and the baking, and that big stack of cards that I have yet to fill out…why?  What does it all have to do with the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ?

     Yesterday I took time to pray.  A full half hour – time I don’t have this time of year!  I found an Advent prayer – a lovely one, so rich in hope – in an old Lutheran Book of Prayer (from 1941) that used to belong to my mother-in-law.  Then I sat in the house here and prayed it over and over.  After that, I prayed for the many broken and hurting and ailing people in the world.

     And now, somehow, everything has changed.

     I’m back to shopping and wrapping and decorating, and will soon be baking (sugar cookies) – and I am rejoicing in it all!  I’m looking forward to sending out Christmas cards, with that message so rich in hope, to the many broken and hurting and ailing people in my part of the world.

     Oh, and this morning when my daughter gave a gift to one of her crossing guards on the way to school and wished him a “Merry Christmas!”, well, that look in his eyes made it all worthwhile.