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365 Days of Counting Gifts

12/26/2012

I have been counting gifts for over one year now. I started this on Christmas day last year after reading Ann Voscamp's '1000 Gifts'. With my whole heart, I endorse both reading her book and counting your own gifts over the next year. Let's celebrate life and all of its beauty together.

Highlights from this month's list of gifts have been very special. I saw some birds sitting on a snow covered tree singing praises (similar to the picture above). My sons smiling and laughing are always good to boost my spirit. My husband's thoughtfulness of a hot water bottle on my aching back. Playful 'talks' with the baby. Good meals with family and friends.

Have you noticed that these things are not big? These gifts are small things that warmed my heart, caught my attention, and let me notice the beauty in the everyday things. What richness!

This is not to say that life is always good. Sometimes I am amazed and paralyzed by my inadequacies, weaknesses, and attitude. But isn't this the point? When I can only see myself, I need to look around me to see goodness, light, love, and God.

Christmas day is a reminder that God is with us. He was born in a barn filled with mud, muck, hay, pigs, and other animals. He reaches down into our messy, mud-filled lives and does His best to get our attention.

The beauty of this that I don't fully grasp is that He has chosen me. Me? My shame and inadequacies as a mother, wife, teacher, lover, friend, writer, cook, and occasionally, an artist, He knows me very well. He changes me. As I count gifts, as I become more and more grateful for life around me, He transforms me. He is filling me with love, light, patience, and grace. He is with me.

Isn't that the point of Christmas? God is with us.

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All Heaven With Its Power

12/16/2012

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This has turned out to be one of the most blessed Advent seasons I can remember. There has been wonderful times in the kitchen baking cookies with friends and families, good food, blessed conversations, snow, snow ball fights, one really good snowman, and general goodness and sweetness in my three boys. All is blessed, all is a gift.

All Heaven with Its Power

Lord Jesus, in this fateful hour
I place all Heaven with its power
And the sun with its brightness
And the snow with its whiteness
And the fire with the strength it hath
And the lightning with its rapid wrath
And the winds with their swiftness along their path

And the sea with its deepness
And the rocks with their steepness
And the child in the manger
Sharing our danger
And the man sandal-shod
Revealing our God

And the hill with its cross
To cry grief, pain, and loss
And the dark empty tomb
Like a heavenly womb
Giving birth to true life
While death howls in strife

and the bread and the wine
Making human divine
And the stars with their singing
And cherubim winging
And Creation's wild glory
Contained in His Story

And the hope of new birth
On this worn stricken earth
And His coming, joy-streaming
Creation redeeming
and the earth with its starkness
All these we place
By God's Almighty Help and grace
Between ourselves and the powers of darkness

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Joseph, Advent, and Hope

12/4/2012

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I am sitting in my not so very warm office thinking about Advent. Exams are almost finished and I now have a moment to breathe and reflect a little more on this season. I am cold and I am wondering how cold Joseph and Mary were in that stable. It's helping me to think about that first Christmas: the cold, the smells, the animals, and the visitors.

Last week I posted a poem about Mary. Joseph often does not get enough credit in this story. What was he going through? What was he thinking about? Again, I am struck by another poem of Tania Runyan who has carefully thought through his humanity.

May this poem make you revisit the Christmas story from Joseph's perspective.

Joseph at the Nativity

Of any birth, I thought this
would be a clean one.
like pulling white linen from a loom.

But when I return to the cave,
Mary throws her cloak
over the blood straw and cries.
I know she wants me to leave.

There He lies, stomach rising
and falling, a shriveled pod
that does nothing but stare
at the edge of the feeding trough
with dark, unsteady eyes.

Is He God enough
to know that I am poor.
that we had no time
for a midwife, that swine
ate from his bed this morning?

If the angel was right, he knows.
He knows that Mary's swell
embarrassed me, that I was jealous
of her secret skyward smiles,
that now I want to run into these hills
and never come back.

Peace, peace, I've heard in my dreams.
This child will make you right.

But I can only stand here,
not a husband, not a father,
my hands hanging dumbly
at my sides. Do I touch him,
this child who is mine
and not mine? Do I enter
the kingdom of blood and stars?

- Tania Runyan

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365 Days of Counting Gifts

All Heaven With Its Power

Joseph, Advent, and Hope

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