Christmas
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It’s Christmas Day and my tree is dead
Sometimes Christmas doesn’t go as planned. Scratch that. Christmas never goes as planned. Not entirely, anyway. Our Christmas tree has been put out to pasture which, in this case, is our back garden. Undecorating it the day after Christmas – Boxing Day – was a bit gloomy but the poor thing had been refusing water for at least a week, even though Doug cut the trunk after it was delivered. In all honestly, with its droopy, needle-shedding branches shrouding our gifts, it should have been put out of its misery on Christmas day but who does that? So we kept the thing propped up and pretended it was alive, like…
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Treasure Up
With the hoopla over and done with, Christmas odds and ends now line store shelves bearing garish clearance priced stickers, just as Christmas leftovers line our refrigerator. (Is anyone going to eat the rest of this turkey? Please?) Carol singing and candle-lit services give way to the cold reality of January and our mentality shifts from the magic of it all to monotony: back to work and school, back to trudging through snow and waiting for busses and paying credit card bills… and cleaning out the fridge. The advent book we started but failed to finish sits on the coffee table like a half done To Do List. (I can’t read…
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Transformation
It’s here. Finally. Snow. We’ve been waiting for it, expecting it, watching the skies and the weather reports—this is Wisconsin after all—and it’s come. It came in the night and transformed our yards, covered up any leftover leaf piles and our oddly green grass. All is changed. All looks new. All is covered over, fresh with promise. Transformation is beautiful. The snow is beautiful, at this moment, early in the morning, as I lounge on my couch and write. I love the snow, from inside. I love the idea of snow. But later, when I step outside to shovel or scrap off the car, or when the kids and the…
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The 12 blogs of Christmas #12: Packing up Jesus
It’s that time of year again. Time to put Jesus in a box. Pluck him off the shelf and swaddle him in tissue paper and stash him in the basement until next year. Christmas is over, right? And this final blog post is kinda late, right? Reason #1: I had the stomach flu. Reason #2: I meant it to be “late”. If the 25th marks the day we celebrate Jesus’ birth, he’s a whopping 4 days old and now it’s kind of like… party’s over. Thanks for coming. Now everyone go home. Here’s the thing: babies grow. And grow and keep growing and walk and talk and go on to…
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The 12 blogs of Christmas #11: Welcome
We step into a house with a newborn like we’re stepping into a bubble, in breathless wonder. Babies are so easy to welcome. So disarming, so nonthreatening. So unifying, because we all started out like that—as a trembling, mewling newborn. Utterly, almost frighteningly, dependent.All of us: President Obama. The artist/athlete/superstar you like. That guy from Duck Dynasty. The person who drives you nuts. At the start we’re the same, same, same. Human. Only a human gets another human. My dog doesn’t totally get me. My Christmas tree doesn’t get me, neither do the glorious stars or a sunset or the birds flying overhead. Only humanity can empathize with humanity. And…
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The 12 Blogs of Christmas #10: Old Eyes
She is old. She is weathered. Life has not been easy. She spends her days and nights in the temple. She understands prayer, she’s familiar with fasting, and she is waiting for something big. She is Anna. Anna the prophetess. One of the most (to me) obscure, intriguing characters in the account of Christ’s birth. Little baby boys were carried in and out of the temple all the time, to undergo a ceremony according to the law of Moses. Anna must have had seen hundreds of babies pass through the temple doors. But when her eyes fall on this baby she immediately knows. This is it. HE is it. He’s…
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The 12 Blogs of Christmas #9: Disillusionment
Disappointment has a sister and her name is disillusionment. Mary certainly doesn’t come across as disappointed with the unexpected direction her life abruptly took (“My soul glorifies the Lord!”) but as a girl turned mother turned wife, I wonder if she was a wee bit disillusioned. Maybe there’s a better word for my life isn’t going how I thought it would. Interrupted? Pushed off course? God loved Mary, clearly. Chose her to play one of the most significant roles in His-Story. And Mary’s response? Let it be done to me as you have said. Faith and obedience join hands. So for all of her obedience and faith shouldn’t God… I…
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The 12 Blogs of Christmas #8: Disappointment
Disappointment is unwrapping a package of underwear on Christmas morning. At least when you’re a kid. When you’re a grown up, disappointment becomes intangible, harder to trace to its source, more like a hollow, reverberating thud. And Christmastime, with all of its twinkle and shine, can make the untraceable emptiness worse because maybe your life does not resemble the front of a Christmas card. Maybe watching George and Mary Bailey and their pixie-faced children prompts you to chuck candy canes at the TV screen because maybe it turned out to be a Wonderful Life for them, but it certainly isn’t turning out that way for you. Perhaps this is your first…
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The 12 blogs of Christmas #7: Ponder
(This is a re-post. *First Ponder was written shortly after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut in Dec. of 2012) Today is a snow day. A perfect day to ponder and lately, I’ve been pondering what it means to ponder…. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. (Luke 2:19) Mary did not endure packed Wal-Mart aisles. She wasn’t in charge of baking the Christmas ham, didn’t stress over gingerbread cookies or family coming over or finding last minute stocking stuffers. She wasn’t hunting down the scotch tape or waiting in line at the post office, or figuring out what to wear or…
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The 12 Blogs of Christmas #6: little kicking kings
The Christmas story contains a villain and it isn’t Ebenezer Scrooge. Naturally, we focus on the angels, the extraordinary star, the sweet baby. But in the midst of all this lurks a villain: King Herod. King Herod the… um… Great. Or so he said. If he felt anyone was a threat to his power he had them slaughtered—including his wife, her mother, and several of his own sons. In fact, Augustus Caesar said it would be better to be Herod’s pig than his son! Ouch. King Herod the Paranoid Tyrant is more like it. He was all about control. Having it, exerting it, and holding on to it. Herod was…