Merry Christmas
I pray for God to continue to grow in my heart the unwavering faith of a virgin who without hesitation responded “I am the Lord’s servant.”
Merry Christmas!
Wishing you a joyous and blessed day.
I read something the other day while standing in line at the store, one of those last minute trips for more brown sugar or something I needed in the kitchen. It was some social media confessional where the author, a photographer named Laura DiMirra, explained her struggle with balancing sadness and joy during this time of year.
“Just here to say that if you are finding yourself vacillating between the cheer and the merriment of the season and the grief and hardship of life, you’re not alone. Christmas has a way of heightening the sweet and the bitter and it’s ok to make room for both.
In all honesty, while I’ve tried not to acknowledge the latter in the past, I’ve found that pressing into the tension of the joy and the grief is when I have the most clarity of the celebration of Christmas.
Christmas is all about heaven meeting earth- a God who made a way to be with the suffering- a broken and achey world, and the perfect incarnation of joy and love came down to meet it. To meet us. To make a way. Christmas is, in fact, at its core, the collision of darkness and light, of desperation and hope, weariness and wonder. The celebration that Christ has come and the longing for when things will be fully restored forever because celebrating the arrival of Jesus doesn’t have to mean dismissing the brokenness that has yet to be redeemed. There was a reason He came and there’s a reason He will come again.
So if you’re feeling that tension this season, I’d venture to say you’re experiencing the fullness of what Christmas is about- an abundance of joy, a thrill of hope, meeting a suffering and weary world. A light that came down, a God that is with us in all the good and beauty and in the difficult and messy, waiting for the glory that is to come.”
A manger throne.
As our pastor said yesterday morning, God who put on man to dwell here on earth, who placed Himself where we deserved to be, such is His love.
I love Christmas, the hope, the gratefulness for what it means, the joy, but it also falls towards the end of another year, marks another notch in the doorframe of time, and after celebrating we are ejected onto the foggy path of a year which has not yet revealed itself. The opportunity, the risk, losses not yet realized, gains not yet known.
I pray for God to continue to grow in my heart the unwavering faith of a virgin who without hesitation responded “I am the Lord’s servant.”
Merry Christmas to all.
Merry Christmas, Dana & family! I look forward to another year with hope that 2024 will be a much better year for all conservatives!
Happy Birthday, Jesus!
And thank you Dana!