mid-December pause

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 You know that place we  get to about mid-December?  It's a place where we make lists and try not to forget the mundane things of the week as we look ahead to Holiday celebrations for Christmas and plans for feasts and parties, or if we are distancing due to COVID we are working on alternative plans that feel special and wonderful for the 2020 Christmas season.  The decorations are up, we are eating chocolate covered cherries and drinking egg nog....the Christmastime is here!  

We are doing a mix of both planning and pivoting and adjusting with our Christmas planning.  There is a Christmas day menu being discussed and presents are progressively appearing around the Christmas tree.  The lists are in full swing.....and maybe you want to hear about how we are having to daily discuss what we can and cannot do for Claire's upcoming wedding January 2, and maybe you want to hear about the tears we have cried and the hope we have reached for and the truth we have all declared over their wedding day......or maybe you don't.  Maybe you want to hear about how aweful it has been for me to parent our kids here these last few weeks and how miserably I have fallen short and then asked God for strength to try again the mext morning...or maybe you don't want to hear about that either.  Maybe your life is peachy and you have everything you ever hoped and dreamed for and you are content and comfortable and unconcerned.   Maybe you want some encouragement as you struggle through your own days of stuff and hard things.....

I think mid-December  is a time to cue up Handels Messiah in whatever form you can find it.....at least that's what I hope to do for the next little while.....because the message is also the looking ahead part of Christmas, the waiting and longing and expecting of this Savior to come who will save us and who will change the world.  Isaiah 40:3......."Listen!  I hear the voice of someone shouting, Make a road for the Lord through the wilderness, make him a straight, smooth road through the desert.  Fill the valleys; level the hills; straighten out the crooked paths, and smooth off the rough spots in the road.  The glory of the Lord will be seen by all mankind together."

Christmas is a magical, wonderful, other-worldly time and now more than ever, we as a human race need to settle into this and experience the joy and beauty and reverence of this Holy holiday.  It's not really about any of us......and yet it is exactly about each of us....and knowing that we are created to be in relationship with Savior of the World, Prince of Peace, Emmanuel.

I am inviting us all to pause mid-December and just notice all of it in perspective.  If you want to share your favorite parts of Handel's Messiah I won't mind that either.  


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