9th and 10th days of Christmas and a little gift to share.

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On the 9th day of Christmas my true love gave to me, 9 ladies dancing.  
the dancing ladies mean the Fruit of the Spirit.  Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness and Self-control.  

When Holy Spirit dwells in you and me, we bear this fruit.....Matthew 12:33 says Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is  recognized by its fruit.  
I want to be a good tree with good fruit.  I want to be known and recognized by this fruit.....If we look at the opposit of these 9 ladies dancing we see the following:  Hate, Sorrow, War, Impatience, Meanness, Evil, Fearful, Harshness and Indulgent.  Lord let us be repulsed and repelled from these things, and instead lean into the ladies dancing.  Let us work to grow and tend good trees, full of life and good fruit.  

On the 10th day of Christmas my true love gave to me, 10 Lords a Leaping.....the 10 Commandments.  These were given to Moses on the mountain top because God's people were struggling and to help them out, they were given a list of dos and don'ts to help.  I once thought these 10 were restrictive and narrowing to my life but as I have grown in years and in wisdom, I now know that it is absolutely and categorically the opposite.  This list of 10 statements can help guide our decisions in life, our path and purpse, and keep us out of trouble!  

As we draw near to Christmas day, I hope we are all more ready than we were 2 weeks ago.  I hope the ingredients are in the fridge for the delicious food we hope to prepare.  I hope all the amazon boxes have been delivered and there is enough wrapping paper.  I hope we all made it to the programs and concerts and events tied to the holiday.  

I am going to offer a little gift.  I'm home for a few days under the weather but it has been a true gift to me.  I have binge watched The Lincoln Lawyer in its entirety.  I have worked on my latest latch hook craft.  This morning I stumbled onto a Chrismtas concert on Amazon Prime tv by Us The Duo.  If you have access to this streaming channel check it out.  It is absolutely wonderful!  

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