I’m planning on going dark on social media over the next day or so. Partly, it’s for my own sanity; once in a while, I just need a cleanse. Need to stop being bombarded by the constant noise of online interaction. I love it – don’t get me wrong. My extrovert comes out in full force on social media; likes […]
The Center Point
It often seems that my Advent meditations center around a single idea – often something meaningful to my reflections on the past year. Sometimes they’re painful meditations. Sometimes they are joyous. Sometimes they are revelations. Sometimes they’re old truths. This year’s meditations have focused the coming of the Christ as the center point of history. From creation to new creation, […]
Starry Nite
The evening’s activities put me in mind of the event a year earlier. The tone both similar and worlds apart – a celebration of the start of the Christmas season, but this year without the aching heart and scratchy eyes of the day’s grief. As I walked away, the voices, amplified by microphones, echoed off the trees, the strains of the […]
Mystery
A child was born on Christmas DayBorn to save the worldBut long before the world beganHe knew His death was sureThe pain and strife secured Mystery, how He cameTo be a manBut greater stillHow His death was in His planGod predestined that His Son would dieAnd He still created manOh, what love is thisThat His death was in His hands […]
Making Christmas Gifts
My mom is going to be the rocking-est Grammy in this hemisphere this Christmas. She just did awesome work.
Extravagance
“What Jesus said to [Mary in John 12], and those around Him as well including Judas, was ‘she has done a beautiful thing and wherever the Gospel is preached what she has done will be remembered.’ That is an amazing commendation for someone like me who tends to work from the heart, who tends to work with precious and costly […]
Men will grow in the oven.
A few weeks ago I needed to make cookies, and I had a hankering for gingerbread. And I also had molasses in the cupboard. And in the back of my brain was a memory that the best gingerbread cookies I’d ever had were from a Christmas recipe book that my uncle and aunt gave my mom for Christmas about 15 […]
Why He Came
For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide […]
Crazy, Small-Town Parades
I thought that the small-town parade had been left behind me in Glennallen when I moved here from Alaska – really, who could compete with the shutting down of a main highway for 45 minutes at the height of tourist season so that the Electric Company and Parks Service can drive big trucks down the road and throw candy to […]
Scarlet and Silver
Tonight was a party to kick off the season with Bing, Rosemary, Danny, and Vera Ellen – i.e. White Christmas. But, my favorite color of the season is the reds – from the deep rubies to the dark crimsons. So, here, shades of scarlet: