And going into the house they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.
Matthew 2:11
Ahh, Christmas! It is my favorite time of year! However, I notice that with this time of year we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to getting it right; the right decorations, the right Christmas outfit, the right gifts. But we really need to keep our focus right—on Jesus and not all the other distractions this season has to offer. And you know what? I find it really difficult to get things right some of the time let alone all of the time! Let me give you an example of what happened at the beginning of this season.
It is our tradition to go with our friends to pick out and cut a live Christmas tree. Every year we come home and put that tree in the front window where it looks really nice and can be seen from the road. However, we have a fireplace in our house and that is where we curl up and watch Christmas movies in front of the fire, but we cannot see our tree. So this year we decided to change that—we put up two trees. An artificial tree in the front window and the live one in the room with the fireplace. I had bought an unlit artificial tree because I wanted the flexibility to do either white or colored lights—plus it was A LOT cheaper than a pre-lit tree. The only problem with such an arrangement is that it necessitated that we also buy extra lights, ornaments, etc.
A week before I planned to decorate the artificial tree, I asked my husband to pick up white lights the next time he was at the store. Being the sweet guy that he is, he willingly did so. Unbeknownst to him, he grabbed white lights that were on a white wire which would not look good against the green tree. Off to the store we went but when we got there they only had LED white lights. I figured if that was all they had, those lights would be just fine, so we bought two boxes. When I plugged them in though, they were blindingly bright—as in we should place a sign warning of bright lights at the crest of the hill by our house. So we decided yet again to return these lights and go to a different store to get warm white lights. A few days later my husband picked up two boxes of the correct lights.
In the meantime, I pulled out the lights that we had used the year before for the real tree—a strand of those white lights had decided to stop working. So I added one more box of lights to my shopping list. Finally, armed with lights, I started to put them on the artificial tree, only to find out that it took many more lights than our real trees ever had and we were going to need yet one more box of lights.
If it felt at all painful to hear about the countless trips to the store, then you can only imagine how painful it was to make all these trips to the store to finally get our trees decorated! And that’s just the Christmas tree! I’m not even mentioning the gift giving and second guessing. Then there was the year I was happily distributing my homemade peanut brittle to friends and family only to realize that my candy thermometer had broken and there was quite possibly glass shards in all the peanut brittle I had been giving out!
Sometimes never getting it right is enough to make me want to throw in the towel—to not even try and to just say forget it! But, then I think about the wise men . . . they headed to Jerusalem, only to find out when they got there, that they needed to go to Bethlehem, so they headed to Bethlehem—not knowing exactly where to find the child, but they had faith and went. They took gifts that they were giving sincerely. And they left the rest up to God.
I think there is a lot we can learn from these wise men, especially if you happen to be a, well, micromanager as I have been accused of being on occasion! Rather than worrying about things that are out of our control, let’s just try to remember to bring our best to God, and to others, and then just let the rest of the worries go.
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I think some of the most beautiful lyrics of all time are contained in some of the old carols we sing to this day. In our rote recitation of the lines we often glance right over the beauty and weight these words hold.
“A thrill of hope
a weary world rejoices
for yonder breaks
a new and glorious morn.”
How beautiful are these words? Have you ever stopped to truly listen and ponder the words of these songs? My guess is you may have given them a moment of thought at one point, before being distracted or rushing off to another task. The Christmas season is filled with to-do lists, parties, commitments, shopping and traditions to uphold. It may not only be the most wonderful time of the year—but also the busiest! This is a season from which we all feel that we need downtime afterwards in order to recover from the busyness of the season. Some people even dislike the season because of all the busyness—the decorating, the shopping… . Christmas doesn’t have to be like this though—it can be a time in which we slow down and do the things that truly bring us joy and leave us feeling recharged at the end instead of depleted but you will need to make a conscious effort to do so.
Into which group do you fall? Do you ever stop? Do you ever get still? Do you ever carve out time for the activities that mean the most to you? Do you ever let your “soul feel its worth”?
I have seen people rush from activity to activity, from party to party, and then at the end of it all say, “But I really wanted to do (fill in the blank) and I never got to this year.” This is a tragedy. I used to fill our calendar with every last Christmas activity so that all the gaps were filled, until I noticed that we weren’t getting enough of the things we really love during this season. Not enough time curled up watching Christmas movies. Not enough time enjoying wrapping gifts while listening to Christmas music. Not enough time playing games in front of the fire. We were getting all the big things in but hardly any time to enjoy the still, quiet times.
The parties are great. I love all the Christmas things, but you know what? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you run out of time to do all the things your wanted to do. It doesn’t matter if you can’t find the perfect gift for someone. It doesn’t matter if your wrapping coordinates with your Christmas decor. What matters is if you slow down enough to keep Christmas in your heart. Because even if you have the best decorated house, the most thoughtful gifts, and attend every festivity that you possibly can, it won’t matter if you are so rushed that you hate every minute of it. This is especially true if you are a wife and mother. No one will remember what gift they did or didn’t get that one Christmas, but they will remember if you were crabby and irritable through every activity.
You do have the power to put on the brakes. You do have control over what kind of Christmas you have this year. You have the power to slow down just enough to let the season soak in. You have the power to do the things that nourish your soul, that make it come alive, that allows your “soul to feel its worth”.
This Christmas will come and go, another year will end, another will arrive. Time will keep its frenetic pace. But will you notice any of it? Will you get more than one day to enjoy the season? I hope that you do. I hope that this Christmas will work as a Sabbath for you; that it will be a time when you slow down enough to focus on what matters most as we head into the new year, and that you will feel rested and not depleted from the holiday season. Let’s re-examine our priorities and focus on what matters most to us in the year ahead.
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Then Moses summoned Bezalel and Oholiab and every skilled person to whom the Lord had given ability and who was willing to come and do the work. They received from Moses all the offerings the Israelites had brought to carry out the work of constructing the sanctuary. And the people continued to bring freewill offerings morning after morning.
Exodus 36:2-3
Have you ever thought that what you had to contribute to the world wasn’t enough? I was thinking about the above verse from Exodus and I loved how everyone pitched in to build the temple. The craftsmen used their skills, those who didn’t have skills specific to the task at hand, brought offerings of whatever they could to the temple. They didn’t say they had nothing to offer. No, they all knew they had been given specific strengths and that no gift was too small and they used their gifts accordingly. What if more people in the Bible had shied away from doing something because they didn’t feel what they had to contribute was enough?
I started thinking about this verse in light of this Christmas season. There Mary and Joseph were in Bethlehem, taking time off from work that they would rather not take, at an very inopportune time—especially for Mary. They were struggling to find a place to stay in the hustle and bustle of a town that was overrun with visitors. Finally they came across an inn and even though it was full the innkeeper allowed them to stay in the stable. He cracked the door open and offered a modicum of generosity to them.
Imagine if he had said no. Imagine if he felt that the stable wasn’t good enough and so had declined entirely.
We don’t know a lot about the details of what this particular inn was like. In most cities of the time, all the visitors slept in one room, sometimes on multiple palettes, sometimes in one large low bed, but there was not much privacy to be had. Maybe Mary was so heavily pregnant that it was part of the problem— no one had a place where a woman could give birth with any degree of privacy if her time came while at the inn. But this innkeeper allows them to stay in the stable. I don’t know this for sure but I’ll bet you the innkeeper wasn’t sleeping out in the stable with them. I bet he and his family still had moderately comfortable accommodations inside the inn itself. He could have offered his spot inside to this young couple but he didn’t. He had a stable so he offered that. What would we have done in that same situation?
I think many of us get caught up in trying to do the perfect right thing that we miss a host of smaller opportunities that come our way. The innkeeper could, and perhaps should have, offered his place inside the house to Mary and Joseph and stayed in the stable himself, but I’m guessing that would have felt like a little too much effort. So instead of making sure he got it perfectly right, he offered what he knew he could easily do.
What opportunities do we miss because we are trying to make sure we have it completely right that we don’t do anything?
While we should not be lazy about what we have to offer, Jesus did make it abundantly clear to treat others the way we want to be treated, we have to start somewhere, and in time, we will get better at serving others. C. S. Lewis said, “Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.” I believe that same principle applies here. If selling all you have and giving it to the poor sounds really scary, what about giving a monetary gift once a month or starting to volunteer in a food pantry? My guess is the Holy Spirit will fill you with a generosity that you never imagined but you have to be willing to crack the door open for the Holy Spirit to work.
This Christmas and holiday season when opportunities are literally around every corner, I urge you to pause and consider your unique gifts and abilities and see where you can crack open the door for the Holy Spirit to work through you.
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The winter weather always inspires me to get a little more crafty. I think this is due in part to the fact that there are all kinds of cute decor out there that can be made and in part because when I was growing up our community would host a community craft show for several days where you could open your home to the public in the hope they would purchase the crafts that you made. We would participate with our neighbors in this holiday craft show; the weeks leading up to it would have my mother and I furiously crafting in an effort to have enough inventory for the show. The crafty bug has hit me again and I have two Christmas ornament crafts for you!
Do you have left over Christmas cards that are too pretty to throw out but you have no idea what to do with them? I have a craft for that!
Christmas Card Ornaments
· Choose a variety of Christmas cards with small pictures on them.
· Select a pre-cut wood slice and lay it on top of the Christmas card.
· Using the wood chip as a pattern, outline the wood chip on the card then cut it out.
· Use decoupage to coat the wood chip and lay the cut-out card on top. Turn the chip upside down or use wax paper as a buffer and lay a book on top to help encourage the card to adhere smoothly to the wood chip.
· Let dry.
· Coat the front and the back of wood chip with decoupage. Let it dry, then coat a second time.
· If desired, spray with spray glue and dust with glitter.
· Spray with sealer.
· Hot glue an ornament hook to the back of the wood chip.
· You’re done!
Snow-Covered Twine Balls
I love twine balls and I think they look just gorgeous on a Christmas tree. For these ornaments:
· Start with a bare twine ball. (You can also do this with pinecones.)
· Spray with spray glue.
· Immediately role in glitter.
· Let dry.
· Repeat steps 2 and 3 until you have your ball covered thoroughly (or as much as you want).
· After the ball has dried, take a hot glue gun and adorn randomly with little pearls and crystals. Let the hot glue cool.
· Attach a hook: you could use fishing line, a regular metal ornament hook, or a fancier one like I did.
· In a well-ventilated area spray the ball with a clear coat of sealer to help minimize glitter loss.
· You’re done!
I hope these ideas will help inspire you if you are looking for some Christmas crafts to do on your own or with your family. Happy crafting!
Disclosure
Please remember that this post contains affiliate links; that means if you click on the link, I will make a small commission at no extra cost to you. It’s a way to support my blog! I will only ever share an affiliate link if I love the product and think that you just might love it too!
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You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
Matthew 5:43-44
We just celebrated Thanksgiving, here in the U.S. I love Thanksgiving. Who doesn’t love getting together with family and loved ones and eating a bunch of food? But, there is so much more to the holiday than that! It is so good for us to have a day when we pause to spend time with friends and family and reflect upon our many blessings. And, it is important that we remember the history behind Thanksgiving.
In our modern culture, Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims, and the whole situation of their arrival to America gets a really bad rap. In focusing on all of the negative surrounding this event, we do a huge disservice, both to the brave people of the 1600s and to ourselves. The lessons we miss. . . .
The Mayflower sailed to America from England in 1620. The Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock and set about trying to survive a harsh New England winter, the likes of which they had probably never encountered before. Not everyone who came over on the Mayflower was a Pilgrim coming here to escape religious persecution, but many of them were. Would you be brave enough to leave all you had ever known to come to a land about which little was known in order to worship as you saw fit?
Arriving in early winter, the Pilgrims were unable to disembark from the ship and had to stay onboard throughout the cold winter and many of them perished. Unprepared for the long hard winter ahead of them, nearly half of all the Pilgrims died from illness and hunger that first winter. When spring finally came, a Native American by the name of Tisquantum, or Squanto, as he is better known, befriended the Pilgrims and taught them basic farming technics which made it possible for the Pilgrims to survive.
Squanto had been captured, most likely as a young man, by the captain of a slaving ship where he was taken to Spain and sold into slavery. Somehow he was able to escape to England, where he learned English. Eventually Squanto joined the Newfoundland Company through which he was able to return home to America only to find that his whole village had been wiped out by disease during the time he had been gone. All of his family—gone. His way of life—gone. Forever. Sometime between his arrival back to America and the Pilgrim’s first spring, he was able to join the Wampanoag tribe where he served as an interpreter for the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag chief, Massasoit.
Can you imagine that? The same “kind” of people who ripped you from your home, stole years of your life, and who are most likely responsible for the disease that killed your family, and what do you do? You show them grace. You love them. You help them. You make it possible for them to survive and thrive in this new world.
This story reminds me of the story of Joseph in Genesis who was sold by his brothers into slavery. When he meets his brothers again after more than 20 years of being apart he tells them, “What you meant for evil, God meant for good.”
Though it is important for us to always remember the travesties that have happened in our past, let us not forget what is even more important: the grace and forgiveness made possible for mankind to extend to each other through the grace that we have experienced from the Creator of the Universe when He sent His Son to die for us.
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