i might even wear my new apron and pass out cookies

i’m going to get up with taido tomorrow at church and this is what i am going to say. at least, i hope it is.

i experience joy at christmas through children. there is a verse at the end of malachi that says,

he will turn the hearts of the parents to their children,

and the hearts of the children to their parents

i have always loved that verse. i envision this time when we see the children around us. when we can hear their hearts. when we have made room for them in our day.

i think at christmas our awareness of children is naturally heightened. our hearts are turned toward them. so it is a season of opportunity for me to enjoy children like i believe God intended. like this verse describes. this year i have really intentionally tried to slow things down around our house so that i have more time to snatch these moments of joy with my children. some of the ways we do this at our house have a lot of meaning to them. we have an advent calendar with scripture readings that we read in the mornings before school. we have a toy nativity the older kids have used to teach the christmas story to simon, our youngest. that they are doing this is a confirmation to me that we have taught them that this story about jesus is one that we tell over and over again. it is a part of who we are. this story. i love to watch them hold the angels singing or the wise men traveling.

there are other things we do that might be less meaningful, but that are still sweet moments to see the joy in a child at christmas. we spend a lot of time baking and preparing food. i love that anticipation of cookies in the oven. are they ready? are they ready? or a request to lick the frosting off the beater. is it time? is it time? we drink special hot chocolate, with candy canes. and when i hand a child that beater, or their cocoa cup or their cookie or i sit on the floor with a child and read a story or hear one of my children tell about the baby jesus in the manger, i drink in their little faces. i love them. my heart is turned toward them. and it brings me great joy.

and my heart did sing

today i went to our regular early morning service at church and then, because a sweet friend of ours was singing in the choir, whitney and i raced over to make the 11 am service downtown at first pres. our friend had really downplayed her special christmas choir service and i had not given much forethought to what i would do with simon (throw him in a car with my brother and his boys as it turns out), so we almost did not go. it is sad to me that i would not have even known what a blessing i would have missed receiving had we not gone. the gift of leaving a place and being so full of thanks for jesus, the long expected one. it occurs to me that so much of life is this way. we don’t know what we’re missing.

but today i did not miss it. for the third sunday of advent, we worshiped with our own familiar and precious friends at fellowship and then had the amazing privilege of participating in a beautifully crafted high church event that included many of my favorite traditional christmas hymns and many others i haven’t even heard before. for reasons that make perfect sense to me, we don’t sing these songs at our church. we don’t stand up and sit down and stand up and sit down and follow a liturgy and hear the christmas story read from the king james version by children and adults wearing their christmas best. we don’t have a string quartet or a very loud organ or hard wooden pews. we don’t have stained glass. and we are not the church in which my grandmother and her sister were married, together, on the same day in 1945.

i loved participating in this form of worship that is unfamiliar to me. its novelty enhanced its richness. we sat very near the front, which i think accounts for the fact that there were moments that the music felt as if it were just made for me. that is ridiculous of course. the worship is all for God. but i would get caught up in a line of a song or a moment that the choir sang a particularly haunting flow of harmonies and i just gripped my little program, soaking it in. treasuring. such rich music. words that i want to string up on my tree so they will stay in my heart all season, peppered with readings that stretched from genesis to the gospels about the coming of jesus. jesus. he has come. he is coming. we talked at fellowship this morning about the hope that we have in his having come and his coming again. and i cried at first pres as the choir sang the names of jesus, wonderful counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting father, the prince of peace. reminding me why i am hoping in him. they sang them over and over again, for unto us a child is born. i sat up tall. yes, i’m thinking. he has come! so i’m glad when we get to stand back up and sing, though i fumbled with my hymnal clumsily trying to find my place…mild he lays his glory by, born that man no more may die. born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth! (at this point i am shouting. let my voice be heard over the organ!) hark the herald angels sing, glory to the newborn king! i love these words. there is so much hope in them. i don’t care that we are uncomfortable (read cold) or that the service is long, i just love these words. they are so true. i laid around all day yesterday (it was dark and cold and i was very tired), mostly reading. i read two novels, neither of much consequence, but every once in a while i would find a line of truth. oh yes, that is exactly true. what i loved about the songs this morning is that the words were truth upon truth upon truth. floods of, oh yes, that is exactly it filling up my heart. a feast of lyrics and liturgy and scripture. i left with a feeling similar to having indulged in a magnificent meal. and i am glad to have my little program to remember back through each course. my menu. holding on…to waiting for jesus.

truth about me (or humanity)

that mourns in lonely exile here

longing heart

the lonely and the unloved

all sorrow and repining

truth about christmas

our joy hath now begun

born to set thy people free

word of the father, now in flesh appearing

tidings of comfort and joy

how silently the wondrous gift is given

dawn on our darkness and lend us your aid

hope of all the earth thou art

truth about my hope in jesus

death’s dark shadows put to flight

save us all from satan’s power when we were gone astray

from our sins and fears release us

rule in all our hearts alone

God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven

shine

that’s the name of the sermon series at our church right now. i love it. it’s so simple. easy to remember. just shine. it keeps coming back to me.

my tree is shiny and my house is sparkley, per whitney’s visit, which makes me smile. and it reminds me to shine. i love this season, but it hurts my heart to see how the general insane-ness of it seems to burn everyone out, including myself.

this week at bsf i heard several comments that have come back to me as truth about this season. it made me glad that i keep managing to get to bsf in the midst of such a busy time, even if i have been shamefully late. there was talk about choosing to not be in bondage to christmas as the western world does it. which was good. and true. however, sometimes i hear this as its own form of bondage, this idea that you have to DO something else with christmas and not DO what everyone else is doing. some years i get really bogged down by all the really good things i want to DO at christmas time. (incidentally, i can do the same thing at easter, making a whole checklist of things i must feel and experience at easter to have served my heart well during lent.) but also, this idea kept surfacing among the women that we are busy with things that are not in and of themselves necessarily bad, but that they create such a frenzy and a distraction that we don’t have time for the things for which our hearts truly long.

celebrating christmas as my heart longs isn’t one more thing i must DO. it is my chance to SHINE.

if i miss it because of all the other (good) things i am DOing, i guess i will just be sad. not the end of the world. not beat myself up for all of january for my less than perfect spiritual experience christmas. just kind of sad.

i already have some idea of how i want to SHINE for christmas. it’s in my heart, deep down. somewhere in there. the longing for something that makes my eyes twinkle. i guess i am asking myself today if i will make room for it by not DOing something else.