Perspective

Hey y'all!!  Things have been quiet on the blog the past few days, but life has been VERY LOUD and BUSY!!  I have lots of pictures and life tidbits to share with you (tomorrow hopefully) about what we have been completely engrossed in the past week - an anniversary reception, a wedding, church Christmas program, school Christmas stuff, still doing home renovations, and...oh yeah, getting ready for CHRISTMAS!!!  Y'all, I am SO TIRED...so very tired.  Yes, physically, but mentally I'm just pooped.  The past several weeks have kinda just been a blur with all that has been going on.  Tonight, I sat down in the middle of a store while Christmas shopping.  I was looking for the LAST present to be bought, and after having looked and looked and looked I could not find this one thing that I had hoped to get.  I felt completely overwhelmed and as I waited for a call back from Brad for an alternate gift idea, I just plopped down.  I had not really been paying attention to what music was playing in the store until I took my seat, but as I sat I heard the quiet melody of "Silent night, holy night...all is calm, all is bright...".  I first chuckled in my head at the irony of such a tender song about the night Jesus was born playing in a store that was full of loud shoppers bustling around to purchase the last of their Christmas gifts, completely oblivious to a song talking about a "holy infant so tender and mild".  But, the more I thought about it, don't we find ourselves in that state all too often?  So focused on the 'here and now' that our perspective of real life is off kilter and the thought of "heavenly peace" is far from our minds? 

I know what Christmas is all about - I talk about Jesus and His birth often during this season.  I even wrote in many of my Christmas cards about experiencing the joy of the miracle of His coming.  But, yet I find myself wrapped up in gift buying, decorating, and the obligatory get togethers that sometimes I don't give the MIRACLE of the birth of JESUS the attention and praise and admiration it deserves. 

Thank you, Lord for reminding me of that silent night, Holy night on this very un-silent, very busy night!!

I read a post tonight by Leslie at Goodbye House, Hello Home that is EXACTLY what I feel like.  When a post is titled Mary Did You Know Bethlehem Doesn't Have a Hobby Lobby? , you knows it's gonna be good!!  I wanted to share my most favorite part, but please by all means click on over to read the whole post.  Awesome, Leslie!!

2,000 years ago, our dying race was given the most beautiful present ever imaginable.  Was it wrapped in polka-dotted ribbon?  With a glittery tag?  Was this gift placed under a dazzling tree?

Nope.

This gift lay in a mucky, lightless, unbeautified and unembellished barn.  Mary did not visit Hobby Lobby or Michael's for ribbon, wreaths or bulbs.  Joseph wasn't up on the roof attaching light strands with thatch clips.  I am pretty sure that there wasn't any eggnog or wassail to imbibe.

But what we ARE told is that this night, the light of the world came to us.  This night, the neighborhood was visited by it's first ever Heavenly carolers.  This night, heaven came to earth and emancipated it. 

I can still deck our halls and hang the mistletoe.  But, as I sing along with each hymn, display each shining item that I have found on sale or in a box on someone's driveway, as I liberate the crafts designed years ago by my toddler's fingers and arrange and rearrange the lights on the bushes, I will remember that the reason I treasure this season so much is that my Jesus is the true light of the world, the creative embellisher, the original beautifier and liberator of treasures, emancipator of souls.

He is the gift to my heart.

And Hobby Lobby has nothing on sale that compares to that.

And I'll bet Mary would have said the same thing.