Inspirations

As I sit here reflecting on yet another Christmas that has come and gone.  The carols were sung, the parties are over, and the gifts have been opened.  Tomorrow many will hit the stores exchanging some of the gifts because there were not what they were expecting, hoping for, or wanting.  One year my darling hubby bought me slippers. No I didn’t like them, they were not what I wanted.   I wore them once in desperation.  Now, I LOVE those slippers; they are my favorite slippers. They were exactly what I wanted. I’m sure most of you have had the same experience a time or two. When God took on flesh and became a baby, many people living at that time refused to accept the gift that was lavished on them.  In fact, many are still waiting for the promised messiah.  He didn’t come as they were expecting, in royal robes, with worldly power and influence so they cast the gift aside and kept looking for the gift that had been promised.  They c...

The other day, I was hoping to go Christmas caroling.  I had planned and tried to get friends to go caroling with me. I was extremely excited to go caroling.  However, those plans didn’t materialize. We ended up having a small party instead.  It was probably one of the most fun things that we have done this Christmas.  We went to a live nativity, made cookies, popped popcorn, played Uno, and sang carols around the tree.  Watching everyone laugh as they got skipped or had to “draw two”, made my heart light.  I could have been disappointed that I was NOT caroling as I hoped.  I could have been inflexible and decided that if I could not do what I wanted, I would not do anything.  If I had taken that option, I would have missed a wonderful night.  My mind goes back to another night over two thousand years ago when another couple had their plans rearranged.  Mary and Joseph were forced to make a trip to Bethlehem.  This wa...

Everyone, well almost everyone, loves a baby.  We love to cuddle and ooh and ah over them.  There is just something about a baby that draws most of us to them.  All of us parents know, they are helpless and a lot of work and they never sleep yet we love them.  They bring out the “warm fuzzies” in us.  We look at them and see perfection. The same is true of the baby Jesus.  We all get excited to celebrate the birth of the baby Jesus.  We love to listen to the Christmas story about the baby born in a manger.  We sing carols.  The thought of the baby in a manger gives us warm fuzzies; even many who don’t believe in God have no problem with a baby in a manger. The problem is that babies don’t stay little.  No, they grow into teens with attitudes and into adults with responsibilities.  Guess what! The baby Jesus didn’t stay little either.  No, he was not destined to stay a baby forever either.  He was the Won...

This time of year is so busy. We have gifts to buy and wrap -let’s not forget wrapping the presents, cookies to bake, a tree to decorate, and parties to plan and about a gazillion other things to get done along with the “normal” routine things. It’s enough to drive a person up a wall. It seems as though even if there were a million hours a day we could not get everything done.  We hurry from one thing to the next, and truly enjoy none of it. I want to offer you a gift, the gift of a slower pace.  Especially at Christmas, it’s incredibly easy to get side-tracked.  We get in such haste to accomplish everything on a “to do” list a mile long that we lose sight of Christmas and maybe some unexpected blessings because we let ourselves get too busy to notice.  We are so busy that we can’t or won’t adjust our schedule to accommodate what might be a blessing. Thinking back to that very first Christmas, the shepherds, the lowly shepherds, were given the privilege of...

I look around me and I see uniqueness in everything in heaven on earth and in the sea below is unique on some level.  I love the fact that when God created the world He didn’t use cookie cutters and make everything and everyone the same.  We can celebrate our uniqueness and praise God for the differences displayed in each of us.  At Christmas, many of us recall another Christmas that was “perfect” and we try to recreate that time; or we look at what others call a “perfect” Christmas whether it’s baking cookies, or shopping, the tree, carols and we try to make our Christmas a carbon copy of their Christmas.  How silly is that?  We feel that if we can’t spend money on gifts that Christmas is ruined; or if we have a fake tree or no tree at all that we can’t celebrate Christmas.  A friend said, “Nowhere in the scriptures does it say, ‘thou shalt decorate the Christmas cookies.’” I love it!!   This year, let’s allow Christmas to be less ...

A few weeks ago, I received some coasters as a Christmas gift.  I love it because the person made them just for me.  No, they aren’t expensive but I know that when she made them, I was on her mind.  She was making them special, just for me.  They were the best gift I could have been given.  A few years ago I received a mug from my older daughter.  She hijacked pictures of the family and them put on a mug.  Every time I use that mug I look at those pictures and smile.  Score one for the daughter who knew that mom would love to see those pictures whenever she sat down for a cup of “joe” (coffee).  There have been other gifts that, over the years, have meant the world to me because I knew that the person giving the gift had chosen it with care and love.  They were thinking of me.  They didn’t grab the first thing off the shelf and call it good enough.  No, they deliberately picked the one thing they knew I would love....

“Christmas needs to be farther away from Thanksgiving.”  Have you ever heard that?  Maybe, like me, in a moment of frustration, you’re guilty of uttering those words yourself.   As I was lamenting, ok whining, about this very thing recently, God took me in another direction and showed me a different perspective to this situation that, up to this point, I had not considered.  I know that Thanksgiving gets practically swallowed up in Christmas. Often there is Christmas music and lights and people are talking Christmas before Thanksgiving arrives.  If you turn the TV on, you are inundated with Christmas commercials telling you everything you or someone you know needs or wants for Christmas eons, it seems, before Thanksgiving Day. It seems that no one pays attention to, or cares about Thanksgiving.  We even start Christmas shopping on Thanksgiving Day, in fact sometimes the food has not even digested and the family is still gathered around the ta...