Monthly Archives: December 2013

Silent Prayer // Advent Song for today

1 Christ is All, 5 Songs I am Singing, 7 Keep Christmas

I am waiting in a silent prayer
I am frightened by the load I bear
In a  world as cold as stone
Must I walk this path alone?
Be with me now, be  with me now

Today, I choose Breath of Heaven by Amy Grant.  It is totally not meant for Advent, since the secondary title is “Mary’s Song,” but it is very prayerful.  That seems to be the theme with me lately.  That seems to be the state I am in: prayerfulness.

Do you wonder as you watch my face
If a wiser one should have had my  place?
But I offer all I am
For the mercy of Your plan
Help me be  strong, help me be, help me

And it isn’t the public kind, all flowery with beautiful words coming from my well-developed church vocabulary (churchish is my native language).  It isn’t the authoritative supplications of an anointed intercessor born to change the world with loud and powerful sentences while pacing platforms in decided strides.  That isn’t the kind of prayerfulness I am in, though I have done my share of those.

It’s the closet kind, in a whisper.  It’s the kind the Father and only the Father can hear.  It’s the slave of Romans 8 collapsing, finally into the arms of his Adopter , his Abba, realizing fear has no place – safe.   I am HIS child.  His.

breath of heaven

It is that kind of prayer.  Crying out to that kind of Father – the kind that sees me as a joint heir with the Savior of the universe:  even me ~ a sinner, flawed and fearful, a bundle of weirdness and insecurity, a weakling, a moaner, an anxious worrier, a broken vessel, a liar, a cheat, a thief…I have to confess it all and plead for mercy.  It’s safe because He is Mercy.  And He is my Father.  These are the times to run to Him, to Him, not away. The papers are signed, adoption final.  I am His daughter.

And I search His face for signs He is disappointed in His choice.  And from this very close and prayerful vantage point, there are none.  I am His.

Breath of Heaven, hold me together
Be forever near me, breath of Heaven
Breath of Heaven, lighten my darkness
Pour over me Your holiness for You are  holy
Breath of Heaven, Breath of Heaven


Take a few minutes to observe Advent today, with a prayerful song.

The Advent Song Goes On

5 Songs I am Singing, 7 Keep Christmas, Stuff I Actually Think,

“Advent as a season is meant to make the journey toward Christmas full of meaning; it’s meant to put us touch with our deepest longings and greatest hopes; it’s meant to teach us to bring all our desires together on one object: Christ. While “Christmas” as a season (properly) begins on December 25 and goes twelve days (yes, there’s a song about that!) until January 6th, Advent is all about the build-up to it. It begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas and takes us right up to the glorious celebration of the incarnation.” -Glenn Packiam

So, we just passed the first Sunday of Advent.  This first week traditionally, at least so I am reading, is all about the Patriarchs and Old Testament figures from God creating the heavens and the earth, the fall into sin with Adam and Eve, through the lives of Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as the promised is being revealed and God’s great plan of salvation is put into motion.  So much happened to get a Savior to us, those whom God so loves, didn’t it?

So today, I chose a Phillips, Craig and Dean song (Dave loves them), Shine on Us.  It is prayerful, an invitation of all God is to come and just be welcomed in us, on us, around us.  Go sit in the light of your Christmas tree and listen for 4 minutes, and pray it.  Then receive it.

And I read a really wonderful blog by Glen Packiam about what Advent should be:

“Advent ought to be a gift of fresh Spirit-oxygen, not a busy, frenetic, string of shopping trips and meaningless parties.”

You can read the whole post HERE.  It isn’t long, but it does have some great insight into this Advent thing.

 

Our Houzz Dream Come True

4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, Stuff I Actually Think

Well – have you heard?  Our home was featured in a Houzz Ideabook.  Yes, it happened.  Thank-you.  Thank-you very much.

houzz this week on houzz 12 4 13

Saw this in my inbox this morning!

Nevermind that it was only a photograph and “fix” we used to stop a roaring vibration sound from the microwave temporarily and is being lightheartedly referred to (by some Houzz users) as a “hillbilly fix.”  Also pay no mind to the title of the whole Ideabook including the words “nutty,” “home,” and “fixes” in it.  Yes, just nevermind those things.

houzz ideabook 12 4 13 b

Instead bask with us in the warm glow of our delighted surprise upon discovery this morning that one of my top two Houzz contributors chose to use our little image at the top of her Ideabook.  Thank-you, Becky Harris.

My publicity firm will handle all requests for further magazine spreads, interviews and the like.  Thank-you.

Advent Song // Get Up and Do a Christmas Jig!

5 Songs I am Singing, 7 Keep Christmas, Stuff I Actually Think

So, I just feel like today, as the temp is dropping, a nice, upbeat, dancing number is in order (just to keep us warm, for crying out loud).  So we’ll listen, sing with, and dance to:

Filled with Your Glory by Starfield

dec 2012 grandbebes

Stephanie took this shot of our 6 grandbebes last Christmas.  Now we habe 8.  Soon…

I love the powerful imagery created by the words:  Angels and men adore, mountains bow and oceans roar.  Creation longs for what’s in store… Well, YES!  Don’t you just have the sense that we’re all really pretty well sunk if the LORD does not show up and fill the earth with His very Glory – just like the water fills the sea?  I think Creation is crying out for His Presence and Glory and we better do that, too.  Though we live in so much light (because {Jesus} the LIGHT came), we sure are managing to embrace living that darkens the future for our planet, for nations, for the hearts and souls of children.  Arise and shine, people of God, for the glory of the LORD is risen upon you!

I’m kind of with the ocean on this one: maybe we need to be letting out a roar for His glory!

The whole earth

Is filled with Your glory, Lord

Angels and men adore

(Mountains bow and oceans roar)

Creation longs for what’s in store

May You be

Honored and glorified

Exalted and lifted high

Here at Your feet I lay my life

Great prayer for our Advent observation!

The Jesse Tree at Advent

3 Celebrations & Festive Events, 7 Keep Christmas, Stuff I Actually Think

Isaiah 11:1 “Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse, and a branch from his roots will bear fruit.”

Remember – I do not come from high-church tradition, so I am muddling along – looking for ways to observe this season in meaningful ways.   You can google-search and learn all about Jesse Trees {here is one}.  But I have decided to stop for a few minutes daily and listen to a song and meditate on all Jesus came to do via lyric and melody.

O Christmas Tree.

I love the trees of Christmas.  I love lights on them and sparkly ornaments that reflect the light (isn’t the spiritual connection just so obvious?).  I love that the trees are evergreens.  Because everything about all of it that my mom or Sunday School teachers ever taught me?  I believe, still and I am reminded and renewed in my gratefulness for the Savior annually.

the tree 2011

My Christmas tree’s branches are green, representing the eternal life Jesus’s death and resurrection made available to us.  But if you stripped away the needles and greenery to the bare trunk and you attached a large branch across, you’d seen the barren tree of a curse where God once hung His greatest gift to us.  Jesus wasn’t the gift under the tree, but the gift on a tree.

So annually, we plop a tree up in the living room and string it with lights to remember and observe.   This will never be a pagan ritual for me.  It will ever and always symbolize a Savior, redemption from the curse and green-everlasting and eternal life.

So, pondering this today, I thought of another scripture I love so much.  It speaks to the things that come to try to take our freedom from the curse of sin and death.  It speaks to the heartbreak of broken relationships and addictions or any gut-wrenching pain that has invaded our homes.  It brings hope to the heaviness of our past which may try to rest on us, and against those things that tear our families apart. It promises hope and healing for the diseased and iniquities.  There is hope for a tree, it says in Job:

“At least there is hope for a tree:  If it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail.  Its roots may grow old in the ground  and its stump die in the soil,  yet at the scent of water it will bud  and put forth shoots like a plant.”   Job 14.7-9

Is this good news, or what?  You know it’s true.  You know a tree can be struck by lightning, mangled by a runaway car or chopped down by a property owner.  It can seem totally defeated by age and bad care, but suddenly, after a rain, new shoots!

So the song I listened to today, to give me that short, song-length reprieve from all the other innumerable things there are to do, is an old Kent Henry song, “Lord I Live by Your Word.”

So many scriptures use the tree as imagery.  The Tree of Life in Genesis shows up again in the last chapter of Revelation.  Jesus is the way to God, He is the Living Word,  the Tree of Life.  And in my living room, there is a green tree filled with lights reminding me that the long awaited Savior did all He came to do – in an everlasting way!

12 3 13

www.aholyexperience.com

Song for a Sunday // In Expectancy and Preparation

2 Mi Familia, 3 Celebrations & Festive Events, 7 Keep Christmas, , , ,

We wait.

baby due 12 16 13

We wait with expectant joy.  A baby is coming.  Joy will be fulfilled and realized with the final Aaaaahhhh-she is here!  She has come!  We understand the anticipation and longing there was for the Messiah “for a people living in darkness…” this year with more vivid zeal and holy anxiousness than ever.  Like children who can barely get to sleep on Christmas Eve as they excitedly anticipate the gifts they’ll find from mommies and daddies who love to give them good things, we await Evangeline’s arrival, sometime before Christmas.

Just a year ago, we were hoping-waiting-cautiously-opening-our-hearts for Malakai.  He came early.  In January.  It was sweet and the consummation of so much prayer and eager yearning.  So sweet…

kai meeting the big santa dec 1 2013

Kai is here today, checking this Santa character out. He isn’t sure about him.  Malakai will be full-fledged walking and running by Christmas morning, I am sure of it.

Advent

And today, the first Sunday of Advent, we remember, with exceeding joy, that the long-awaited Savior of the world, once a mystery and a desiring, yet He already was waiting for us and we acknowledge the beauty of His coming and look for Him again.  He is the Promise.  The Hope and Perfection of all things!

I had an idea!

I didn’t grow up in high-church tradition, so we didn’t observe Advent and the traditional readings and candle-lightings and services that went with the four Sundays leading to Christmas, nor the daily devotionals.  But I discovered them when my children were small and have so so so always tried (or maybe more accurate: wanted to try) to implement the observation, the wreath, the candle-lightings.

Today, after all, the first Sunday of Advent is about HOPE.  It is about the story of the Old Testament Patriarchs, Jesus’s ancestors, looking, waiting, hoping, longing for His coming.  Hope is needed now more than ever…

So, as I was wondering, what song to do for Song for a Sunday, I realized how Advent could totally be a time of songs, too.  Which it probably already is, but I am going to set myself to selecting songs for this season, each one to sing and think about, each to represent our longing and worship as we enter this busy season.

I plan to set apart a few minutes each day, at least long enough for a song, to meditate on the Joy of my Desiring, a Savior!  I’ll share with you if you’d like.  I think this could help lots of busy families who want to observe and celebrate Advent, but can’t find the time.  A song!

Today,  O Come, O Come, Emmanuel by Francesca Battistelli

And my anticipation is doubled because soon, a new grandbebe. And this year, I will comprehend in deeper ways.  And look for Him in my day to day…And this is blessed.

And we watch.  And we wait.