But I am like an olive tree
flourishing in the house of God;
I trust in God’s unfailing love
for ever and ever.
For what you have done I will always praise you
in the presence of your faithful people.
And I will hope in your name,
for your name is good. Psalm 52.8-9
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.
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.
“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.
Well – have you heard? Our home was featured in a Houzz Ideabook. Yes, it happened. Thank-you. Thank-you very much.
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.
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.
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:
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!
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.
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.
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!
“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!” ~ Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
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 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.
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 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!
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.
When I started blogging on November 29, 2006 {seven years ago today}, I only had three grandbebes. I tried to make the first post lighthearted to cover up a pretty dark time in which I was seeing much of my life’s “work” as a total waste, my churchy-ness/ministry as being much too motivated by the fear of man (“The fear of man is a snare“), rather than by love and basically realizing what a Pharisee I had been. Pride. It was not a pretty sight. But I thought I’d just write into “the air,” sneak in some confessions about my ridiculousness and and hope people only read the cute grandbebe stories.
I’ve told on myself a thousand times since then. And haven’t told on myself thousands of times because, geesh, I wouldn’t want anyone to know how thoroughly rotten I can be.
It took me two months into the blog to really say the shocking thing out loud, that I was mourning loss. My heart palpitated as I pressed “publish.” I laugh now, because I wasn’t very transparent. {{see here}}
Then I confessed to my prideful religiousness. Dung happens. {{see here}}
And I shan’t show you all my yuck-stuff, but I wrote about how I know that “It takes one to know one” is true. Bleh. {{see here}}
Lots has changed since I started this blog. I have 8 grandbebes now. Almost nine. I’m older, sweeter {*ahem}, less certain of my once rock-solid-strong opinions and I’m much more hopeful for all the days I have left than worried over the ones I have lost. Though I haven’t aced life’s testings, I am pretty happy with my grade. I {{love}} so much more now than I did then, I am more grateful for my heritage and so thankful for all the people along the way who have touched my life and altered its course and blessed me so much. My family has grown by leaps and bounds and songs are in my heart again. I had tomatoes from my garden at my Thanksgiving table (first time in years) and I am learning to receive the {completely unmerited, but so freely given} love of the Father, rather than just trying to work my tail off impressing Him.
One thing that hasn’t changed and likely never will? My blog posts are too stinking long and I cannot curb my wordiness. That is just how it is. I thought I’d have run out of all the silly nothings that spill out of my brain and heart and onto the screen. But I haven’t. More words to come. Thanks for those of you who stop by and read. I LOVE that!!! :)
Here at my Thought Collage, I have tried to say, in a million ways, God is faithful. He is so faithful. Please promise me you’ll always-always-always look past me to Him and don’t ever let anything I have done or said disappoint you in the Everlasting Father. Because- He. is. Faithful. For sure. Forever!
Hi, mom. Hope you’re still reading! xxoo
Really, despite inconveniences and yucky stuff life can throw at us, even though every single day may not be perfect and there might be unbelievable challenges in our lives, whether we need new jobs, healing, relationships mended, financial breakthroughs, more sunshine – whatever: we HAVE been blessed, all of us in millions of ways! We GIVE THANKS to You, Lord!
From the fullness of His grace, we have all received one blessing after another (John 1.16)
after another…after another…after another…
To all who happen by today ~ Be blessed, be whole, be healed, be awesome, today and always!
