Is. 9.2 a people walking in darkness have seen a great light
This version of the song is from Chris Tomlin’s Christmas album, but the musical genius (Matt) wrote it (and leads most of it) and every Christmas, I can’t help singing it. And each Christmas when I drive into my neighborhood and see the lights on the houses, I know they are declaring, whether those who strung them realize the truth they represent or not, that the Light of the world came. Every twinkling light, every candle lit that pierces the darkness that would otherwise be there represents Jesus, the light of the world. Jesus dispelled a darkness that can never overtake us again. We are children of the Light.
I look out my window on a December night and I remember: The Light came, He shines!
John 8.12 Jesus said: I am the light of the world…
When (if) I blog about Christmas, when (if) I get the time (because I LOVE LOVE LOVE Christmas), I shall place this banner in the body of the blog.
Here is what it has:
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“Keep Christmas” because that is actually one of my blog categories and is derived from the Charles Dickens quote, which you may read at the bottom.
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Next there are 1960s baubles and I love the merry cheer they invoke. They were the type of ornament I grew up with and make me happy. It was a google image I happened by and I don’t recall the source. Thank-you, some random jpg-poster!
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Then, I allow you a “sneak peek” at some little Rhoades Family Fun we had a few weeks back. There are some darn cute pictures that will go one our Christmas card – if ever I actually get around to doing that! The grandbebes just bring me joy!
This particular shot (used in the banner) was a split secondbefore total chaos erupted. At this precise moment, Amelie is watching her little tiny life flash before her eyes, because the donkeys just got spooked by the {giant} white calf that walked up on the right. Meanwhile, the alpaca on the left has freaked out the billy goat, who is madly ramming his horns in to a bail of hay and has caused Gemma May to run to hide behind Averi. The miniature donkeys nearly trampled the whole lot of my bebes, but it did not stop our photo shoot. Oh no, it did not. We kept right on shooting with angel-Amelie and Baby (Sawyer) Jesus crying their heads off in the frigid air. It was a hilarious sight to see.
Hunter asked if this was the last year we’d be doing a nativity. “Oh no,” I told him. “Pretty much you’ll be in a Christmas Nativity scene for my Christmas cards until you’re grown and married and have kids I can use.” He seemed to shrug that off without much surprise.
This shot of Stef holding “Baby Jesus” dressed in pink and Rocky holding Baby Jesus’ body-double cracks me up, for some reason.
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The final photo is of the actual tree-topper my family used in the 1960s. “Angel hair,” or spun glass, was all the rage (we’d all tell horror stories of children we’d heard of who’d been dumb enough to run their fingers over the glass threads and began bleeding profusely on to the Christmas tree, each story topping the previous). Truthfully (true confessions) , I never knew of a single cut, yet the myth persisted and annually, we were careful-beyond-carefulto avoid bleeding out as we decorated wih the mysterious and deadly angel hair.
My mom says she picked this topper up in a grocery store, circa 1964. This is what Stormie says I have to explain: I was holding the topper at arms length in front of me because it is the story. She thought I’d just pasted it onto a blurry photo of myself. So there. You can’t see my arm much, but it was there! The ANGEL was the focus (or should I say, the “paper angel” to fully distinguish between the two of us? ;D ha-ha-ha ).
Oh. Well, I DID paste on a fake Santa hat. There is that, I guess.
In the end, the banner is just a reminder to you, to me, to KEEP CHRISTMAS, the celebration & worship of the Christ, because Jesus is all, and all in all….
Elise was here this weekend and brought gifts she and her mom had made for all of us “girls.” This one is mine, all mine!
Christmas planners!
Inside front cover, inside back cover…I have never felt so inspired to deck the halls and keep Christmas order! So pretty. So fun! THANK-YOU, Moslander women!
Even as a really young kid, once I started reading, “It Pays to Increase Your Word Power” in Reader’s Digest was a favorite of mine. I love words, I love phrases that string them together in a way that lights up my brain. I am a word-lover. And I love to give words as gifts.
So you’d think by now I’d perhaps have mastered the use of them somewhat, have some ability to use them for great things.
I cannot believe how prone I remain to blurt out the worst possible words at the most inappropriate moments; how quickly I will still employ the profane in spite of knowing thousands of other ways to communicate even my frustration. I say the wrong words at the wrong time in the least-effective way so {stinking} often. Just….yuck. Bleeehhh.
See? Nothing.
If only my “spoiling it all” by “saying something stupid” was as nice as “I love you.” sigh
Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few. Ecc 5.2 NIV
My song for Sunday a week ago got me totally in to an Andrae mood. So, I pulled out all my Andrae Crouch and the Disciples LPs and played them this week, sang along! He is just one of the voices of my life, one of the greatest musical infleunces. I am begging Luka to book him for Heaven Fest for me (and everybody else!). I found this interview he did online at www.oneway.orgwhere he explained how young and “green” he was, even when he wrote the song I shared last week, “The Blood Will Never Lose its Power,”
“When I first wrote ‘the Blood’ I was 14; I didn’t even know what the song meant…(The Blood Will Never Lose Its Power, Take the Message Everywhere, Light Records, 1969)…it just came. …Didn’t know what it meant; wasn’t driving a car; I was totally green to what was going on.”
Interviewer: And it (the Blood…) has meant so much to people all of these years.
“It’s the Word, so it was really a prophetic message that lives on forever that, “the Blood Will Never Lose Its Power.” Many songs came that way. Those early days were exciting and adventurous. Everything was new. Just like I don’t know what God has in store for me, now. It’s that same kind of excitement.”
Another of his songs I so love, one I find myself humming or singing quite regularly, is one which reminds me that what I have, I need to share. “Tell Them” is the good news that THE God of the universe, while they are yet sinners, loves the people around us – just the way He did with us. And He came to give them life. I find it appropriate to kick off this “season of good will” with the joyful message of a Father who loves us~
Tell them even if they don’t believe you
Just tell them, even if they don’t receive you
Tell them for me
Please tell them for Me
That I love them
And I came to let them know.
Tell them
When it seems you are forsaken
Just tell them though it seems your earth is shaken
Tell them for Me
Please tell them for Me
That I love them
And I came to let them know
Tell that lonely man who walks the cold streets all alone
Tell that crying child who doesn’t have a home
Tell those hungry people dying lost and in despair
They don’t even know that I care
Won’t you tell them on the streets and tell them on the highways?
Compel them, even on the byways
Tell them I can mend the broken hearted
Restore the ones who have parted
And I came to let them know
And I came to let them know
It is appalling to think how long I often go, rushing here and there in the busyness of life, full of the great news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, yet neglecting to share it. Neglecting to go and compel…
I never- ever-ever pay a lot for a candle-in-a-jar, but Target had a fall selection of Yankee Candles (the best candles in the world) near my birthday (early October) on sale for $18, down from $24.99 and when I expressed great pleasure in the “Autumn Festival” scent, Dave insisted on getting me one. You know – for my birthday.
I have burned it, and burned it and burned it. When I am home (and sometimes when I not, shhhhhh, it isn’t on purpose!), I burn it. It has burned all day long and all night long (like, ALL night long, much to Dave’s dismay). I have burned that thing for hundreds of hours by now. 300+ I’d say.
It was just one of those nights
Just one of those fabulous flights
A trip to the moon on gossamer wings
Just one of those things
Was it meant to last this long? Was it meant to make my early mornings so sweet and my evenings so romantic? Was it supposed to burn for untold lengths of time where the memory of it lingered in the air as I’d descend the stairs come morning? And as I watch the flicker this afternoon, smaller, much closer to its end, I wonder how on earth I shall ever replace this beloved candle?
If we’d thought a bit about the end of it
When we started painting the town
We’d have been aware that our love affair
Was too hot not to cool down
I have been preparing myself for the end, dreading it, yet helpless to stop it. I have been sniffing candles madly at stores, looking for my winter comfort. But so far, none can surpass my Autumn Festival – both fruity and spicy; tangy and zesty, yet mellow, rich. It has been the scent of my home as the days have grown shorter and the nights longer; as the chill has forced its way into early morning and long hours of dark azure skies.
So good-bye, dear, and amen
Here’s hoping we meet now and then
It was great fun
But it was just one of those things
It seems hard to believe another candle could ever match this one. This one. But I am fond of a deep red cinnamon scent, earthy and multi-layered…where o where is it?!
SONG LYRICS “It Was Just One of Those Things” by Cole Porter, performed by gazillions of artists, though I am fond of the Diana Krall version!).
NOTE: I used to get very teary when my mom threw out the Christmas trees at season’s end, too. They’d just made me so happy….
It is appalling to think how long I often go, rushing here and there in the busyness of life, full of the great news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, yet neglecting to share it. Neglecting to go and compel…
