Angels, Blessings and Christmas

It's hard to believe that another Christmas is here...another year we've been blessed to celebrate the birth of Christ, the gift of Hope to the world, the promise of abundant life to all who receive Him.

I find myself drawn to the story of God made flesh -- even though it is old and familiar, this year it seems amazing to me again in a way I hadn't experienced in a while.  Perhaps because I'm remembering the birth of my own children.

We've been singing a song at church this month by Chris Tomlin called Hallowed Manger Ground.  The last verse begins, "The Son of God, here born to bleed, a crown of thorns would pierce His brow..."  And I wonder that He came at all, knowing all that was in store for Him.

And I'm struck that another son -- my Sam -- was also known by God, and sent by Him, and all that has transpired this year with his homegoing and our loss....none of it was a surprise to God, and He is still working a plan, the fruit of which I have yet to see.  Hard to fathom! Hard to understand. Hard to take, sometimes. :-) And yet, as Mary must have understood, we have to trust God.

 

I guess I've cried just about every day.  But blessings abound.  Some new angels on the  mantle...

"Remember" from a friend at church. So appropriate, so perfect.   Just to the left of Remember is the "Angel of Summer" that Mary at Quilt Hollow sent me last Christmas because Jeff was deployed and she knew there'd not be much under the tree for me. :-)  What good friends!!

Another dear friend gave me "Heart of Gold," also a Willow Tree figurine...  just the perfect representation of our Sam.

Sam's Boot Camp friends gave us ornaments from a race he ran last winter called the "Jingle Bell Run." :-D  Last year's race photo becomes the current year's trophy ornament...and the Boot Campers checked out the engraving, contacted the company and added Sam's name to it for them and for us to have as keepsakes.  Awesome! :-)

Sam is number 110--'bout fourth in the start, and he looks cold, but not as cold as those guys without shirts! LOL

So many changes this year.  I look back over all that I've written here in the last several months...It feels like eons ago.  It feels like yesterday!!  I'm in awe at what God has done and is doing. 

Ephesians 3:14-21 (The Message)

^14-19My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you'll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ's love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.
^20-21God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.

Glory to God in the church!
Glory to God in the Messiah, in Jesus!
Glory down all the generations!
Glory through all millennia! Oh, yes!  

Just like the angels sang to the shepherds on that first Christmas morn!
"Glory to God in the Highest!"

May every blessing of Christmas be yours today and in the New Year!

Christmas 2010

Christmastime is for telling favorite family stories.  We love to sit around and reminisce about good, bad and ugly Christmases past.  We retell our parents' stories to our children ("In my day," my Mom used to tell, "we got an apple and an orange in a stocking. And we were grateful for it.") and relive our own 23 year history of Christmases together.

Case in point is the tale of Jeff's and my first Christmas.  We'd been too poor to get an engagement ring before we married, so he took me to the local jewelry chain and picked up a little diamond ring to go with my wedding band.  I knew that was my Christmas gift, but I hoped for something else under the tree.  It was our first Christmas after all! We'd been married exactly three months to the day.

Imagine my chagrin when I eagerly pulled open the wrapping of a gift he'd placed under the tree for me....
and inside was a penguin shaped ice scraper.  And inside that, a bottle of Scope.

It was something we needed.  It was on the list. He'd picked it up and thought, "Hmm, I'll just wrap this and put it under the tree."  Knucklehead!! :-D    The story lives in infamy; it's brought up every year.  He's spent the next 22 years trying to do better (and mostly succeeding! LOL  How could he not!?!).

This year's Christmas was a little different.  Thanks to the wonder of technology, we were able to open gifts with Jeff in Afghanistan by way of a Skype video call.   He had no gifts to open...in the remote village where he is stationed, there is little room for excess baggage; and whatever we send he'd have to carry on his back out of the country when he leaves.  But he joyously watched as our three children opened their treasures and we celebrated together.

Mary, from Quilt Hollow, sent me a gift specifically for Christmas morning.  A military wife herself, she knew Jeff's deployment meant very little under the tree for me.  She sent me a Willow Tree angel...the perfect touch to let me know that not only is the Lord (and the friends he's given me!!) watching over me, but the spring (and Jeff's return) is not so far away.

I'm amazed that even in these little things -- a video visit, a gift from a friend, the stories of Christmases old and new -- the LORD is faithful.   Jesus told his followers, "Are not two little sparrows sold for a penny? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father's leave (consent) and notice.  But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.  Fear not, then; you are of more value than many sparrows"  (Matthew 10:29-31 Amplified).

This is a Christmas to remember.  Will's iPod touch, Sam's cymbals for his drums, Emily's video collection of "Boy Meets World." :-D  The gift of a Savior, Christ the LORD!

And husbands and friends too marvelous for words!

Blessings!

Christmas

Many things make Christmas for me....
A Charlie Brown Christmas is a classic, of course, with Linus' beautiful telling of the meaning of the day.



A Nativity Story -- a new classic for us -- with the phenomenal story of the conception and birth of the Savior and the additional insights into the very human, frail and willing lives of Mary and Joseph.



And while Christmas is not THE story -- THE story covers the remainder of Jesus' subsequent life, death, and resurrection -- Christmas is the beginning, the foundation for all that was and is to come.

How blessed we are to know Him!
How blessed we are to know each other and be joined together as family by the Love that was birthed that day!

Glory to God in the Highest, and peace, goodwill to all.

May God richly bless you this Christmas!!

"That's just ugly!"

Have you clicked on the Brown Bag Quilt Contest button yet?  So exciting!  Here's the deal:  We exchange 2 yards (in whatever denomination -- quarters, halves, full yards or what not) with a designated person and then have to use 90% of the fabric we've been sent, along with whatever we want to add from our stash, to make a quilt.  Fun, huh?  I can't wait to see the fabric I'm getting! I hope I am creative enough to come up with a cool design.



Drew my own block out of the bag.
Am I as RED as my sweater with
embarrassment!? Um, yeah.

Curious, though, that the contest used to be called the "Ugly Quilt Contest." :-D



Apparently, the object of the exchange is to get rid of fabric that no longer speaks to you.  (The assumption is that the fabric SCREAMED your name once upon a time, and now it makes YOU scream! LOL)

 

Are we having fun yet!?! LOL

Well, I'm not worried.  No matter what I receive from my assigned partner, it can't be as bad as what I'm working on from my own collection of quilt tops!

One Christmas our club decided to bring friendship star blocks in Christmas colors for a drawing for a lucky quilter to win.  We didn't designate WHICH colors, just Christmas ones. OH. MY. WORD.  Did we get a bunch of interesting blocks!  AND  I -- moi, me, myself -- won the accursed lovely :-P things.



Did you ever see anything so...yeah.

 So I've put them together. And they are not pretty as a group.  I think this might actually turn out to be -- yes, you must agree! -- an UGLY quilt.



Did you know that "ugly" is not used at all, not once!, in the King James Version of the Bible?  Isn't that a hoot!? You know there had to be something ugly back there in Biblical times! 

The New International Version, yeah.  They got Ugly.  It's kinda hilarious:

Joseph (the coat of many colors guy) is listening, in Genesis 41, to Pharaoh tell his dream (of the impending famine, as it turns out).

Pharaoh says, "In my dream I was standing on the bank of the Nile, when out of the river there came up seven cows, fat and sleek, and they grazed among the reeds. After them, seven other cows came up -- scrawny and very ugly and lean.  I had never seen such ugly cows in all the land of Egypt."  (v. 17-19 -- emphasis mine! :-D)

What do I learn from this?  Ugly is for real.  I think it's this quilt! LOL  Check out one of the friendship star blocks! I hadn't the heart to fix it.  "It is," as my friend Pat from upstate New York (not the block maker) says, "what it is."   Perhaps the maker didn't want anymore friends. :-D 

Secondly, skinny cows are ugly.  It's proof from the Bible that you don't have to be skinny to be beautiful.

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

The good news is that I'll use my Christmas Quilt to practice my machine quilting with my Hobby Quilter.  I'm an optimist.  Perhaps quilting will make the quilt.  Perhaps I'll learn to love the thing. 

Perhaps it will make some cow a lovely gift!

Blessings,