Merry Christmas

An unused nappy lies on the couch. A pair of sheepskin slippers for a baby tumble together with various cars and toy animals on the floor. Family beginning to come ‘home’ to the ‘hillock for the holidays.

The Mighty One has done great things for me, Mary sang. I sing the same song.

For ten days we have struggled to get our central heating fixed. Unfortunately, we had ‘O’Reilly’ (Fawlty Towers fans will understand) out to fix it. Only because he was available, and we didn’t know. Now we know. Yesterday we had a new man come who has got it going, though it isn’t completely fixed yet.

Preparations for the family’s arrival in full swing, last night the element in the main oven broke. At other times of the year, this doesn’t matter. Don and I can get by. But with family, with a rare moment of gathering together, with babies and toddlers, not to mention an outsized turkey thawing for tomorrow, timing is not right.

The temptation is to ask, why us? Why now? We’ve had a challenging year, so why not end 2019 with a challenge?

So, as Don heads to Aberdeen to try to find a new element for an old oven, and we start talking through contingency plans, it is good to read these words and hang with them, and let them hang with me. The Mighty One has done great things for me. And as the angel assured Mary, ‘nothing is impossible with God’.

In a day when folk are flooded and burnt out of their homes, refugees are in peril on the roads and seas fleeing from violence, homeless folk huddle in doorways and others struggle with pain and illness, a broken oven is ‘small potatoes’. Whatever happens, we will manage.

It will be a memorable Christmas. What more does anyone want?

Whatever your Christmas is looking like, it is good to reflect on the great things the Mighty One has done for you this year. It restores perspective.

Grace and peace today and always, and may Immanuel reveal himself in us more fully every day. Merry Christmas.

Bread

Does anything evoke well-being as much as the smell of homemade bread? I was blessed to receive a bread-maker for Christmas. Our house is too cold for bread to rise in the normal way, but this bread-maker produces delicious results effortlessly.

We have noticed that the bread is so filling, we eat less than commercially produced products.

Jesus is the bread of life, fragrant and satisfying. His word feeds us. We don’t need much, just enough to chew over.

Starkness of winter

There is a beauty in the starkness of winter. The twisting trunks of the rowan outside the window are more visible now without their robe of leaves. The dawn light illuminates those brown trunks and branches, picking out the knots and prunes and breaks. It is the light side of the trunks that I am noticing this morning, but there are mornings when all I can see is the dark side of the trunks. I can become stuck, staring at the shadows rather than moving to another spot and gaining a new perspective.  It’s the same wood, the same tree, the same trunks, but perspective is everything.

There are times, there are circumstances, which can catch us in a mire where we can only see the shadows. We need God’s help to shift to another spot, to gain a new perspective. As the truth of the real meaning of Christmas dawns on us, may we all be enabled to see the wood in our lives with the Light shining on it. The hope of the world.

Green string and Christmas

I just noticed a piece of green plastic string – probably 2 metres long – tied to the curtain rail and left hanging there since it helped support the unstable Christmas tree five months ago.

I’ve been aware it was there but suddenly it is getting in my way. But I’m aware that actually, it’s only seven more months till we probably will have another unstable Christmas tree requiring a steadying support. Has everyone else been wondering when the slapdash homemaker would get around to taking that green string down, or is everyone else as blind or unconcerned about it as I have been?

It’s amazing how we can have artificial supports in our lives which we gradually become unaware of. They become part of the furniture of our minds/lives/spirits. We rely on them sometimes even more than we rely on God, whose support is secure, natural, supernatural even, and never breaks or lets us go.

Will stop now and get the scissors. At least I can attend to that pesky green string.

All is Calm

All is calm. All is bright.

Random reminders of Christmas scattered round the room: a bag of wrapping paper, cosy slippers and walking boots, a 2-year-old’s waterproof onesie. Empty stockings, a sagging tree, still crazy with lights and baubles and an oversized angel bending down.

An oversized angel bending down. I like the image of an oversized heavenly being bending down, detailed to give us all a helping hand. I love the truth that Jesus can call out his legions of these heavenly beings whenever he wants to. 

It’s been a tricky Christmas for many. A challenging year right round the globe. Tragedy and heartbreak, sorrow and loss.

But in the midst, Jesus has deployed his angels. We are probably rubbing shoulders with them more often than we realise. With every breath, we inhale the fragrance of our Creator God, who loved the world so much, in all of its fallenness, rebellion and pain, that he gave of himself, the most precious Son whom he loves with a love that goes away beyond what we recognise as love. 

Others give of themselves to those they love. New parents with restless babies who are reluctant to settle down. Veteran parents with older children pushing at the boundaries. Those caring for the sick, the injured, the elderly, the dying. 

Rubbing shoulders with the angels. Today and every day. Thank you, Jesus.

Yeast and Potica

Beware the yeast of the Pharisees, Jesus warned.

A tiny bit of yeast can make a substantial loaf of bread. Yesterday I baked the annual Potica we have as a traditional breakfast on Christmas morning. As I always struggle to get it to rise (in our cold house), this year I found the old fashioned dried yeast which you activate in warm water/sugar before adding it to the flour. It seems to have worked as the two sweet loaves were done in record time.

Over the last few years, I’ve used the type of dried yeast which sprinkles directly into the flour. Didn’t work very well.

A suitable matrix for the yeast needs to be found, perhaps. If the yeast of Christ is going to work through my life, I need to be sure he finds a warm place filled with love, a place in my heart. 

As I nurture that space for the yeast of Christ, there will be no welcome for the yeast of the Pharisees.

We two kings

We two kings ...

The third king has come unstuck. He’s dropped the light, and awaits repair upstairs. He dropped it last Christmas, and has awaited repair all year. But we’ve been too busy, one way and another, to even take time to apply a bit of glue to his upturned arms. A whole year hasn’t been long enough somehow...

It’s easy to drop the light. To become unstuck, too busy with preparations for everything, everyone,  except the King. I just had a wee chat with our postie Paul, who said he is madly laying floors and painting walls before family arrive for the holidays. Today I am pretty focused on getting the traditional Potica to rise – always a challenge in a cold house. Then I want to check the gift situation, do a bit of wrapping, a lot of cleaning, some more baking ... the prep goes on. Busy busy.

And the prep can snuff out the light. We can even drop it as our hands fill up with all sorts of things.

I’ve just come out of the prayer window, and a rendezvous with the King. Time to confess, to be cleansed, to be refilled and relit with the Light of the World. Advent is the season of prep, but we – I – so often replace the important inner, spiritual preparation of a place fit for the King of Kings to live, with outer, relatively unimportant prep.

May your light shine bright throughout the busy preparations. Especially in this world of turmoil and uncertainty, as the darkness nips at our toes, the prep that is really needed is that time in the prayer window, or wherever you call your sacred space. 

Whatever gift you have been given by the King, let him fill your arms with it this Christmas, as you offer it back to him in utter trust and joy.