A couple of slightly random Christmas thoughts…
Today was a special “girls day out.” Since Kristin, Janelle and I spend the majority of the Christmas holiday with our in-laws, we spread the Mahaney Christmas out over the month of December. One Monday (our husbands collective day off) the guys go out and exchange gifts, then it’s the girls turn, and finally we have a party for the kids on the third Monday.
“Our turn” almost didn’t come as Brian got the flu. But Mike bravely stepped in and watched the Chesemore kids and Caly. Thanks Uncle Mikey! We got to enjoy lunch and hang out and talk and talk and talk. We capped off the afternoon with Starbucks and Cinnabon (a hard to beat combo). Traditions, both old and new, are expressions of God’s goodness and faithfulness at Christmastime.
Over the weekend, Mom’s friend Julie gave her two more suggestions for Christmas reading with children.
One Wintry Night
by Ruth Bell Graham
The World of Narnia Collection
by C.S. Lewis (and adapted for little children)
Julie keeps both books with her Christmas decorations and pulls them out every year to read to her two boys. I can’t wait to read these with Jack.
Finally, as we’ve been discussing Christmas gifts lately, these excerpts from a Valley of Vision prayer seem fitting:
“O Source of all good,
What shall I render to thee for the gift of gifts, thine own dear Son…
Herein is wonder of wonders:
he came below to raise me above,
was born like me that I might become like him…
O God, take me in spirit to the watchful shepherds,
and enlarge my mind;
let me hear good tidings of great joy,
and hearing, believe, rejoice, praise, adore,
my conscience bathed in an ocean of repose,
my eyes uplifted to a reconciled Father;
place me with ox, ass, camel, goat,
to look with them upon my Redeemer’s face,
and in him account myself delivered from sin;
let me with Simeon clasp the new-born child
to my heart,
embrace him with undying faith,
exulting that he is mine and I am his.
In him thou hast given me so much
that heaven can give no more.”
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