For when everything is different ::: We can't detour around this brokenness. The only way out is to walk right through.

What Christmas asks You to Believe :::  He is here in the stomach illness, the cold weather, the humbling moments, and the tension.

Santa-Jesus ::: how often do we try to make Jesus into Santa Claus?

The Hum of Something Holy ::: in this moment of dance and chocolate and babies eating paper and lights blinking white, green and red, and Frank Sinatra singing, in this moment, Jesus is born.

Yes, Samuel, miracles do still happen… ::: a past reflection on miracles of Light we witness here in the dark, against all odds…

It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas,
when it's mighty founder was a child himself.
-Charles Dickens

I am thanking God that unto us a Child was born. I am thanking Him also that there was a pure-hearted woman prepared to receive that Child with all that motherhood would mean of daily trust, daily dependence, daily obedience. I thank Him for her silence. That spirit is not in me at all , not naturally. I want to learn what she had learned so early: the deep guarding in her heart of each event, mulling over its meaning from God, waiting in silence for His word to her.

I want to learn, too, that it is not an extraordinary spirituality that makes one refuse to do ordinary work, but a wish to prove that one is not ordinary — which is a dead giveaway of spiritual conceit. I want to respond in unhesitating obedience as she did: Anything You say, Lord.

 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

-Elisabeth Elliot