In December, there was always Christmas music playing in our home. My Mom loved listening to her Perry Como, Andy Williams, and Burl Ives Christmas albums on the family stereo. When music wasn’t playing on the turntable, Mom would be singing “Up on the Rooftop,” or “Here Comes Santa Clause.” Remembering her singing is one of my favorite Christmas memories.
At church we sang Christmas carols, but my favorite time would be the Christmas Eve service and singing Silent Night.

My grandparents and Aunt always visited for Christmas and we attended the service together. It would end with the lighting of small white candles held in the hands of attendees as we all sang Silent Night.

I would stand beside my aunt as the familiar carol began and I would hear her sweet singing voice. As the song progressed my aunt would harmonize with the melody and my heart would swell with joy because it was my favorite holiday, spent with those I loved. As the song came to a close, we would blow out our candles and exit the church in silence, walking down the sidewalk lit by luminaries. It was a special time.

In 1816, the words to the carol we now know as Silent Night were written by an Austrian priest by the name of Joseph Mohr. Two years later, Franz Gruber, the church’s organist, put music to Mohr’s poem and the song, “Stille Nacht” was born. The two men performed the song, accompanied by guitar, for the first time during a Christmas midnight mass at St. Nicholas Church in Oberndorf, Austria.

As the story goes, an organ repairman, Karl Mauracher, was called to repair the organ at St. Nicholas. (The organ being in disrepair was perhaps the reason the song was first sung with guitar accompaniment.) The repairman heard the song and took it back to his hometown of Tyrol, where he shared it with a group of singing sisters, known as the Strassers. The Strasser sisters began singing the song in their performances as they traveled. The carol soon became popular in German-speaking countries. As Germans immigrated to the United States, they brought the song with them. The song was first performed in the U.S. in New York’s Central Park by another singing group of sisters, the Rainer family, in 1839.
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 It would be hard for me to imagine Christmas without this familiar carol. Growing up in my family’s home, I would always sneak away from the rest of the family at some point on Christmas Eve before it was time for bed. I would go and sit in silence and look at our pretty Christmas tree, all lit up, the only lights in the room. When I married and had a family of my own, I continued this little tradition. Just a few quiet moments, silently looking at the Christmas tree lights, thinking about God’s goodness and Him sending His son, Jesus, all those years ago. He rent the heavens and love’s pure light came down on a silent or maybe even a not-so-silent night, just for you and me. Christ the Savior is born, Christ the Savior is born!

​On Christmas Day in 1863, as the American Civil war raged throughout the land, a poet by the name of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow found himself momentarily captivated by the music ringing out from the belfry of the local church. For years Longfellow had been living in a season of personal heartache. First, he experienced the tragic death of his beloved wife, then came the bleakness of a nation at war and then most recently, Longfellow became a caregiver to his son who was seriously injured in battle. All of this despair had taken a toll on the famous poet and he was emotionally and creatively drained. In fact, it had been years since Longfellow had been inspired to write anything new. But, on that Christmas day, when his focus shifted from the distractions of this world to the sublime sound of the bells ringing out, Longfellow sat down and penned the poem, “Christmas Bells”, which would eventually be converted into the carol, “I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day”.
 
What is captivating your attention this Christmas season? Perhaps like Longfellow, you’ve been living in a time of great despair. Maybe you’ve been coping with a loss or affected by a serious illness, maybe you’re struggling financially or dealing with a wayward child or a broken marriage. Or perhaps, maybe everything is going great for you and you’re grateful to be healthy and able to enjoy all of the festivities that this time of year brings. In either case, let me ask again, what is captivating your attention this Christmas season?
 
What we choose to focus on matters. Especially now when so many things are competing for our attention. Think about the difference between Martha and Mary in Luke 10. Martha was missing out on Christ because she was so busy being “worried and upset about many things”, while Mary sat captivated at his feet. We can become so distracted by the world that we miss out on the significance of Christ’s birth. We miss out on what the angels in Luke 2:14 proclaimed to the shepherds and what Longfellow described in his poem as “a chant sublime“: The sovereign provision of ‘peace on earth, goodwill to men’.
 
The restored peace with God that was promised to Adam and Eve in the garden was delivered to us in a manger on that first Christmas. The Prince of Peace came to earth in the form of a baby and through his perfect life, sacrificial death and victorious resurrection we have been reconciled to God. Our mighty Lord and Savior came to us; He willingly bound himself up in the weak flesh of an infant, so that we could one day be reunited with Him in heaven. The idea that a wretched person like myself can be so deeply loved and wanted by a perfectly holy God is mind blowing, it’s beautiful, it’s awe-inspiring, it’s…well, it’s sublime.
 
This year when the festivities and the personal situations tempt you to look away from the true meaning of Christmas, allow yourself to refocus on Christ. Let His gift of everlasting peace ring in your hearts so loudly that it drowns out the distractions of this world until you become completely captivated by what Jesus has done for you.

Once again, the year has flown and somehow, we are already back to the month of December. Throughout this month, we will each be sharing some of our favorite Christmas carols. For me, Christmas music is my favorite part of the season, so it was tricky to pick out just one song. However, I finally chose “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” I love how the words throughout are very descriptive of what that night in Bethlehem would have been like, with phrases like, “How still we see Thee lie,” and “The silent stars go by.” It was a quiet city, without a lot of excitement. Except for Mary and Joseph, no one was expecting their Savior to be born that night. Yet what a beautiful thought that at Jesus’s first cry, “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight.”

Hundreds of years before Jesus was born, Isaiah prophesied these words found in Isaiah 9:6: “For a child will be born for us, a son will be given to us, and the government will be on His shoulders. He will be named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.” They were given the promise of the coming Messiah, however, they didn’t know how long they would have to wait for His arrival. I’m sure over the course of hundreds of years, they began to doubt if the prophecy was actually going to be fulfilled. When He was finally born, it was probably not how they would have envisioned a prince’s birth. As the song says, “How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given.” His arrival was not announced throughout a kingdom, but instead to lowly shepherds. Maybe they thought that He was going to be an earthly King, like David, and bring freedom and peace, not peace to their souls. Perhaps the Israelites were confused or disappointed in the way God’s promises came to be, losing trust that Jesus really was who He was prophesied to be.

Like the Israelites, there are times in our lives, where we know the promises filled throughout Scripture, and yet struggle with doubt as we wait to see how God fulfills those promises. We sometimes think we know what God’s plans will be and envision how He’s going to answer our prayers, instead of releasing control to Him and trusting His plan. Lastly, sometimes we can get confused or angry with God when He finally gives us the answer to our request, but it’s not what we wanted or expected.

We can know that even in the quietness, while we wait to see His plan unfold, He is working in our waiting. Just like the Israelites had to wait for the Messiah, He came when they least expected, and in a way they didn't envision, but it was God’s perfect timing and plan. Even in the waiting, God is working all things out for His glory and our good. We can trust that His plan is perfect, even when it doesn’t look like what we thought it would. ​

I Thessalonians 5:18 says,
“Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus."

Wow, that is not always the easiest thing the Lord commands us to do. Most of us have walked through some really difficult things that bring us, at its worst to deep grief and anguish, and at best, to feeling bewildered or confused as to why it happened. 
 
If we are not careful, we can find ourselves living under the assumption that life should be easy and trouble free because we follow Jesus. But that is the exact opposite of what Jesus told his disciples, the men who gave up everything to follow him. In fact, he said, “in this life, you will have trouble."  That word trouble in the original language means, anguish, affliction, trouble, and persecution.  And yet God’s Word still tells us to “be thankful in everything."

Thankfulness is about faith and trust, Colossians 2:7 says, “ Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness.” 

​There are truths in God’s Word we learn with our heads that cannot be seared onto our hearts until we experience them.

The sudden death of my father is one of the things the Lord used to make this truth about thankfulness real for me. This is the single most difficult thing I have walked through; the grief was so overwhelming at times I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Even now, after 11 years, I write this with tears in my eyes.  You see, being thankful is not the same thing as being happy about a circumstance, or denying the pain or the ugly wrongness of it.  
 
Thankfulness is about “letting your roots grow down deep into him,” allowing the things the Lord has allowed in your life to drive you deeper into His grace and mercy, so you are able to trust Him, and your thankfulness overflows not in the circumstance but in who He is.
 
As we drove to my father’s funeral, the Lord met me in that car with a simple children’s song from Psalms 33**, He spoke this truth to my heart.
In You our hearts rejoice, for we are trusting in your name,
in You, our hearts rejoice
We depend on You, for we are trusting in your name,
we depend on You
Our hope is in you Lord, for we are trusting in your name,
our hope is in you Lord

I am still filled with thankfulness as I remember the tender way He accompanied me to the funeral. Reminding me I can rejoice in Him, not in the circumstance, I can depend on Him, even when I don’t understand why the Lord allowed this, and I can hope in Him because this life is not the end. He has an incredible eternity marked out for my Dad and me.
 
Oh, Ladies, we can give thanks in ALL THINGS because we belong to Christ.  After Jesus said “in this life, you will have trouble” he said “ fear not, for I have overcome the world” and in that we can truly be thankful.  

**Psalms 33 is written by Rob Biagi, I added the link if you want to take a listen.
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​Next week my husband will have cataract surgery. He will have surgery on one eye and then a week later on the other. He is rather young to be having this surgery in my opinion, but because of some medications he has had to take for other health issues, the cataracts appeared quickly and his vision has suffered because of it. Ironically, he is an eye doctor, so he needs to be able to see clearly when examining the vision of others.

Recently he told me the story of a patient who had cataract surgery at the age of 95. That is rather an old age to be having surgery, but she was healthy in allother regards and the cataracts which had been there for a long time threatened to rob her of vision completely. She had needed the surgery for 20 years but had been afraid to have it done.

So, at age 95 she had the cataracts removed, and she could see again. What had once been blurs of her loved ones became clear and distinguishable faces. Her vision acuity was great again. She was amazed at the difference and very grateful for having had the surgery. And, my husband told me, she was also quite sad. She was sad that she had waited 20 years because of fear. She was sad at all of the sights she had missed in those years; at all of the family events that had just been blurs on the screen of her eyes. She deeply regretted having let fear have dominion over her life.

The disciple John tells us in his gospel that when Jesus walked on the earth, He declared that He was the Light of the world and then He healed a man who had been blind since birth (John 9). The man’s life changed instantly. The man who had been a beggar for years because of his blindness, could now see. The change was so incredible that his neighbors questioned whether he was really the blind man they had known his entire life.

The religious leaders decided to get involved in the conversation because this life-transforming miracle happened on the Sabbath, a no-no in their eyes. Their vision was fixed on their own legalism rather than on the miracle that had just occurred.

The Pharisees accused Jesus of being a sinner. They brought the formerly blind man’s parents in for questioning. They continued to deny the work of God that was right before their eyes. The now-seeing man told them as they questioned him a second time about his healing, “‘I don’t know whether (Jesus) is a sinner,’ the man replied. ‘But I know this: I was blind, and now I can see!’” (John 9:25)

The healed man was thrown out of the synagogue by the religious leaders, cut off from community. Jesus found the seeing man and revealed Himself to him, telling him, “I entered this world to render judgment—to give sight to the blind and to show those who think they see that they are blind.” (John 9:40)

It is quite the paradox, Jesus enabled a physically blind man to see, both physically and spiritually, while the physically seeing religious leaders denied the spiritual and physical miracle right before their eyes. They were the blind ones. All of the blind man’s sightless years were swept away in a moment by the hand of God and he was also blessed by the gift of beholding God himself, and he believed.

My 5 year old son enjoys math and will randomly ask me different addition problems throughout the day. Recently, he was asking me what eight plus eight equals. I told him that it was sixteen and very confused, he looked at me and said, “No, I said what is eight plus eight?” I gave him the same answer, and then he questioned me again, saying, “Are you sure?” At that moment, because he kept doubting me, I started to doubt myself too, thinking maybe I told him the wrong answer. After taking a moment, I reassured him that sixteen was, in fact, the right answer. 

As I sat there, finding it humorous that I let my 5 year old cause me to doubt a math fact that I had been taught my whole life, I realized how easily it is for us to be swayed in our thinking. Whether it’s our culture, the enemy, or our personal worries and unbelief, it is so easy for us to doubt the truth of God’s Word. We can easily find ourselves questioning things that we know to be true, some of which we have been taught our whole lives. 

God knows that we will deal with doubt, which is why, in His wonderful grace, He reminds us all throughout the Bible to be steadfast and on guard. We can do that by daily reading His Word, memorizing Scripture, and spending time in prayer so that we will not be easily swayed by other teachings or beliefs that are thrown at us. Ephesians 6:13 says, “This is why you must take up the full armor of God, so that you may be able to resist in the evil day, having prepared everything, to take your stand.” When we are consistently reading the Bible and spending time in our relationship with God, it will strengthen us for when those doubts try to creep in. We will more easily be able to spot the lies in our thinking and combat them with the truth. Even Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness to deviate from the truth, but Jesus fought those lies by quoting Scripture. 

It’s like the familiar story that is told about the person whose job it is to recognize counterfeit money. The way they become so good at it is by taking time to truly study what the real dollar and coin look and feel like. That way, when something counterfeit is in front of them, they can quickly realize it, because it differs from the real thing. In John 10:4-5, Jesus gives a similar illustration about sheep with their shepherd: “The sheep follow him because they recognize his voice. They will never follow a stranger; instead they will run away from him, because they don’t recognize the voice of strangers.” When we are so familiar with truth, it will be easier to flee from the lies of this world and not doubt the Word of God. 

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Recently, my husband and I experienced an unusually crazy, non-stop period of time. So, after church one Sunday afternoon, we left our home and went for a motorcycle ride through a rural area. Sitting on the back of the motorcycle was vey relaxing. As we rode, I enjoyed the rolling hills, cows and horses in the pastures and the fresh air blowing in my face. At one point, I looked up and watched two birds …high in the sky…gliding … effortlessly … floating … going higher and higher … soaring. The words of Isaiah came to mind, “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (40:31).

At that moment, the birds were soaring. They were not trying to carry sticks to build a nest or food to feed their young. They weren't trying to impress or compare themselves to the bird flying near them. They didn’t have the weight of the world on their feathers. They were soaring - so effortlessly - so beautifully and so freely. I realized that in my multi-tasking mindset, I was trying to do many things in my own strength. Even though they were good things, I wasn't waiting on the Lord, therefore, I definitely wasn’t mounting up on wings as eagles and soaring - I was more like a chicken running in circles flapping my wings in a tailspin crossing things off my to-do-list…. and I was beginning to feel weary and faint. As I watched those birds soar, they were doing exactly what the Lord created them to do. And the very way that His word encourages us to live. When we wait upon the Lord, our strength will be renewed, we will spread our wings and soar like eagles, we will run this race and not grow weary and we will walk through life without giving up. And that, is very refreshing for my soul!

We all will face serious burdens and feel as though we are spiraling downward unable to run or walk. When this happens, Jesus told us to, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:29,30). We can cast our cares upon Him, because He cares for us. And we can remember that the Lord likens us to eagles. The eagles are a symbol of courage and strength. They tend to fly higher than any other birds, oftentimes they fly alone. When there is a storm or wind runs into hills or mountains, currents are forced upward and when eagles discover such a current, they just go along for the ride. They don’t force themselves through the current - that would be exhausting and foolish—they fly without expending much energy and they are able to soar higher and higher. The eagle allows the difficulty to take him higher. And that is a beautiful example of allowing our trials to take us higher and higher, straight into His mighty presence!

Next time you are feeling weary and faint, wait upon the Lord- really sit at His feet, meditate on His word, rest in His unconditional love for you, listen to what He wants to share with you and your strength will be renewed and soon you will be soaring.

I sat watching my week-old granddaughter as she lay in her cushioned bouncy seat. Her eyes were wide open, quietly looking up at the space above her. She was so small, so tiny, so vulnerable. I was struck by her vulnerability, being so small in a big room, in a big house, in a big world. If she didn’t have loving parents, an adoring big brother, a loving grandmother nearby, how would she survive?
 
Yet that is how we all come into the world; small, vulnerable human beings. By comparison, I was a huge baby when I was born, the largest my mother’s doctor had delivered in his 30-year medical career. My parents tell me that I was a miniature of my father in appearance. Still, I was small and except to my parents and grandparents and the rest of their family and friends, I was insignificant. No newspaper headlines proclaimed my arrival in the world. It wasn’t reported on the local news. It was a grand event for my family who welcomed me with great love, but just a tiny blip in the events of a big world.
 
Even so, my Heavenly Father, the God who ultimately created me didn’t think me insignificant. The Psalmist David wrote in Psalm 139 that God had already planned out my days even as he was knitting me together in my mother’s womb: “You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day passed.” (Ps. 139:16)
 
All of these thoughts passed through my mind as I watched my new and already greatly loved granddaughter. How any of us survive in a world so big is really miraculous; yet we do survive. We survive and become the parents and grandparents of new small beings. Watching my granddaughter, my thoughts drifted to how big God is and how He looks out for the small things of His creation. I thought of the words of David in Psalm 8:

“LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!...
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?
 You have made them a little lower than the angels
 and crowned them with glory and honor.
 You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
 you put everything under their feet:
 all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild,
the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.
LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!” (Ps. 8:1, 3-9 NIV)
 
All of us are significant, every single person that has ever been born, because we have a Heavenly Father who says we are.