Silent Night

Sunday was a peaceful day at church. David's sermon made me cry. Here's the thing, I love David's sermons, but they've never made me cry before! The premise of the sermon was that Joseph was a real man for standing by Mary even though scandal was a possibility due to her "untimely" pregnancy. He ended the sermon by reminding us that just as Joseph was Jesus' adoptive father, God the Father adopts all of us into His family. This is when I started to cry.

I will not be with my family this year for Christmas, but God the Father will be with me. He will celebrate in the Christmas joy with me. Praise the Lord! I will have a Father with me tomorrow=)

We ended the service by singing "Silent Night, Holy Night." I could barely sing past the tears forming in my eyes. I can't even begin to imagine the tenderness of that night when Jesus was born....

Rejoice, rejoice! Your King has come to you, o Israel!

In His Mercy.

Silence is Golden

Sunday morning, I sat down in front of the tv with a bowl of cereal, yogurt, milk, and of course, coffee. I pressed the power button and the tv blew out. In a panic, I immediately started planning on what to do- buy a new tv? Take David's mom's old tv? Whatever will we do without a television?

In Sunday school, we are going through Rob Bell's Nooma videos. It just so happened that on Sunday, the video we were watching was about silence and how we needed to turn off the cell phones and tv's in order to hear God's voice. While discussing this video, I realized that perhaps our tv breaking was spiritual, and not just the inevitable of our old tv dying.

The funny thing is is that it turned out, I didn't even have time to do what I wanted to do while our tv lay there dead. There is so much to do. Turning on the tv is possibly a crutch for not doing other things that need to get done. 

Silence is golden.

In His Mercy.

Little Hands and Loud Amens

Four days a week, I get to go into my job and be blessed by 2, 3, and 4-year-olds. Each morning we have a staff meeting where we go over anouncements, do a devotional, and take up prayers and praised. Jim asked us one morning if anyone had any praises and 4-year-old Gabriel (son of one of the teachers) raises his hand and says, "Jesus loves us, this I know." Precious.

So then it was time to pray and we all held hands. On one side of me was 3-year-old Wright. Unsure if he would want to take my hand, I held it out and he looked me and decided it was ok to hold onto my hand. Throughout the prayer, his little hand kept slipping and he would inch his little fingers back into the palm of my hand and hold on as tightly as he could. It was so sweet.

I wonder if God wanted to teach me about the kind of faith I should have. I need to know with all my heart that Jesus loves me. And when I start slipping away from the Lord, I need to inch my fingers back into the palm of His hand and hold on as tightly as I can.

While there are days where I am copying and stapling in the office and I have to remember that one day my degree will be put to better use, there are other days where I get to be in the classroom surrounded by these precious kids and be blessed by them for three hours....and even beyond as I sit here and share my experience=)

In His MErcy.