We Wish You a Merry Christmas!

I love the Christmas season!

Decorating the tree and house.

Buying presents for my family and friends.

Cooking, baking, visiting relatives.

Remembering we're celebrating the birth of our savior.

Christmas movies, Christmas music, Christmas lights, traditions.

Wrapping presents and pretending they came from Santa

(even though my kids are grown and know better!)

So, from my family to yours (my tree below)

A Christmas blessing...

I wish you a very merry

including all the joys of the season

and best wishes for the coming year.

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to his own town to register.

So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

Luke 2:1-7

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I love this!

Reconciling the Old and the New (Testaments)

Last year, I read the One Year Bible.  It is divided into manageable sections with reading from the Old Testament, the New Testament, Psalms, and Proverbs each day.  I thoroughly enjoyed it and looked forward each day to my Bible time.  In fact, it was such a boost to my spirit each day that I got another One Year Bible, this one in chronological order.  

The only thing I sometimes have trouble with is reconciling the God of the Old Testament to the God of the New Testament.  While His behavior appears inconsistent when only studied at a superficial level, when I began to dig deeper, the differences in behavior actually made perfect sense.

For example, one must consider the context in which each part of the Bible was written.  Come Reason Ministries says, "one point we note is that the commands of God are addressed on a national level. Here God is instructing Israel as a forming nation."  Many of the Old Testament admonishments were directed at the entire nation, not as individuals.  Conversely, Jesus's teachings about God and what God wants for the world are on a personal level rather than a national level.  Come Reason Ministries states that Jesus's admonitions "...are guidelines for how we can be more loving to our fellow human beings and they help instill a spirit of selflessness in our individual characters."

I really love the way Carl Olson, editor for Our Sunday Visitor, explains this need for reconciliation by reminding us that, "One essential problem here is quite simple: there are not two Gods — one of the Old Testament and one of the New Testament — but just one God...the Old and New Testaments are not in competition with one another, nor do they tell two different stories, but are intimately connected to each other, forming a long and continuous whole. And that whole — what we might call salvation history — is held together by God’s revelation of himself. "  Similar to the previous source, he also states, "readers must put forth some effort to comprehend just how different the ancient Middle Eastern cultures, morals and attitudes were from our 21st-century situations and perspectives."                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               So, while I don't begin to understand everything about God and the Bible, I do understand more than I did previously.  I only included small samples from these sources, but reading them in their entirety opened my eyes and helped me understand a very complex concept.

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The Nativity

Not everyone who reads my blog is Christian, and I love that we can all have our different beliefs, religions, and holidays. But since I'm Christian, and this is my blog, I want to talk about Christmas for a minute. Do you have a Nativity set in your home? I have a darling Dreamsicle set.

I started wondering, though, why is it called the Nativity? (This is the English teacher in me.) The root word is native. That makes me think of natives as in native people. Then, I did some searching in my brain and realized that plants can be native to a certain area (belong), so maybe that meaning is why it is called a nativity.

I had to look it up to be completely certain. Technically, the word nativity means "birth or origin." (I learned something new.) In this particular meaning, it means "of or relating to the birth of Jesus Christ." So now, it makes sense to me! I'm so glad I cleared that up!

And speaking of The Nativity Story, have you ever seen the movie from 2006? It's a wonderful reenactment of Joseph and Mary's lives and their journey leading up to the birth of Jesus. My twins were ten when it came out, and I made them go with me to see it. I'm so glad I did. I believe it gave them a clear sense of why we celebrate Christmas. As the saying goes (among Christians), Jesus is the reason for the season!

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Happy Easter!

Happy Easter Sunday to all of you!

"In their fright, the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them 'Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee?'" Luke 24: 5-6

Thursday Thirteen #29

Who am I?

A Photo Story

1. I’m a mom - I love my kids with all my heart. This is my first and foremost role in life.

2. Wife - I love my husband and want to share his life.
3. Daughter - Not always the best daughter, but I try. I wish my mom lived closer sometimes.
4. Sister - She lives an hour away, and I love her dearly. We get along so much better now that we are grown with families of our own.
5. Teacher - This is my career, not my life.
6. Reader - I absoltely adore reading. I read every single day.
7. Writer - I enjoy writing, but I haven't honed my craft enough to publish, and I'm not sure I want to. It's a great hobby and sometimes a release for me.
8. Scrapbooker - I big-puffy-heart scrapbooking, my hobby on which I have limited time to work.
9. Christian - I believe in God the Father, Jesus Christ-his one and only Son, and the Holy Spirit.
10. Volunteer - I volunteer at my children's school when I can, and church. I volunteer with the kids' activities. (girl scouts, football, baseball, etc.)
11. Insomniac - Even when I am dead tired, I can't sleep well.
12. Night Owl - I get more done after hours when everyone else is in bed. That's when my mind really starts to work. The day time is just rote.
13. Cleaner/Organizer - I could have put "maid," but cleaner/organizer sounds better. I like things to be neat and relatively clean, and living with people who put this on the bottom of their priority list, or don't put it on their list at all, really drives me bonkers.

To visit other Thursday Thirteeners, click here.

Passion - Sunday Scribblings

This week's Sunday Scribbling's topic is passion. “Passion” is associated with many things. A passionate love, hate with a passion, compassion for our fellow man, a passion for fashion, or even a passion for chocolate.

But in a Christian’s life, passion is most often associated with Christ’s passion: His trial, suffering, and death at the hands of His oppressors. Then his glorious resurrection to Heaven to sit at the right hand of God.

The passion play is a dramatic presentation of these events in Christ’s life. I have never attended a live version of a passion play, but I have been interested in the one my relatives in Arkansas have attended in Eureka Springs, AR, which claims to be America’s Number 1 Attended Outdoor Drama. You can check it out here. Below is a scene from the live drama.

Then, of course, there is the cinematic version The Passion of the Christ directed and co-written by Mel Gibson. I wouldn’t allow myself to see it when it first came out, not only because of the intense violence, the thought of watching a son sacrificed while his mother looks on, and because it was right around the time my father died, and we had talked about this movie. So, I didn’t watch it for almost two years, and then only when my step-daughter promised to watch it with me. Moving, emotional, heart-breaking, and touching, it details the final hours of Christ’s life in a realistic fashion. Overall, it is an extremely powerful film.

Check out other responses to the topic “passion” by visiting Sunday Scribblings.