Christmas Crows

Happy New Year to all of you! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas. We certainly did here, including some fantastic church programs, a visit from Paul's parents over Christmas and lots of family time.

Can you believe I gave all the gifts I made for Christmas without taking a single picture of any of them? I certainly wasn't thinking ahead to when I could actually post about those creations, was I? However, thanks to the wonders of email, I can finally share the present I made my Mom.

This fabulous crow was designed by Kristy at Quiet Play and as soon as I saw it I knew I needed to make it for Mom. Actually, I knew I had to make 4 of them.

 Why? Well, Mom and three other women meet for lunch once a month. They all used to work in the same mall years ago and have stayed friends through this monthly lunch. They call themselves 'The Old Crows" and give each other crow-themed gifts. So those three pillows with the red tags are for the other 'Old Crows' and the fourth is for Mom.

Thankfully, the crows went together easily, though Kristy did warn me that the feet are 'fiddly.' No kidding! There are 11 tiny pieces in just one section to make one foot! Crazy, but so worth it. Thanks, Kristy, for another great pattern.

Now I can't wait for Mom's next Crow's Day so she can deliver the other three pillows to their owners.

This is my last finish for the last quarter of the Finish-a-Long for 2013. You can find my list here. There are two projects on the list that are not finished, but I added them to the list fully expecting not to actually finish them, but hoping I could get to them. Oh well, the link-up for the first quarter of the Finish-a-Long for 2014 will open soon. Those projects will be on the list again, and with higher priority this time!

I'll share about the other gifts I made, including my very first dresden plate, as soon as I can arrange to take some pictures.

Jude's Doxology

Devotion for the Week...

Can you believe this is the last Monday of 2013? I know we say it all the time, but the older I get the faster the years seem to go by. I said that to my dad a few months ago and he told me his father used to say the same thing, and now Dad understands it a little better each year.

I read the book of Jude a few weeks ago and I thought the Doxology at the end seemed like a fitting way to end off my devotions for the year. This is how Jude ended his brief letter:

"To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy - to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen" (Jude 24, 25).

There is so much in these two verses!

To him who is able to keep you from falling - What a wonderful promise this is. When we rely on God's power rather than our own, when we focus on His plan for us rather than what we think is best, then He is able to keep us from falling into sin. It is when we rely only on ourselves that we have no power to resist the temptation to sin.

...and to present you before his glorious presence without fault - I don't know about you, but I am far from without fault! Though I try to be a good person, the inescapable truth is that even the best people still do wrong. We cannot do differently. It is human nature. Only through faith in Jesus as our Savior can we be presented before a holy and glorious God as people without fault.

...and with great joy - Can you even begin to imagine the joy that will be ours when we stand before God? I doubt our wildest imaginings even come close. What amazes me is that God will also feel joy when we stand before Him.

...to the only God our Savior - The Creator of all life, Creator of the entire universe, God Himself provided the way for our salvation. Knowing that we could never redeem ourselves, Jesus came to be our Savior and that salvation is available to anyone who believes in Him.

...be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord - Though we glorify sports figures and celebrities, though we use the term majesty to refer to royalty or mountains, though leaders the world over exert power and authority over their people, in reality all glory, majesty, power and authority belong solely to God.

...before all ages, now and forevermore! - Through all time, and all eternity, God never changes. All glory, majesty, power and authority have always belonged to Him and always will.

...Amen - Amen simply means 'so be it.'

And so, as 2013 draws to a close, please join me in saying, "To God be the glory!"

Of Course He Cried!

I began taking the Bible seriously thanks to Chuck Swindoll's teaching on Insight for Living. One of the biggest things that changed my thinking was Chuck's habit of saying, "I wonder what he was thinking when that happened." Or, "I wonder how he felt at that moment." It made me realize Bible people were real people. They aren't just made up characters in an old book - they really lived and did the things recorded in that old book. Their thoughts and feelings didn't always get recorded, but they still had the thoughts and feelings.

Imagining how I would feel in certain situations helps me relate to the Bible stories. Relating to what I read helps keep me from just reading it in an offhand manner. Instead I enter into it, think about it and try to learn from it.

Here is the NIV translation of Luke's account of the birth of Jesus.

"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 their 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 guest room available for them" ( Luke 2:1-7).

There's not a lot of thoughts or feelings recorded there. On top of that, I think some of our Christmas carols have done us a disservice when it comes to relating to the Christmas story. Don't get me wrong, Christmas carols are beautiful, but I think some of them are a little off the mark.

Take 'Silent Night' for instance. I doubt Bethlehem was all that silent that night. The town was so full of visitors there were no rooms available anywhere. Just imagine all the noise and confusion that would come from having that many people uprooted and forced to travel. Remember, these people were not on vacation because they wanted to get away from it all. They were told they had to go, like it or not. I would imagine more than a few of them didn't like it much at all.

And just imagine how many donkeys were being housed in the stable Mary and Joseph were offered for the night. Imagine all the sounds - and smells - that would accompany those donkeys. Kind of goes against all the pretty Christmas scenes, doesn't it? And yet, doesn't it also feel more real, more understandable? Our world is not perfect. There are messes all around us, both literal and figurative. But Jesus willingly came into our messy world and He can help us deal with whatever mess we make of our lives.

When Aiden was a baby, Paul asked me one day, "Do you think Mary ever said, 'Jesus, would you please just go to sleep?'" It really made me stop and think. Jesus was sinless, fully God, but He was also a human baby. Babies have trouble falling asleep. They cry. There's nothing sinful in that. It's a baby's only way of communicating.

I find I can't relate to, or even really believe in, a baby who doesn't cry, as 'Away in a Manger' says of Jesus. Of course He cried! How else did Mary know when He was hungry or cold or scared? Jesus did baby things, like crying, teething, falling down and learning to walk, even though it isn't recorded in the Bible.

Over the next few weeks, try imagining your way into the Christmas story. Set aside the sterile, silent version and really think about the events, the circumstances and the people.

Think about a God willing to step into our messy world, our messy lives, and become a helpless baby dependent on a human mother.

A real baby. A real mother.

And a real God.