Monday Morning
I've realized that my favorite time of the week is Monday mornings about 7:30 am.
Now don't throw things or stop reading out of exasperation yet - let me explain.
By 7:30 my family is off to work and school. We have found the homework, and the gloves and shoes, packed the lunches and book bags and the door slams and the house is quiet.
I pour a cup of coffee and sit down. It is the time for thinking, time for planning, time for lists.
On a Monday morning there is a whole week of responsibilities and projects stretching out before me but, there is also a whole week's worth of time. As I make my plans and write my lists I have this sense of hope that by next Sunday night many of these things will have been accomplished. (It's an entirely different feeling than let's say on a Friday afternoon when the list still has half of the things on it!)
Today is the first Sunday of Advent and appropriately the candle was that of Hope. There are only 23 days until Christmas but there are twenty-three days until Christmas. Although the list spills over onto a second and third page, there is time.
It was said in church today that we have been observing the anticipation of the coming Christ child every year for as long as we've lived.
We're singing the same songs, making the same shopping lists, pulling on boots and slogging through shopping centers, untangling lights, hanging the same ornaments, baking the traditional cookies...what is it that will make this season significant? stand out? encompass the mystery and wonder of this most amazing event we've become oh so familiar with?
It is this sense of hope.
That although the story is not new the Author of the story still has the ability to speak to our hearts in a way He has not before.
That although the melodies are familiar perhaps we'll glimpse the glory of which the angels sing.
That although we have planned, purchased, hidden and wrapped every gift under that tree that there still may be a gift for us: a gift of wonder, that would make our hearts as wide eyed as a toddler at Christmas, because we have unwrapped a fresh realization of how great a gift we've received in the Christ of Christmas.
The lists are long.
The calendar has more ink on it this month than any other but there is hope that somewhere in all the familiar, God will come to us.
Now don't throw things or stop reading out of exasperation yet - let me explain.
By 7:30 my family is off to work and school. We have found the homework, and the gloves and shoes, packed the lunches and book bags and the door slams and the house is quiet.
I pour a cup of coffee and sit down. It is the time for thinking, time for planning, time for lists.
On a Monday morning there is a whole week of responsibilities and projects stretching out before me but, there is also a whole week's worth of time. As I make my plans and write my lists I have this sense of hope that by next Sunday night many of these things will have been accomplished. (It's an entirely different feeling than let's say on a Friday afternoon when the list still has half of the things on it!)
Today is the first Sunday of Advent and appropriately the candle was that of Hope. There are only 23 days until Christmas but there are twenty-three days until Christmas. Although the list spills over onto a second and third page, there is time.
It was said in church today that we have been observing the anticipation of the coming Christ child every year for as long as we've lived.
We're singing the same songs, making the same shopping lists, pulling on boots and slogging through shopping centers, untangling lights, hanging the same ornaments, baking the traditional cookies...what is it that will make this season significant? stand out? encompass the mystery and wonder of this most amazing event we've become oh so familiar with?
It is this sense of hope.
That although the story is not new the Author of the story still has the ability to speak to our hearts in a way He has not before.
That although the melodies are familiar perhaps we'll glimpse the glory of which the angels sing.
That although we have planned, purchased, hidden and wrapped every gift under that tree that there still may be a gift for us: a gift of wonder, that would make our hearts as wide eyed as a toddler at Christmas, because we have unwrapped a fresh realization of how great a gift we've received in the Christ of Christmas.
The lists are long.
The calendar has more ink on it this month than any other but there is hope that somewhere in all the familiar, God will come to us.
Comments
Hope you're doing well.