What Your Christmas Needs to Really be Merry
The Practice of the Pause
And on a whirling world,
in the middle of the blur,
you just hold a pause —
at the end of one smeared moment —
and before the next,
holding the moments right to their very end with the full length of all your attention,
these lingering,
weighted
pauses,
heavy with the full weight of His glory,
pauses wedging h o l y w h i t e s p a c e
between letters, notes, minutes,
lest youmissthemeaningandsenseandjoyineverything,
the practice of the pauses
to give repeating thanks to God,
this practice of practical divinity,
that slows
all these spinning days
into
one
unexpected
song.
The Practice of the Pause
to give repeating Thanks to God
is the music of practical divinity.
“Contentment is the … soul of all practical divinity.“
~ Puritan Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment
Have you heard the unexpected song you hear when you pause?
Amazing. Don’t miss this?and the pauses of our days here, the lingering of contented thanks anyway, regardless, more of the One Thousand Gifts:
~ card games in the evening, kids all loud & laughing around the table
~ my mama here, her and I in rocking chairs, laughing with them too
~ Christmas carols over Advent candles
~ hot chocolate and our mugs and him and I in the quiet
~ this perfect Christmas print for all the nations reminding us this Christmas to take His message into all the world
~ finding a thousand ways to cook through a very large pile of butternut squash
~ the way God does impossibly beautiful things, great things out of nothings: this unforgettable story:
~ songs being made — and heard — everywhere…..
~ making space for pauses this Advent, pauses of thanks, again, again.
~ repeat the sounding joy…
and found here: our special mugs and Peace on Earth Print
Join us? And happily change everything by keeping your own crazy list of One Thousand Gifts?
Please, jump in, make your life about giving thanks to God! — Just add the direct URL to your specific 1000 gift list post… and if you join us, we humbly ask that you please help us find each other in our refrain of thanks by sharing the community’s graphic within your post.
