Advent
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moreWhy You Can Have the Most Hope the Day after Christmas
On Wednesday, December 26 th, 2012I milked a sow on Christmas night and her white ran warm. It was after the packages for the neighbors were wrapped up and walked over across the snowy fields. After the baking and the eating and the gathering and the candles and the singing and the Scripture and the praying. After the feast for the coming of our Salvation. After the last of the relatives slipped home in the dar...
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moreThe Best Christmas Gift & the Miracle We Need
On Monday, December 24 th, 2012It’s nearly that time of Eve. And the Farmer, he’s driving down the middle of an empty country road, when he just flicks the headlights right off and the black isn’t black after all. “Look at it!” I whisper it. The bowl of milky moon’s spilling over snow sleeping fields. “You could drive the whole way home without the lights on.”...
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moreHow to Really Hold Jesus This Christmas
On Thursday, December 20 th, 2012The girl, she hands me this two-inch Christmas tree. A Christmas tree made of salt-dough, painted and varnished. She gives it to me right at the beginning, right when we meet. The boughs of the tree in my palm, they are dough, cut and bent — these wee branches extended straight out. How in the world do you make a tree like that? How long does it take t...
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more‘Jesus is the Greatest Gift’ Christmas Gifts for Neighbors: Free Printable
On Wednesday, December 19 th, 2012The kids have Adore Him playing and th...
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moreFirst Up: A Christmas Podcast over at Desiring God
On Wednesday, December 19 th, 2012Because I’m with you, friend, wanting nothing more this year than this: Christmas is not something we wrap up, but a Person whom we unwrap... So! Let’s do Just. That. — you & me both. Three posts today… yes, three because who can contain the comforting joy of Christmas? First up this morning: The grace-filled folks at Desiring God h...
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moreThe Truth about Sandy Hook: Where is God when Bad Things Happen?
On Monday, December 17 th, 2012When the guy with the glasses and guitar stands at the front of the chapel, in the middle of Nowhere Country, and tells us all to stand, I’ve got no idea if I can. I don’t know if legs can hold a heart this heavy. I don’t know if anyone can stand straight in a fallen world and why don’t we all just fall on our skinned and bloodied knees? When grief is deepest, words ar...
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moreWhat to do With a Broken Heart this Christmas
On Friday, December 14 th, 2012That one doctor thought it was a bit of a miracle before they even cracked open the chest and cut a way at his heart. Because who in the world figures out you’ve got a tumor plugging up an entire cavernous heart chamber when you’re blithely driving kids to hockey on Tuesday night and fine-tuning a tractor engine on Thursday and sitting in the front pew on Sunday? Ma...
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morewhen it’s hard to believe in miracles this Christmas
On Wednesday, December 12 th, 2012First, a new note for you right below that Hope doesn’t want you to miss? Second — today is my dearest mama’s birthday. She was born 12 minutes to 12. And today is 12. 12. 12. — the last repetitive date we’ll ever see. So! Slipping quiet away here to celebrate an only-one-day-ever-like-this with my only-one-ever-like-this beautiful mama… and...
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moreWhat Your Christmas Needs to Really be Merry
On Monday, December 10 th, 2012The 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...
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moreThe Best Way to do Christmas Cleaning
On Friday, December 07 th, 2012Why it happened right then, when she turned toward the stack of dishes on the counters, the ...
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moreHow to Slow Down Christmas
On Thursday, December 06 th, 2012Power plays and big takeovers and loud commercials. That’s the way the world turns and Wall Street rolls. But God, when He comes, He shows up in this fetal ball. Just this seed unfurling, impossible power contained in the small. The beginning of December, that is what I set out on the counter: just a bowl of seeds. ...
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moreThe Christmas Miracle He will Not Withhold From You
On Wednesday, December 05 th, 2012I don’t really want to think about what you’d find if you sliced my heart right open. Hope’s at the front of the church singing like an ascension, like a heart could take to heaven – or least to the heights of St John’s Church of the Evangelist. My back’s up against the b...
