Advent
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moreThe Grateful Christmas Project: 7 Ways to have more Grateful Kids this Christmas
On Monday, December 03 rd, 2012I‘m thinking it’s almost a dozen years now, nothing under the Christmas tree here. Strange, the way children teach men. The whole crazy, unexpected thing, it started at bedtime one year, I do remember that. Smoothing back hair, kissing foreheads. I had gifts to wrap. So, I pulled up the blankets. Prayers. And then, when I’m at the door, one h...
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moreWhen You’re Looking for a Christmas Miracle {Pt. 1}
On Friday, November 30 th, 2012They say that the most glorious mess is the foot of the tree on Christmas Day. But there are frank people who will just straight out tell you that the whole thing can be a bit of a mess. The kids’ uncle lies in a hospital bed waiting for a surgeon to cut into his chest wall and slice a tumor out of th...
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moreFree Family Advent Christmas Devotional with Jesse Tree Ornaments
On Thursday, November 29 th, 2012When we haul a tree in the front door and untangle the lights on the darkest days of the year and look hard, keeping looking hard, for the star for the very top — I think I know what I want for Christmas. I don’t want a Christmas that you can buy. I don’t want a Christmas...
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morewhy you can have the most hope the day after Christmas
On Monday, December 26 th, 2011I 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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moreWhat He Really Wants You to Remember this Christmas
On Friday, December 23 rd, 2011She 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. A story carried back from Ecuador…. To Read: What He Really Wan...
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more10 Ways To Celebrate Christmas Morning {regardless of what’s under the tree}
On Thursday, December 22 nd, 2011Ten Things to Do on Christmas Morning ...
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morewhen your Christmas stretches you …
On Wednesday, December 21 st, 2011A ll day long, I pray to be a womb for God. On the way to town in the morning, I whisper it to Father, “Come dwell in me, Lord. Come dwell in me.” When we come home from errands and appointments, to crusty bowls still on the table and the entrails of scarves and mittens and boots flung everywhere, I remember. And I pray it in earnest, as I pick up, put away, the wor...
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moreWhy You Need to Go Look at the Stars Tonight {and become One of the Wise Men}
On Tuesday, December 20 th, 2011It’s after midnight. And 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 out the passenger window. The bowl of milky moon’s spilling over snow sleeping fields. “You could drive the whole way home without the lights on.R...
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more3 Gifts You Really Need to Open Right Now: Love Comes Down {video}
On Monday, December 19 th, 2011Come to the manger… and find the Cross in Christmas. Will you open your present early this year? Our gift to you… Scroll to double bar PAUSE symbol, located above the date, and pause the background music. Then, click PLAY button on the video & begin to open your gifts! If you can’t view the video, click here… Share video with friends Come. Come to...
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moreWhat the Real Beauty of Advent is all About…
On Friday, December 16 th, 2011‘Advent, it becomes a time of self-examination. “Put the desires of your heart in order, O human beings!” as the old song sings…. God wants us to always be w...
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moreThe One Thing Your Christmas Can’t Afford to Be Without
On Thursday, December 15 th, 2011I walk out of a Christian women’s conference in mid-December and step oblivious right over a cross. I’m a woman rock hard and blind. A woman who forgets her own face, oblivious to the appalling miracle of rain that becomes wheat, bread in the mouth that becomes grace in the veins. Of God taking my place when my sins are that I keep taking His, and honestly, I would have jus...
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moreHow in the World to get Ready for Christmas?
On Wednesday, December 14 th, 2011It’s on the day I forget to buy toilet cleaner in town. The day the man at the gas pumps says it’s just around the corner, what they’re forecasting will be a green Christmas and he looks up and asks, “So… are you ready yet for Christmas?” And I choose to smile instead of hyperventilate, to keep breathing and believing, and that’s the da...
