I lose track of my phone more often these days. I check my email less frequently. I scroll social media less often and more quickly, scanning for birthdays and baby pictures. I don’t have dementia (at least I don’t think so!) I have grandchildren! It’s so much easier to put a pause on my devices and spend quality face time reading real books and playing peekaboo. I can’t get enough of them and they seem to sprout up overnight, even when I’m seeing them two days in a row. I’m so thankful to get to be part of their lives. They bring me so much joy!
This will be our granddaughter’s first Christmas and our grandson’s second. Christmas last year was such a rush that we’re being more deliberate in our planning for this year. Lord-willing, we will gather on Christmas Eve morning for cookie baking, finger painting, memory making fun as we celebrate Jesus’s birthday. I’ll try to take lots of pictures so the mommas and the daddies can remember because I know they won’t otherwise.
There are almost three decades of life with my own children stored in the recesses of my brain to which I’ve lost access. Again, it’s not dementia! I thought I would recall the important details of their childhood with clarity all my life, but like my current cell phone, my brain doesn’t have enough working memory and keeps archiving things I want to hold onto just a little longer. So now I make videos and take pictures and pay Google to store them for me so we can all enjoy them for years to come.
Why? They bring me joy and they remind me that I am so blessed. I have much to be thankful for this Christmas and every minute of every day. When I am bone tired and struggling to sleep, I am still blessed. When I feel the aches and pains that remind me of my age, I am blessed. When I wash the dishes and laundry, or change another dirty diaper, I am still blessed. And when that sweet baby has trouble resting whether it’s colic or nosiness, I am extra blessed to be able to hold either of them in my arms just a little while longer.
I have everything I’ve ever wanted. I am a wife, mother, and now grandmother. I have loved being a homemaker since my children were born. I have a beautiful home and a car with car seats for both grand babies and room for their mommas. I have the love and respect of extended family and friends, and a dear church family to boot. Above all else, I am a child of God. What more could I want? Peace on earth, joy to the world, and a silent night? (My daughters would probably pick the silent night hands down!)
Since it’s Christmas, you’ve undoubtedly been asked what you’re getting or what you’d like to receive. I always struggle with this question. I truly do not need a thing. My husband tells me I can talk myself out of wanting something for myself and he’s right. When it comes down to it, we all need air, water, food, and shelter, right? This is elementary stuff. Still it’s difficult to answer this question- what do you want or need- on the spot. Sometimes a deep desire is staring you right in the face but most often it’s not quite so obvious.
“As Jesus approached Jericho, a blind beggar was sitting beside the road.”
You know the story.
“When he heard the noise of a crowd going past, he asked what was happening.
They told him that Jesus the Nazarene was going by.
So he began shouting, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
“Be quiet!” the people in front yelled at him.
But he only shouted louder, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”
When Jesus heard him, he stopped and ordered that the man be brought to him.
As the man came near, Jesus asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?”
“Lord,” he said, “I want to see!”
And Jesus said, “All right, receive your sight! Your faith has healed you.”
Instantly the man could see, and he followed Jesus, praising God. And all who saw it praised God, too.”
Luke 18:35-43 NLT
https://bible.com/bible/116/luk.18.41.NLT
“Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was the pool of Bethesda, with five covered porches.
Crowds of sick people—blind, lame, or paralyzed—lay on the porches.
One of the men lying there had been sick for thirty-eight years.
When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, he asked him, “Would you like to get well?”
“I can’t, sir,” the sick man said, “for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me.”
Jesus told him, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk!”
Instantly, the man was healed!
He rolled up his sleeping mat and began walking!”
John 5:2-3, 5-9 NLT
https://bible.com/bible/116/jhn.5.2-9.NLT
The need was obvious, right? But then there was “a woman in the crowd who had suffered for twelve years with constant bleeding.
She had suffered a great deal from many doctors, and over the years she had spent everything she had to pay them, but she had gotten no better.
In fact, she had gotten worse.
She had heard about Jesus, so she came up behind him through the crowd and touched his robe.
For she thought to herself, “If I can just touch his robe, I will be healed.”
Immediately the bleeding stopped, and she could feel in her body that she had been healed of her terrible condition.
Jesus realized at once that healing power had gone out from him, so he turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my robe?”
His disciples said to him, “Look at this crowd pressing around you. How can you ask, ‘Who touched me?’”
But he kept on looking around to see who had done it.
Then the frightened woman, trembling at the realization of what had happened to her, came and fell to her knees in front of him and told him what she had done.
And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Your suffering is over.””
Mark 5:25-34 NLT
https://bible.com/bible/116/mrk.5.25-32.NLT
Sometimes Jesus entirely bypassed the obvious, going right to the heart of the matter, as with the woman caught in adultery.
“As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery.
They put her in front of the crowd.
“Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?”
They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger.
They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!”
Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust.
When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman.
Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”
“No, Lord,” she said.
And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”
John 8:3-11 NLT
https://bible.com/bible/116/jhn.8.3-11.NLT
Asking for something is not wrong but my motives can be, and the same is true for not asking. The same pride that prompts my request for something extravagant for myself one day might also be the driving force behind my self-reliance the next. Only God can know my thoughts and the condition of my heart.
“You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it.
You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them.
Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it.
And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.
Do you think the Scriptures have no meaning?
They say that God is passionate that the spirit he has placed within us should be faithful to him.
And he gives grace generously.
As the Scriptures say, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.””
James 4:2-3, 5-6 NLT
https://bible.com/bible/116/jas.4.2-6.NLT
In Christ, God has already provided the one thing we all need most- salvation. Jesus’s final words from the cross are the first words of our faith. It is finished. (John 19:30)
“God saved you by his grace when you believed.
And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God.
Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.”
Ephesians 2:8-9 NLT
https://bible.com/bible/116/eph.2.8-9.NLT
Our generous God is also a jealous God. James, half brother to Jesus, who called himself a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, (James 1:1) wrote “God is passionate that the spirit he has placed within us should be faithful to him. And he gives grace generously.” God passionately desires that we be faithful to Him, and He gives us everything we need to do just that when we surrender to His Spirit living in us.
““And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for.
Keep on seeking, and you will find.
Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks, receives.
Everyone who seeks, finds.
And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.””
Luke 11:9-10, 13 NLT
https://bible.com/bible/116/luk.11.13.NLT
Still searching for the perfect gift?
“You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.”
Jeremiah 29:13 NASB1995
https://bible.com/bible/100/jer.29.13.NASB1995
Living for Jesus a life that is true
Striving to please Him in all that I do
Yielding allegiance glad-hearted and free
This is the pathway of blessing for me
Oh Jesus Lord and Savior
I give myself to Thee
-Thomas O. Chisholm, 1917.
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