December 2018
Devotion Dec 5, 2018
05/12/18 22:08
Greetings!
Thanksgiving has passed and now it is the Christmas season. The Christmas season just brings with it such a list of things that need to be done. Decorating, planning, buying, wrapping, Christmas Cards, and of course, The Christmas Tree.
I have always enjoyed putting up Christmas Trees and there have been times in my life where I have had multiple Christmas trees and maybe someday when I retire I will do that again - a tree with ‘pretty’ things, a tree with all of those precious ornaments made by my children with things like the jar lid with sequins glued on or a Santa face with a cotton ball beard - and a tree with all of those ornaments I have crocheted over the years…. But that will be some day because now a days I struggle to get one tree decorated!
Thanksgiving came and has gone and now it is time to get the Christmas tree out and put it up and decorate it with the ‘pretty things’ I have - continuing to keep the boxes with all the other ornaments in case the day does come once again when I become a multiple tree decorator….
Up in the attic I went with the sainted husband standing below to catch whatever I might throw at him… first the tree in its big box that is falling apart which should have been my first indication of the condition of the tree itself followed by the box of decorations much more carefully handed down because there are lots of breakable items in that box. And that did it for the tree getting out of the attic step in this tree decorating process!
I went to the mangled tree box and began to take out the tree contained inside which was more of an operation that I recalled it had been in previous tree putting up moments - tells me we must have been in quite the hurry last year when the tree was put back into the box! However, after a definite struggle, the parts were recovered and the tree was assembled. But the poor tree had not weathered the year in its box well because under the newly constructed tree was more on the floor than on the branches - the ‘needles’ that is. Around my feet stood a pile of plastic ‘pine’ that threatened to completely hide the toes on my feet which of course meant the needles were not on the branches and there were bare spots everywhere. The poor tree humiliation continued when the lights were plugged in and maybe 1/8 of them lit up and after about an hour of the sainted husbands effort to try and relight the lights - there was just no hope. So there stood my poor pitiful little tree with bare branches and only a few lit lights….
My first thought was of course - a new tree is in my future and admittedly that is what eventually happened - but I started to feel sorry for this poor tree that had served me so well for so long and there was a part of me that kept thinking - “Surely there is some way I can make this work…” Maybe with enough extra lights put around it and some tinsel and lots of ornaments the flaws of this poor little tree won’t be quite so obvious. But when I swept up the piles of ‘needles’ on the floor and realized that not 10 minutes later the there were just as many if not more of the tree parts on the floor as before I swept I realized that the demise of my poor little tree was inevitable…
And as I carried my old tree out to the porch to decide its fate I remembered we have a God who will never discard us for a ‘new model’ even though we may have only a few of our lights lit and are shedding what we do have and feel like we have outlived our usefulness.
And even if we can’t do ‘what we use to’ we are all valuable in God’s eyes and God has uses for us we may never have even thought of…
Know that you are loved and valued and treasured by God and he doesn’t measure us by the same standards other people may measure us or we may measure ourselves, but he measures us in the love of our Lord Jesus and through Christ, we will always measure up!
Amen!
Thanksgiving has passed and now it is the Christmas season. The Christmas season just brings with it such a list of things that need to be done. Decorating, planning, buying, wrapping, Christmas Cards, and of course, The Christmas Tree.
I have always enjoyed putting up Christmas Trees and there have been times in my life where I have had multiple Christmas trees and maybe someday when I retire I will do that again - a tree with ‘pretty’ things, a tree with all of those precious ornaments made by my children with things like the jar lid with sequins glued on or a Santa face with a cotton ball beard - and a tree with all of those ornaments I have crocheted over the years…. But that will be some day because now a days I struggle to get one tree decorated!
Thanksgiving came and has gone and now it is time to get the Christmas tree out and put it up and decorate it with the ‘pretty things’ I have - continuing to keep the boxes with all the other ornaments in case the day does come once again when I become a multiple tree decorator….
Up in the attic I went with the sainted husband standing below to catch whatever I might throw at him… first the tree in its big box that is falling apart which should have been my first indication of the condition of the tree itself followed by the box of decorations much more carefully handed down because there are lots of breakable items in that box. And that did it for the tree getting out of the attic step in this tree decorating process!
I went to the mangled tree box and began to take out the tree contained inside which was more of an operation that I recalled it had been in previous tree putting up moments - tells me we must have been in quite the hurry last year when the tree was put back into the box! However, after a definite struggle, the parts were recovered and the tree was assembled. But the poor tree had not weathered the year in its box well because under the newly constructed tree was more on the floor than on the branches - the ‘needles’ that is. Around my feet stood a pile of plastic ‘pine’ that threatened to completely hide the toes on my feet which of course meant the needles were not on the branches and there were bare spots everywhere. The poor tree humiliation continued when the lights were plugged in and maybe 1/8 of them lit up and after about an hour of the sainted husbands effort to try and relight the lights - there was just no hope. So there stood my poor pitiful little tree with bare branches and only a few lit lights….
My first thought was of course - a new tree is in my future and admittedly that is what eventually happened - but I started to feel sorry for this poor tree that had served me so well for so long and there was a part of me that kept thinking - “Surely there is some way I can make this work…” Maybe with enough extra lights put around it and some tinsel and lots of ornaments the flaws of this poor little tree won’t be quite so obvious. But when I swept up the piles of ‘needles’ on the floor and realized that not 10 minutes later the there were just as many if not more of the tree parts on the floor as before I swept I realized that the demise of my poor little tree was inevitable…
And as I carried my old tree out to the porch to decide its fate I remembered we have a God who will never discard us for a ‘new model’ even though we may have only a few of our lights lit and are shedding what we do have and feel like we have outlived our usefulness.
And even if we can’t do ‘what we use to’ we are all valuable in God’s eyes and God has uses for us we may never have even thought of…
Know that you are loved and valued and treasured by God and he doesn’t measure us by the same standards other people may measure us or we may measure ourselves, but he measures us in the love of our Lord Jesus and through Christ, we will always measure up!
Amen!