Random Thoughts

My brain is on a ramble, jumping from one thought to the next so don't expect this post to have much flow, or maybe even sense!

On Remodeling
Why do we do this to ourselves anyway. It's our turn for Christmas so my husband decided we needed to paint the bath. This made me somewhat crabby, cuz that really means you are down to 1 bathroom for at least a week, if not longer. One shower and 3 people disrupts my routine, and really, I am not a person who does well with disrupted routines. However, I agreed, and then we just went crazy. Now we have painted walls (one a burnt orange color), new floor, new toilet (It can flush a whole bucket of golf balls - amazing), new sink/faucets, new lights. A new tub was not in our budget, otherwise we would have that too. I have vowed to never paint again - what a pain (literally and figuratively). Since my husband did the floor, that led to free time for me to watch . . .

The Lord of the Rings
I really love this movie (I'd love it even if Viggo Mortenson wasn't in it). Although I had to watch in spurts (had to check up on that flooring), I still found plenty to ponder and enjoy. One thought that struck me was about the dwarf. It just popped into my head that the disciple Peter must have been like the dwarf - carried away by passion and fealty (isn't that a good word - one of the meanings is intense fidelity, which means the quality or state of being faithful) to fight for the cause, in this case saving middle earth. Then I was struck by "middle earth", okay if you think of heaven as being above, and hell as being below - hey, we're IN middle earth! I think of Peter's impulse to fight for Jesus and how he cut off the soldier's ear - to me, that's like the dwarf. Then I thought of the dwarf telling Lord Aragorn to "toss him" during the seige, and I thought, isn't that sort of like what being a Christian is about. In a sense when we believe in God, we have to say "toss me" and trust Him to use us where we land. We land in the fray of life, and really we are fighting to show the light that is Him in us, and, isn't it just hard sometimes, which leads to . . .

Christmas
Ahhh, now is the season of Advent, the time to celebrate the real light coming into this dark world. We only have to look a short ways to see that the darkness enroaches all around us. I have this wonderful devotion book for Advent by Calvin Miller: The Christ of Christmas. On day 1 (yesterday), he reminded us that we, like John, have been born to bear witness to that Light. Now is our time to point to Jesus and say "Jesus is the light of the world". I love that Miller reminds us that we cannot coerce people to to accept this truth, he says "God will never hold us accountable for being ineffective in pointing the way, but He will hold us accountable for our cowardly silences." Ouch!

Today, the meditation was on the glory we behold in Christ "the light of grace and truth". He says "Glory is the glistening garment of God--a garment that He is all too eager to throw around us, to welcome us into His everlasting light." He says "grace is the unmerited smile of God. If glory is our dance with God, grace is the ballroom--wide and free . . . not a tiny little dance with thin music and stingy steps . . . it is set to the open steps of elation. Grace saves with celestial music and redeems us, with Christ as our life partner." Then he reminds us that Jesus is truth "the mortar that binds grace and glory together . . . Jesus is never out of love with those for whom he died." What great words to start the day with!!