I am so excited about christmas this year! Our boys are such fun ages to really get into traditions, baking cookies, and making ornaments. My current project to do soon….is to bead colorful noodles on string with Caleb for our christmas tree. Don’t you remember doing that???
I know there is so much hype around christmas with the shopping and buying. I fall victim to that OFTEN and want to prayerfully go about this season in a different manner. I want to make memories and traditions instead of stressing about what to buy and how much money everything costs. An awesome friend (ahem…Maddie) told me about a tradition she does with her family every year.
They make each other a present! We are doing that with Matt’s family this year…and I am SO excited about it! What an awesome illustration of love to devote time to something for someone you love. I have been rereading the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan. This book rocked my world a year ago…and I am praying it does the same this time around! I will tell you this…I read a page a few days a go and I still can’t shake it from my head. Here is a snip-it from it…
Did you know that a caterpillar has 228 separate and distinct muscles in its head? That’s quite a few, for a bug. The average elm tree has approximately 6 million leaves on it. And your own heart generates enough pressure as it pumps blood throughout your body that it could skirt blood up to 30 feet. Have you ever thought about how diverse and creative God is? He didn’t have to make hundreds of different kinds of bananas, but he did. He didn’t have to put 3,000 different species of trees within one square mile in the Amazon jungle, but he did. God didn’t have to create so many kinds of laughter. Think about the different sounds of your freinds’ laughs-wheezes, snorts, silent, loud obnoxious. How about the way plants defy gravity by drawing water upward from the ground into their stems and veins? Or did you know that spiders produce three kinds of silk? When they build their webs, they create sixty feet of silk in one hour, simultaneously producing special oil on their feet that prevents them from sticking to their own web…
I could keep typing, but I will stop there so you have to get the book and continue reading! 🙂 My point in this long message is that we serve an awesome, creative God. The creativeness he spent on all creation is mind blowing-yet he calls us, humans, his masterpiece (Eph. 2:10). What a crazy love he has for us!
It is my prayer that I will be able to love others with that crazy love….friends that I have known forever or am really close to and fallen into crazy ruts of no longer investing and pursuing the relationship, neighbors that I love…and also those neighbors that are hard to talk to and let in, strangers that I meet while out with my family, my boys-that I can be patient and intentional with them throughout the day, my husband whom I adore, and my extended family…even when its breaking and you might not agree with everyone’s actions, words, or ways…
God loves us with a crazy love. Let’s love others the same way!
oh I love this post my sweet friend – and I miss you so much!! 🙂