The Sylvr Pen

Today’s the day: that infamous one we now call “Black Friday.” What are all those people doing out there, standing in line at 4 A. M., fighting traffic and mobs at stores? “Getting ready for Christmas”! Greens and lights and overinflated reindeer and suchlike are starting to decorate houses and lawns, for the same reason.

But how ready for a meaningful Christmas does all that really make us? I find that kind of busy stuff tends to do the opposite to me. I get fixated on the trappings and miss a full embracing of the Day’s core meaning.

I want really to get ready for Christmas this year: to sow the kind of thought seeds in my mind and heart that will bring forth an abundance of wonder, gratitude, and rejoicing in the core meaning of that Day.  I’m planning on posting one such thought each day on this blog, so it might help anyone else reading it to get ready that way, too. May a Christmas full of wonder “bless us all, everyone,” as a result!

Just after publishing Wednesday’s post, I sat thinking how the reason I couldn’t help telling people about that rainbow and urging them to take a look at it was the big awe I experienced, looking at it myself. Then I realized that if we Western believers really got close enough to God to see Him for what He is, we’d be so awed that, likewise, we wouldn’t be able to help telling people about Him, the same way.

So I saw the key to sharing what we know about God, about Christ, not as trying to make ourselves do what we “ought to” do, but drawing close enough to God to get bowled over by His awesome holiness, beauty, power, omniscience, mercy, etc, etc. We wouldn’t have to try to do better at sharing–it would spring from us spontaneously.

We get so sidetracked by the distractions, worries, and busy plans of life, we don’t give ourselves that opportunity…

So let’s make an effort to draw close to the Christ of Christmas this year as we move through the Advent season and not let those distractions rob us as they usually do.

(My part: I plan to post a Christ Thought, arising from scripture, each day until Christmas, starting tomorrow, to point my heart’s focus in His direction. Check back daily and see if it helps you do the same.)

Out chugging along on errands yesterday, I got wowed! Intersecting with a mix of sunlight and steady rain, I came upon the most intense and long-lasting rainbow I think I’ve ever seen. Driving first toward, then alongside it for minute after minute, I kept ooing and ahing and thanking God for this marvel, all the way from the grocery to the rural butcher shop. “Don’t fade! Don’t fade!” I wished, and, yes, the jewel-like colors kept glowing even as I exited my parked car and entered the shop. “Did you see the rainbow?” I had to ask the lady behind the counter, and then (because she hadn’t) I declared she ought to come around that counter and take a look.

So she indulged the customer, thinking who-knows-what about this familiar-faced but name-unknown woman who’d come in and spoken so boldly and taken such liberties. She stooped and peered out the large front window, and by the time she straightened up and turned around to get back to her place again, her poker face had mellowed to softness, her eyes had morphed from dull to bright. Now she was smiling.

The wonder in the sky kept hanging out there, iridescent, while I waited for the butcher to bring my reserved turkey. When he tromped from the back at his usual rapid pace, I repeated my question and invitation. He also complied, tromping around the counter in emotional neutral–except for the obvious workday tension that stiffened his muscles–and stooped to sight the bow in the sky. An even more dramatic transformation than the counter clerk’s transpired: He moved to a side door for a fuller view, then stood in the open doorway, exclaiming in subdued tones things like “Amazing!” and “I think that’s the brightest rainbow I’ve ever seen!”

After a full two minutes of soaking in the spectacle, he disappeared into the back room, and by the time I was toting my turkey to my car, he was stepping out another front entrance with an assistant. Both were smiling exuberantly–the assistant half-laughing with pleasure–and gazing at the sky. Meanwhile, three other people off to the side of the parking lot stood rooted to the gravel, out there in the rain, not making a move to get out of the wet, just watching, watching, the beautiful rainbow.

I left behind me at that shop several people with transformed moods, and mine had soared higher with each person who shared the joy.

What if I’d never bothered to mention the phenomenon? (If I could have kept it to myself!) That face on the clerk would likely have remained as stoic as before, those taut yet tired muscles in the fatigued workers as stiff, their eyes as lack-luster. A little wonder from God and a little person to share it brightened everybody’s day—including the little messenger’s.

This whole experience prodded me to share greater delights. I so wished I’d equipped my car with several Pocket Testaments. I would have handed everybody one right then. It was such an open moment. But since I couldn’t, other alternatives stirred in my mind: I’d like to give them each a little gift of some kind—a bar of the hand-crafted soap, perhaps, that I make with fat from their store. I’d wrap it, and tie it together with a Testament, and add in a reminder of the rainbow.

How like a magnificent rainbow (God’s sign of His grace, Gen 9:11-17) is any wonderful truth from His word! How equally compelling to share it! What an even greater shame not to spread its joy!

A lesson for me in exuberance.

I’m not talking about more flamboyant food. Or more spectacular table decor. Or more expensive dishes or table linens. I’m talking about richer thanksgiving!

Last November the little Bible study group that met in my home did a Thanksgiving-enhancing activity that really blessed me. I’m sharing it here so that this year it can bless you, too.

Each of us got a little mini-booklet like the one in the photo. And here was the plan: each day in November, on one of its 2 1/2 by 5 1/2 inch pages we would write thanks to God for just one thing, event, situation, or abstract blessing. It could be a blessing of the day, or a remembered blessing of the preceding year.

Even though I forgot on two different days, and just left blank pages, my naming of things for which I was thankful all the other days led up to a grand culmination for me on the holiday itself. It helped Thanksgiving Day live up to its name–and be fuller, richer, more joyful.

So you might want to make up such a little booklet, or just use your daytimer or some little notebook as your thanks-recording spot. It’s a good activity in which to include children, grandchildren, nieces, or nephews, too. And if several of the people who gather together for your celebration do the same thing, you just might enjoy the richest sharing of any Thanksgiving Day yet.

So, here’s wishing you in advance… a very Happy  Thanksgiving!

It’s no ordinary day when I can comfortably sit on the front porch at 9 AM doing desk work this late in October, here in the north.

The sun is shining, but not hitting much of me as I station myself at the round picnic table. A slightly overgrown rhododendron, a porch post, and the tabletop itself, block the sunlight, but I’m still pleasantly warm.

“Unordinary” is guaranteed when Emil and Katie-Kat show up meowing. They leap onto the table (verboten!) and even my keyboard (even more verboten!) to get attention, then romp about, soon captivated by the dangling knobs on the ends of the bamboo shades’ pull-cords. Katie jumps up and clings to the body of a shade to reach one of the pulls. Silly as I am, I get up and readjust cord lengths so she can play without destroying shades. (My husband calls me an “enabler.”) Dangling and swinging, another pair of knobs rivets Emil’s attention. In strike-and-destroy mode, he bats at them like punching bags, klonking and banging wooden knobs against wooden window frame. Clank! Clunk! Klonkety-clunk! Now Katie perches on the porch rail and stalks a rhododendron leaf, grabs it with paws, then tears at it with teeth.

“No, no! Don’t eat that! Rhododendrons are poisonous!”

True, if I hadn’t come out here, there’d be no one to warn and scold them, so why don’t I just ignore them, leave them to themselves?

With all the running, leaping, thumping, and clanking? Not easy!

This isn’t getting much work done, is it?

Or is it? Isn’t jotting all this down “writing work”—especially if I post it on my blog?

What deep meaning can I make of it, what parable? None, I admit. But it does show how little can make a day unordinary—at least around “the funny farm,” and, I suspect, anywhere else, if one just stays alert to opportunity.