The Sylvr Pen

It was my favorite Christmas decoration.

But we don’t use it anymore.

It decayed and fell apart, disintegrated, at least the one main part.

The other part hangs high and permanent now on the weathered barn.

Husband pours spotlight on it in this season, but not everyone who sees it connects it mentally with Christmas. It speaks more, they’d say, of Good Friday, of Easter.

But thinking that far ahead is okay, methinks, and maybe more than okay. Historically, Christmas wasn’t the big deal it is now (I’ve just learned), but more a first step annually leading toward acknowledgement of the Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension, come spring.

The real big deal, the main show, the stellar season of the year came at “Eastertide,” holding high our hope, our future, our life eternal. Christmas at most celebrated the miraculous incarnation that brought the needed Lord and Savior down into our ruin-wracked world — that He might later offer the saving sacrifice, of Himself.

Jesus’ death and resurrection could not have happened had He never been born in the flesh. Yet His birth alone, without the dying and rising and ascending would still leave us utterly hopeless.

So first in focus this Advent season, let it be for me the cross.

And tomorrow I’ll tell the other half of my favorite decoration we no longer use, and all the astounding meaning wrapped up in this humble thing.

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“While all acts of generosity are divine, perhaps it is the small touch, the personal touch, that elevates the season’s pleasures high above the realm of obligation.” –Arlene Hamilton Stewart, A Woman’s Christmas

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“As we cease from self, and our soul becomes still to God, God will arise and show Himself… Then you shall ‘know that I am God.’

“There is no stillness like the stillness Jesus gives when He speaks, ‘Peace, be still.’ In Christ, in His death, and in His life, in His perfected redemption, the soul may be still, and God will come in, and take possession, and do His perfect work.” – Andrew Murray, Waiting on God

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Two aims I have, this first day of this last month, for each day’s pilgrimage on toward Christ’s Day:

~one small touch, that points to beauty, serenity, glory of God.

~one small piece of time aside, to quiet and think on the Christ’s arriving, a moment reserved apart, for my soul to die again to self, to “wait in silence,” to “wait only upon God.”

 “My soul, be thou still only unto God!”

~~~

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After a weekend of exuberant activity, like that just past, I like to have a come-down day, a settle-the-soul day, a day of quietly following the whispers of whims (only gentle ones, nothing overambitious), if I can.

And yes, yes, I count myself blessed, because I can do that this morning.

After the husband-ground-and-brewed coffee, after the slow movement of waking, shaking out the aching, in limbs and back, from extra sleep (ah! luxury!), how good to sit against propped plump pillows on the neat-made bed, with no pressing agenda, no fist full of lists, no notebook or journal (but this), not even a Bible yet. Just to sit and settle and let gratitude flow as leisurely as it will.

Such a wellful of it lies rich and dense and flavorful and strong in my heart this morning, too loaded to stream forth and fade like one quick vaporous cloud.

Even to recite a list seems inappropriate today.

Just sitting silent this morning, silent and smiling, soul saturated with His beneficence.

May your blessings also have moments for quiet percolation and savory slow flow, someplace in this day…

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I’ve been making lists of late: things not to forget.

• Ingredients from the supermarket.
• Things to gather for the table centerpiece.
• Little five-minute cleanup jobs to do all over the house — a list that seems to grow instead of shrink!
• Advance food preparation tasks to keep the Day itself from labor overload.

And I’ve been checking them off, checking them off.

• The bread is crumbled for the stuffing and stashed in the freezer,
• the pie dough mixed.
• The rooms are altered, furniture moved, nearly ready for their occupants.

Today I’ll even pick out all the serving dishes and label what will go in each, line them up in the off-to-the-side counter furthest from action central (and listen to Husband laugh).

Others are preparing for travel. Making lists. Of countless baby necessities, folding gadgets, diapers, special foods, things to keep kids occupied during the trip and after, all the clothes everyone will need for however the weather might turn…

But there’s one thing we might all forget if we don’t put it at the top of the list.

Thanks. giving.

The best way to prepare for Thanksgiving Day is to start giving thanks before that.

As I’m scrubbing under the kitchen sink, am I thanking God?

• (for the sink, 
• for the water and the soap or whatever I’m using, 
• for the ability to get down on my knees and do the work and get back up afterwards?)

As I do the needed laundry, am I thanking God…

• that I have some kind of machine to use instead of a washboard? 
• for the clothes or towels or whatever is sloshing? 
• for the nifty laundry chute Husband installed, 
• and the big roll-out bin beneath it? 
• for enough bedding to put on beds, and blankets enough to keep everyone warm? 
• for the electric (or whatever) power to make the noisy contraption go?

As I’m preparing the rooms, am I expressing gratitude…

• for each and every individual that’s coming? 
• for the blessings God’s done in each life this year? 
• that they can even get here, what with gas shortages, gas prices, and other hindrances?

When irritations rise because of things I loathe to do, am I thanking God

• for the practice in patience or perseverance, 
• for the challenges large and small, 
• for the sense of my inadequacies and constant need for Him, 
• for the reality of His presence…?

And on and on…?

I could make an enormous checklist, couldn’t I? We all could. It could also include hard thanks giving…

• for the less than pleasant people “in my way,” 
• for the door that sticks or squeals, 
• for the phone that doesn’t work quite perfectly…

Husband just heard that many are saying there’s not much to give thanks for this year, but on the program where he heard it, one man remembered his parents during the Great Depression, how they exhibited such gratitude for so many little things we’d just measure and find lacking.

“If you want to change your attitude” (about the day, the gathering, the troublesome travel, the aches and pains, the illness, the financial trials, the inability to make the trip to see the family and the needed solitude this may provide), “start with gratitude.”

Everything else does start falling into more pleasant places as we do that, and then we’re ready, heart and spirit—even if the feast is a hot dog on a roll, or a bowl of vegetables—for a great Thanksgiving Day!

And don’t forget Whom to Thank!

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Praising God this morning, BECAUSE (from Psalm 84)…

• 557 – His “tabernacle” is lovely
• 558 – Because He is the Lord of Hosts
• 559 – Because He is the living God
• 560 – Because He gives a home in His tabernacle, in Himself, where even the sparrow and the swallow can find shelter for themselves and their young
• 561 – Because blessed are all those who “dwell in His house, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage”
• 562 – Because as they pass through the Vale of Tears (Valley of Baca) they make it a spring
• 563 – Because they go from strength to strength, till every one appears before God in Zion
• 564 – Because a day in His courts is better than a thousand anywhere else
• 565 – Because it’s better to be a doorkeeper in  His house than to dwell in luxurious tents of wickedness
• 566 – Because He is a sun for His children
• 567 – Because He is a shield
• 568 – Because He gives grace
• 569 – Because He gives glory
• 570 – Because no good thing will He withhold from them who walk uprightly
• 571 – Because blessed is everyone who trusts in Him

May your Thanksgiving be richly blessed, with things beyond what eye can see and hand can touch, with things that only the soul born of God can know!

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Something’s troubling me this morning. It comes up as I read scripture verses. Certain people come to mind, an issue rolls around and around, a puzzlement, uncertainty. I surrender the trouble to God, repeatedly, at least I try to, but it keeps springing up again like bobbing apple pushed underwater.

I ask the Lord for wisdom, and trust that He will give it, trust even that He brought the issue to my mind that I might seek the counsel He has ready somewhere waiting for me. But no immediate insights flash into my mind to illuminate my thinking.

I thank Him for things I like, then think to thank Him for what I don’t like (Eph 5:20), and more real surrender happens.

And then I open up a journal to read a devo clipped from Spurgeon’s writings, titled  with that familiar scripture instruction, “Wait on the Lord” (Ps 27:14).

And there I find my rest within which to walk and work today. Maybe you, dear reader, could benefit, too. So today a “Guest Post” from C. H. Spurgeon. May God bless it to your heart as He has to mine.

“Wait on the Lord.”—Psalm 27:14.

IT may seem an easy thing to wait, but it is [something] a Christian soldier doesn’t learn without years of teaching. Marching and quick-marching are much easier to God’s warriors than standing still.

There are hours of perplexity when the most willing spirit, anxiously desirous to serve the Lord, knows not what part to take. Then what shall it do? Vex itself by despair? Fly back in cowardice, turn to the right hand in fear, or rush forward in presumption? No, but simply wait.

Wait in prayer, however. Call upon God, and spread the case before Him; tell Him your difficulty, and plead His promise of aid. In dilemmas between one duty and another, it is sweet to be humble as a child, and wait with simplicity of soul upon the Lord. It is sure to be well with us when we feel and know our own folly, and are heartily willing to be guided by the will of God.

But wait in faith. Express your unstaggering confidence in Him; for unfaithful, untrusting waiting, is but an insult to the Lord. Believe that if He keep you tarrying even till midnight, yet He will come at the right time; the vision shall come and shall not tarry.

Wait in quiet patience, not rebelling because you are under the affliction, but blessing your God for it.

Never murmur against the second cause, as the children of Israel did against Moses; … accept the case as it is, and put it as it stands, simply and with your whole heart, without any self-will, into the hand of your covenant God, saying, “Now, Lord, not my will, but Thine be done. I know not what to do; I am brought to extremities, but I will wait until Thou cleave the floods, or drive back my foes. I will wait, if Thou keep me many a day, for my heart is fixed upon Thee alone, O God, and my spirit waiteth for Thee in the full conviction that Thou wilt yet be my joy and my salvation, my refuge and my strong tower.”

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