By Barbara Rainey
First posted on EverThineHome.com
Stop for a minute.
Yes, Christmas Day is now over, but don’t hurry to box up the ornaments and purge the regalia from your home!
Recently on December 26 a national morning show featured an “expert” happily talking about packing away decorations and properly disposing of your Christmas tree. “It’s time to move on” was the message.
But I want to suggest a different message.
Before you move on from Christmas, take time to savor the hope and joy of the message, to savor the meaning of this miraculous moment.
The word savor is often associated with a fine meal and it means letting food linger on your palate so you can fully enjoy the flavors. Meditate might be an appropriate synonym for savor in the spiritual realm. Another synonym is ponder.
In liturgical churches such as Anglican, Episcopalian, Catholic and some more traditional Protestant churches, Christmas is celebrated for 12 days from December 25 through January 6. Sadly, by then most of us are weary of the perpetual commercial messages promoting shallow cheer because we’ve been inundated with seasonal merchandise and music since before Thanksgiving.
The real message and truth of this annual season is worthy to be savored. Now that the false Christmas content has ceased, it’s an opportunity for true disciples of Jesus to savor His arrival in our darkened world.
Letting the moments of remembering Christ’s birth linger allows the stupendous meaning of this pivotal event to settle more deeply in our souls.
So I hope you will join me in slowing down this week and allow the true message to linger longer. Keep the Christmas music playing. Allow the lights and the sparkle to remind you for a few more days that the Light of the World has come and most importantly will come again!
And as you take down your decorations here are three ways to savor the arrival of Jesus.
With each ornament you remove from your tree, ask your children to name a gift Jesus has given and say “I’m thankful Jesus gave me …”
Evaluate your décor and find things you can leave up for a while longer. I keep out all my bottle brush trees into January because they are more wintry than they are Christmasy.
Keep twinkle lights up or find new places to use them for the month of January. One of the happiest of all our decorating is the use of Christmas lights which remind us Jesus is the Light of the World. There is no reason to take them down, especially the clear or white ones because again they remind us of Who Jesus is in our dark world.
May you and yours savor the Savior a little longer this season.
If you didn’t have the opportunity to read all my “Newborn Babe” series, last week, these would give you a great opportunity to savor the Christmas message:
“The Newborn Babe Is the Lion of Judah”
“The Newborn Babe is the Savior”
“The Newborn Babe is the Mediator”
“The Newborn Babe is Lord of Lords”
“The Newborn Babe is the Son of David”
My Heart, Ever His: Prayers for Women (NEW from Barbara Rainey)
As we search for meaning in our world of shallow online relationships and glamorized selfies, many are returning to traditional and liturgical churches. The repeated words, benedictions, and historic hymns connect us to saints who have gone before, giving us a sense of belonging, richness, and transcendence. Written prayers, once cast off as archaic, are now welcomed as guides to tune our hearts to the heart of God.
In My Heart, Ever His Barbara Rainey shares 40 prayers for women. Readers can read and meditate on one prayer throughout the week or read a prayer a day for 40 days as a way to express the longing of our hearts to our Father who loves us even as he sees who we truly are. Like the psalms of David, these prayers are honest, sometimes raw. Barbara uses these transparent expressions of common female experiences to encourage us to surrender to Christ and help us see God as he is, not as we assume him to be. My Heart, Ever His provides a stepping-stone to help you become more transparent with God and discover his welcoming embrace.
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