Many Christians have been greatly helped by Dave Ramsey and his teaching on how to get out of debt, and I’m very grateful for the impact he has had. However, sometimes sincere Christian people can turn the weirdest things into a new super-law, and I’ve seen this come from an over-application of his principles. For example, somewhere he says that Christmas is not an emergency. Come on! Are you kidding me? Of course it is!
This is what I mean. In a zeal to get out of debt, to get the emergency fund set up, and to get the savings account up to the equivalent of several months’ salary, some folks have ceased to see what money is for. It really can start controlling their lives, this program of not spending. Sometimes they end up short-changing their kids (or themselves) and adopt a poverty-stricken persona, and constantly refer to the fact that they have no money. But the truth is, they do have money, but they are shoveling most of it into the debt payback and the savings account. They elevate thrift-shopping and driving a beater car into a virtue, right up there Continue reading ‘Christmas is an Emergency’
Just thought I would be helpful and give you all a heads up that Advent will arrive in November this year. Otherwise, since Christmas is on a Saturday, we would only have three Sundays before Christmas, and as you know, the Advent wreath has four candles to be lit, one for each week of Advent, with the Christmas candle lit on Christmas Day.
And if you want to give out your Advent gifts to the kids, you’ll definitely need four weeks to do that! So my grandkids will be getting their Christmas jammies on Saturday, November 27….right after Thanksgiving! Believe it or not, I found fifteen pairs of cute Christmas jammers. (No, they don’t all match….too many variables!)
I was feeling a little smug about doing some Christmas shopping early this year, and I bought the three Femina girls some adorable snow boots, had them wrapped and stashed in the forbidden Christmas closet. But then, trouble struck. Actually, it turned out all for good. But Rachel was chatting with me in the kitchen and mentioned that she had just ordered herself the cutest pair of snow boots….so I sneered at her a little and asked what kind they were. Sorel. Oh great. What do they look like? Yep. She ordered herself the same pair (in a different color). What could I do but tell her the truth! Then Heather announced that she needed boots, so maybe she could buy the extra pair. Well, that’s all I needed. So I went downstairs and got the girls their Christmas gifts! Now they all have a new pair of snow boots in time for the first snow. Here’s a pic of them modeling those early Christmas boots! Pretty cute, huh?
You know, I have no idea how or when it happened, but at some point in the last few years I crested out of the “herd of very tiny kids” phase. I was very definitely in it for years – and as I look at Liz right now, I very clearly and vividly remember being in the thick of that phase. But somehow I’m not in it anymore. The moments of coming up the stairs to find the entire second floor under a heavy dusting of baby powder, or coming downstairs to find the sofa slicked down with hand lotion and cinnamon have drifted into the past. In fact, at this very moment I have told the kids they need to pick up – and, wonder of wonders, they’re actually doing it!
Seven years ago, almost to this very day, I was enormously pregnant with baby number four. And I had a one-year old, a two-year old, and a four-year old (each with more than his or her legal share of ingenuity) who spent all their free moments teaming up and egging each other on to commit evil deeds.
On one particular Friday in late December we had a Christmas party to attend, and Ben was giving finals until about 6:30. So I got the three kids all decked out in their new Christmas dresses and ties and so forth, made the hors d’oeuvres to take, and got myself ready to head out as soon as Daddy showed up. No doubt I had had to launch that project at about 1:45 in the afternoon, because I was so hugely Continue reading ‘An Uplifting Memory’
I’m trying to give you a short summary each week from the sermon, a few gleanings that I found particularly satisfying. But this week I was so convicted that I just wanted to come home and go to bed. But instead I had to hear it all again in the second service (being a devoted wife of the minister). But, thankfully, we had a time of confession again in the second service, so I managed to press on and through. Here are the few highlights I have selected for you, and I hope you will be encouraged.
The basic thrust was this: Look out. Look sharp. Christmas is coming, and it is not all about you. The text was Colossians 3:12-17 and the idea that the minister was expressing to us was that we should take a hint from the past seventeen Christmases where we fell on our faces and do a little preparation this year. After all, it will be here on Friday. And, as he put it, there it is on the calendar, leering at you. Continue reading ‘Get Dressed for Christmas’
“The angels knew what was going on even if no one else did. They grasped the bizarre reality of Shakespeare stepping onto the stage, of God making Himself vulnerable, dependent, and human — making Himself Adam. And so, in a more appropriate sense, they arranged a concert and put on what was no doubt the greatest choral performance in planetary history.
Were the kings gathered? Where were the people with the important hats? Where were the ushers, the corporate sponsors?
The Heavenly Host, the souls and angels of stars, descended into our atmosphere and burst in harmonic joy above a field and some rather startled shepherds. Continue reading ‘The Greatest Choral Performance’
With two new babies on the way, we will soon have, Lord willing, fifteen grandchildren: ten girls and five boys. I have thirteen stockings to fill this year (unless a little someone makes an unexpectedly early arrival….then it will be a quick trip to find stocking #14). The 2010 Christmas celebration will involve a full fifteen. Hard to imagine! A few years back I decided that I could not manage to keep filling stockings for the grandkids. Afterall, I reasoned, they were coming so fast that it was just too much to keep up with. And with their parents also giving them stockings, it was really unnecessary. So I was planning to quietly phase them out. But then, out of the blue, Knox asked me one day, “Nana, are you doing stockings for us this year?” So without even pausing for air, I said, “Of course I am, Knox.” And I have never looked back. It is quite delightful. And, yes, lots of the stuff I put in them is entirely unnecessary. But God gives us “unnecessaries” all the time. Like the flickers (woodpeckers) out on my fence. And the pink winter sunsets. And the red berries hanging so colorfully from the bare branches of the Mountain Ash. And the powdery snow falling quietly on the trees. Who needs all that stuff? Totally redundant and perfectly wonderful. God stuffs our stockings full of unnecessary pleasures and over-our-quota goodness day after day. Oh, to be like Him.
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