What I love about this picture is that it's so representative of our year. While we all have smiling faces, my sunglasses hide my eyes (and much of what's happened mentally in the last year). And we were being attacked by a swarm of flying, biting ants, so we were all saying "hurry up and take the picture so we can get back in the car!"
So I wonder, what's really happening in the lives of all the smiling, wearing their Christmas best families that we see in the pictures?
God's Christmas letter tells it pretty straight--a pregnancy before marriage, the hushed and hurried wedding that probably happened before the birth, a long trip on a donkey, a birth in a stinky barn, with a bunch of probably stinkier shepherds as visitors. Yet Mary pondered these things in her heart, and proclaimed the majesty of her God who ministers to the poor and lowly.
Lord, I thank you for the blessing of friends, and I pray for the things unseen and the stories not told in their Christmas letters. Thanks that you came not to the rich and mighty, but to the poor and lowly, and that you promise great things to the hungry, meek, and poor in spirit.
2 comments:
I haven't even started my cards...maybe they'll get out by Valentine's Day! I was tempted to put in a blurry photo of all of us trying to sit donw for a picture...that's what our year has been like... a blur!
Great post...and I'm SO glad I didn't have to give birth surrounded by anyone stinky!
Interesting thoughts...probably true for the untold stories. It's always good to gain perspective on Mary's journey. We watched the Nativity Story for the first time this year, and it was definitely interesting.
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