Up the Sunbeam

"For He . . . is not a God of confusion and disorder  but of peace and order." 1 Corinthians 14:33a AMP My dining room is overrun with boxes. I find myself flashing back to the height of my work as an office supervisor with Census 2010. I can hear again the dull roar of whirring printers, dozens of voices, a crazy array of telephone ring tones and people scrambling to find which phone to answer. In that mad rush to count our county's million or so residents ( 1,049,025 to be exact)  on a single day in the decennial year 2010, we had every inch of our office, the entire 4th floor of the office building, literally stacked floor-to-ceiling with boxes.  It was the only way we could organize our efforts to facilitate and manage all the binders, supplies and papers going out and coming back in, forms to be evaluated, sorted, data-entered, quality-checked, returned for corrections, shipped to headquarters, you name it, we had a box for it. Everything had to b...

-- McIntyre Bluff and Vaseux Lake, British Columbia, Canada                                    " . . .  When my heart is overwhelmed;                                    Lead me to the rock that is higher than I." Psalm 61:2 NKJV A peaceful hush fell over the room. Each of us bowed heads and hearts, eyes closed so souls could open, filling with the blissful quiet. The young pastor who offered this moment of reflection before the service began, said it had been a hectic week for him too, and I nodded agreement. Oh, so hectic! A barely perceptible murmur, not quite a sound, but a soft stirring, told me the rest of the closed-eye, open-souled sojourners in the room had endured hectic weeks too. I don't know why I thought it was just us, and I don't know why it helped so much to know it wasn't, but it did....

First, let me say that I understand why you will think this should have been a Christmas post when you see that I'm writing about mistletoe.  However, this time, my thoughts about mistletoe actually have little to do with Christmas, and maybe when you've read it, you'll think of mistletoe at times other than Christmas too.  Let's see . . . I had never seen mistletoe growing until I moved to California when I was 18. I had only ever seen the stiff plastic Christmas decoration kind, or the overpriced, wilted, bedraggled bits of it tied with a crumpled red ribbon that they'd sell alongside live Christmas trees.  All I knew was that I found it both a little thrilling and a little terrifying to be at social events where there was a sprig of mistletoe hung somewhere strategic, plastic or otherwise. Well, nothing magical ever happened to me under the mistletoe, but I always liked the idea of the tradition anyway. As I said, never having seen how mistletoe grew, I was...

-- The re is something about Christmas that flat-out refuses to be simple. It just will come with cramped quarters, groans and struggle, hard work and extreme inconvenience--Mary knew all about it, didn't she? Her life, so beautifully planned, suddenly and monumentally interrupted by none other than God Almighty! The angel He sent, Gabriel, told Mary she was favored among all women, and had been chosen to bear God's only Son. Her still innocent child's heart was so trusting, so willing to accept the honor and the profound responsibility of parenting the great I AM. Her faith astounds. "I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered. "May it be to me as you have said." Luke 1:38 NIV As if she and Joseph didn't have enough to deal with, what with trying to explain the baby before the wedding and all, suddenly Caesar Augustus had his brilliant idea to call for a census. Not only that, but they had to travel all the way from Nazareth to Bethle...