Dear Reader:

When I saw this bumper sticker on the back window of a truck in front of me yesterday…I started grabbing my purse for my Iphone. I had just enough time (at the stop sign on Carolina Avenue) to grab a quick photo…before the truck turned and disappeared.

Today…of all days… Good Friday…the crucifixion of Jesus Christ…is the day we should all “know” that Jesus is the One. I think if Christ had to pick a word of the year for the year he died, it would be SACRIFICE. Everything in his life preceding His greatest sacrifice had been leading up to this one act of love that surpassed anything most humans could even comprehend.

Sacrifice:  “The act of giving up something that you want to keep… especially in order to get or do something else or to help someone.”

I started thinking back on my own life and the people in it who sacrificed for me…mother, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends. The successes in my life have been due to loved ones going the extra mile for me. (The incidents too numerous to mention or even totally recall.)

On December 4, 2010 Gloria Houston wrote me to wish me well over the holidays…ending her letter with: “Ruthie and I send all good wishes for success and great progress in your treatments. I hope you can postpone any unpleasantness until the holidays are past. We wish you a new year –  cancer-free!

Our thoughts and prayers go with you. Happy Holidays! Gloria and Ruthie.

It is rather ironic…that Gloria was writing me five years ahead of her own diagnosis of a rare cancer which quickly took her life too soon….months after her mother Ruthie died.

One of the most poignant examples of “sacrifice” comes from Gloria’s beautiful Christmas story-‘The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree’.

In the story little Ruthie and her mother are struggling to stay afloat on their little farm in the mountains while her daddy is off fighting in France in WWI. Her mother adds left-over scraps of materials to the hems of her dresses and they can everything possible to try to get through the winter months.

The Armistice ends on 11/11/11 (1918) and soldiers are daily returning home. Ruthie and her mom go down to the station to wait on Tweetsie the train to see if her daddy gets off…but so far he has not appeared.

Earlier in the spring Ruthie had gone with her daddy to pick out the ‘perfect Christmas tree’ for the Christmas Eve service. It is their family’s turn. They find a beautiful balsam on top of a rocky craig and tie a red ribbon off Ruthie’s hair to recognize it when they return in December.

But daddy hasn’t returned and Ruthie is afraid she might have forgotten exactly where it was…none-the-less her brave mother awakens her and out into the cold night they go with only a lantern and ax to cut down the tree. Thank goodness there is a full moon and they find it….cut it down and pull it back down the mountain on their sled.

They arrive home just as the sun is coming up Christmas Eve morning…placing the tree right outside the sanctuary. Mother tucks Ruthie in bed snugly and goes to her bedroom…but not to rest or sleep.

She reaches in the closet and pulls out a long box…she opens it tenderly and pulls out her wedding dress made of the most beautiful creme satin. Ruthie has been chosen for the most important role in the Christmas pageant…the angel announcing the birth of Jesus, and she needs a a beautiful gown to announce the Good News.

Wiping away a small tear…mother begins cutting the satin wedding dress…making not only an angel gown…but a miniature copy for the little doll she has homemade for Ruthie for Christmas. She, secretly, places the angel doll on top of the recently decorated church Christmas tree.

(Every time I picture this scene I tear up…the love of a parent for a child is truly one of the most beautiful examples of love on earth)…but how much greater was God’s sacrifice of His only son for all of us? It is beyond what we mortals can comprehend or absorb.

Little Ruthie, like me, probably never knew or understood the sacrifice her mother made for that special, beautiful Christmas Eve. We children are sheltered by our parents when it comes to sacrifices of this nature. It is only as adults that we realize that so many events in our lives took place only because someone sacrificed for us.

So until tomorrow…..Before we can begin to see the cross as something done for us, we have to see it as something done by us.”
― John R.W. Stott

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

Boo Boo Baskets in the making: “Baa Baa Jakie” “Hippity-Hop Eva Cate” “Ribit, Ribit Rutledge” and “Quacky-Wacky Lache”!