Dear Reader:

Haven’t we all experienced the various kinds of waiting that take place in our lives…ranging from the annoying kind…like waiting on your car to get fixed with no communication forthcoming to the more serious…waiting for the pain to go away from an accident, or surgery or some other form of health issue?

There is also the expectant type of waiting….to hear if someone is pregnant, or results from a medical test, or a reply back from a job interview or college application. There are more kinds of waiting we all experience in life than we can really count. Most of us remember the anxious type of waiting.

But then there’s the good kind of waiting. Quinn Caldwell calls it the “delicious shivery kind.”  These kinds of waiting scenarios fall under categories like waiting for your daddy to get home from a long trip with  surprise gifts in hand. There’s the smell of a delicious pie or other treat cooking in the oven. There’s the feeling of surprise and wonder when one feels her firstborn baby kick for the first time.

Advent…those weeks leading up to Christmas are about both kinds of waiting.

When we get down at the state of affairs around the world and have seen one too many horrific scenes of man’s destructive power over his fellow man we are choosing to see God’s absence. We just want God to show up and make everything perfect again.

Caldwell says, on the other hand, advent is about ” choosing to see God’s almost presence. It’s about looking around at the state of the world, at the struggling schoolteachers and rich philanthropists doing the right things, at babies being born, and the love being made and the ancient stars shining bright as hope in the cold night sky. It’s about looking around at all of this, reading the signs, and knowing that everything, one day, in an instance, will change.”  

“Advent is about standing mired in mud calling out “How much longer Lord?” But just as surely it’s about standing in the shining, shivering with delight and singing, “Come, Lord, come.” (All I Really Want…Readings for a Modern Christmas-Quinn Caldwell)

So until tomorrow…Let us spend our time looking for signs of God’s presence in our lives and not choosing to be blinded by some men’s interpretation of His absence.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Poo

A few weeks ago Cindy Ashley saw this charming little “rabbit” in a neighboring yard when visiting her granddaughter. She took the picture and sent me…besides being just plain cute…the colors work…red and green!

So on this first day of December, say “rabbit” and have a wonderful feel of Christmas in the air this month.

Some of you might remember that I surprise the little group of neighbors right around me each year with a December 1 surcie…usually a poinsettia but this year it changed. I found these adorable deer at such a fantastic sale price….(For once I was at the exact right place at the right time)…. a Christmas Neighbor Gift this year…or as I put on the card…“You’ve Been  Jingled.” “Have a “Deer” December!”