Dear Reader:

As Vickie, Maggie and I passed this house in the neighborhood yesterday the late afternoon sun was lighting this palmetto tree up with brilliant colors. How beautiful our state palmetto tree is!

The older I get the simpler I like Christmas to be…I have quit putting as many decorations on my wreaths and just let them be green with pine cones and a spark of baby breath perhaps….my door wreath this year.

I saw this idea on Pinterest that was simple and cute…maybe next year I will try it…the two state symbols…the crescent and the palmetto tree (pinecone)

I love to get Christmas cards with state emblems on them…and I do like the palmetto trees lit up on Marion Square and the parks around the area…including side streets…and in houses.

Every place around the world has its own unique beauty and culture at Christmas through the plants and trees indigenous to its area. That is what makes the world so interesting…the diversity of this planet we live on. God so loved the world He made the races of man diverse as well as the terrain.What a wonderful Christmas gift!

But the one thing that ties us altogether at Christmas are the stars. You might remember me telling you how homesick I would get at summer camps growing up. So one year before I left mother took me out in the yard, put a blanket down on the ground and started pointing out different constellations and making me laugh with their stories and legends.

Then she said (something to the effect) “Becky, remember each night, if you are feeling homesick…Go look up at the stars and know that I am looking at them too…it is the stars that connect us all and bring us back home.”

Wasn’t it the stars that brought us all back home one Christmas Eve a long time ago…the whole human race? It was one brilliant guiding light that told the world God had placed His Son in our world and things would never be the same again.

And now today…when we look out over the stars…we are seeing the same stars our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc. saw…from the first civilization to present…the human race is connected to the stars.

…And mom was right…one day one star will lead me back home again…and I will never feel homesick again…because I, finally, am home.

So until tomorrow…

“The universe is in our bones, the stars in our Soul; it’s never really the end.”

When we sing we are all one in the spirit…we are singing we are all one in the universe…we are all connected to life…to our Creator.

What a beautiful Christmas gift!

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh