Category: Holidays
Veterans Day
Do you have a veteran in your life? Someone who sacrificed their family time and some of their dreams in order to serve in the U.S. military?
My father served in WWII, under age with a fake ID. He went off to war. Patriotic? Possibly? He was trying to escape an abusive stepfather and found himself in a war instead. He survived thanks to the Lord’s grace and came home to marry my mom and have a family together.
A really old photo of my dad in his uniform with my mom when he was on leave.
My husband served for over twenty years, dual service. He was in the USN for eleven years and then 12 years as an officer in the USAF. He left the navy to be able to spend more time with his family instead of being at sea so much. Unfortunately, the USAF sent him to school constantly to train, but he was at home a little more and the children and I appreciated his home time.
Harry in our back yard in South Carolina as a newly commissioned officer.
I sincerely appreciate the service of all of the veterans, but most especially those whose service and commitment to honor and duty that I saw. I am very thankful for the lessons they taught me and our children.
If you see a vet today, thank them for their service. The United States is free because of them and others like them.
Happy Resurrection Day!
I am creating this post early since tomorrow my husband and I are traveling to a nearby town to celebrate our 52nd wedding anniversary. But I couldn’t let the day go by without wishing everyone in my little blogosphere a Happy Easter!
Easter is my favorite holiday. Most people say that Christmas is their favorite, and I think that used to be my answer when I was younger. But now that I am counted with the elderly, I look forward to Easter and the joy and hope it brings.
Ambassador Mike Huckabee and his wife are in Israel now, serving our nation as he has done for most of his life. As you read this scripture, say a prayer for him and Janet to be safe and well there.
Happy Resurrection Day!
Merry Christmas!
From the YouVersion Bible App Devotional, “Advent, Day 25”
It’s a Merry Christmas
Two thousand years ago, the world was waiting for a Savior. He would be their hope for the future, peace in the present, joy in all moments, and love for all people. Little did they know that God was working out His grand plan through a small, lowly family in Bethlehem.
Today, we celebrate the birth of Jesus, who brought all those things, and more.
Where there was no hope, Jesus brought a new hope—hope founded on His life, death, resurrection, and the promise of His return.
Where there was no peace, Jesus brought a new kind of peace. A peace that isn’t dependent on the whims of humans, but on the unchanging nature of God who sustains us, makes us whole, and gives us a calmness the world can’t touch.
Where there was no joy, Jesus brought joy. To everyone under the oppression of sin, He offers freedom. And to the foreigners and outsiders, He offers a seat at His family’s table. Through Him, we can find joy in all things.
Where there was no love, Jesus brought love. During His life on earth, He spent time with people across varying social classes and ethnicities. He disregarded who culture told Him to associate with and instead offered His perfect love to everyone He met.
The Son of God made Himself low so that He might be raised above all. This Christmas, finish your Advent season by worshiping Him!
Pause, Read, and Reflect:
As you’re with family or friends, spend time reading today’s Scriptures aloud. Then, take a moment to read and reflect on this Christmas prayer together.
Lord, thank You for Your Son, who died to unite me with You. Today, I thank You specifically for Jesus’ birth, and the way this moment changed everything for the better. Help me to follow You with the same level of commitment that Christ had during His time on earth. In Jesus’ name, amen.
My Thoughts
I was thinking that I would be sad today because it is just my husband and me here and no one is coming to celebrate with us until the 28th. But, I am not sad at all. I have shed a few tears but that’s because of the wonderful difference Christ has made in my life. I hope each of you have found the hope, joy and peace that only Jesus Christ can bring to you. Have the most wonderful Christmas ever! I am blessed to be a blessing and hope that you are, too.
Who Is Jesus?
From the YouVersion Bible App Devotional “Advent, Day 24”
All I Want for Christmas Is …
What do you want for Christmas this year? Maybe you’d like something practical, like a mini screwdriver set for your glasses. Or perhaps you’re hoping for something fun, like that new device you’ve been dropping hints about since August.
No matter what it is, you probably have some expectations. Maybe those expectations will lead to happiness or disappointment.
Before the birth of Jesus, the people of Judea had expectations too—an expectation that God would send a rescuer to save them and rebuild their nation.
If they knew about Christmas, they’d be saying, “All I want for Christmas is a strong, charismatic, inspiring leader who’s willing to do whatever it takes to lead our people to a better future.”
In the 500 years before Jesus’ birth, there had been a handful of these kinds of leaders, bent on violent revenge toward their enemies.
But why did they expect God’s savior to be a violent king? Because that was all they knew. The only time they’d experienced peace in the past was when a warrior king rescued them by force. So naturally, they wanted another strong ruler to guide their people to military victory.
But what they, and almost everyone in history, failed to notice was that violence can never secure lasting peace. Instead, violence simply passes violence down to the next generation.
God’s people experienced moments of peace when a warlord saved them, but only until another warlord overthrew them. And they were constantly overrun by powerful empires, who kept being defeated by other powerful empires.
So God’s people were waiting for something that couldn’t bring them lasting peace—a strong man, bent on ruling with an iron fist. A ruler who loved his people and hated their enemies. But that kind of ruler has never led them to lasting peace, and never could.
So, what kind of leader could bring them peace? A leader no one expected, or really even wanted.
- A humble person from a small town, who looked nothing like a king.
- A servant leader, with no ambition for national rule.
- A gentle guide, who encouraged people to love their enemies.
- A meek man willing to serve rather than be served.
- And a king who would rather be the victim of violence than a source of violence.
Jesus was the Christmas present no one wanted but everyone needed. It was true then, and it can also be true today.
We’re wise to consider who we expect Jesus to be in our lives this Christmas and in the upcoming year.
Do we see Him as a biased leader who only loves the people who think and act like us? Or is He a divine Santa Claus, ready to bless those on the nice list and curse those on the naughty list?
Jesus is still breaking our expectations, even thousands of years later. So as you prepare for the big day tomorrow, consider your expectations. Who is Jesus to you?
Pause and Pray:
Lord, thank You for Your faithfulness to me in the past. Even though I don’t deserve it, You died to set me free. Help me to trust that You are giving me hope, peace, joy, and love right now, in the present. Help me to have faith that You are making the future better than the present or the past. In Jesus’ name, amen.
(Note that the colored and bold sentences were changed by me to draw your attention to what drew mine.)
My Thoughts
As I read the description of what Jesus was as opposed to who people expected Him to be, I got teary-eyed. I don’t expect Jesus to be a warrior, but I have expected Him to grant my wishes…for health, for safety, for blessings. It never occurred to me that He has already given me health, provided safety more times than I can count and blessed me far above what I deserve. My expectations are that He will carry out His plan for my life and I just have to get in step with it.
The most important word in this verse is the word ALL. We are not supposed to show a half-hearted attempt at seeking God. We need to be all in, all the time!
I have been guilty of wanting God to hurry up and send Jesus back, but the Lord always brings this verse to mind when I am getting impatient. God wants EVERYONE to repent. It’s not enough if ALL have not repented. God loves THE WORLD, not just a small part of it.
If you really want to know who Jesus is, this link may open the door for you to step out and start seeking. May you be blessed with the knowledge of Him who loves you completely and gave so you could know Him.
Watch Out for Christmas
bigskybuckeye.com/2024/12/23/watch-out-christmas-is-almost-here-special-guest-post/
Read this poem and be in awe of the simple message that will dig deeply into your heart. Thanks to Big Sky Buckeye for sharing truth with us. Please go to the original post and follow the author. You are in for a real treat!
What Love Looks Like
From the YouVersion Bible App Devotional, “Advent, Day 23”
What Does Love Look Like?
At the beginning of the week, we asked these questions:
- What do you think of when you read the word “love”?
- How would you describe love to someone else?
- How would they know you were being loving through your words and actions?
How would you answer these questions after spending time reading about Jesus’ examples of love, and looking at Old Testament stories?
Often, we think of love as a happy, warm feeling that makes us feel good. We might consider a time when someone showed us kindness or made us feel seen. But love is so much more than a feeling.
Love is following Jesus’ example of loving everyone as valuable and worthy of sacrificial care, and we have many examples of people practicing God-honoring love throughout the Bible.
Today, let’s take another look at Jesus’ parents, Mary and Joseph. Mary was chosen by God to have His Son. But Mary and Joseph weren’t married, so everyone had their thoughts about what had really happened. Mary and Joseph had a decision to make about how they chose to respond to God, and they made the choice to love Him.
Mary served and loved God by joyfully responding to God’s call with faithful trust. She could have been bitter, angry, or frustrated. Instead, she embraced God’s purpose for her life because she knew the character and nature of God. She wasn’t trying to earn His love by having Jesus, but knew she was already fully loved by her heavenly Father.
Joseph chose to stay with Mary and raise the Son of God together. This decision took courage and trust. He could have turned his back on her. Instead, he cared for her throughout her pregnancy, maybe even bringing her soup and crackers to help with morning sickness. His love translated to outward actions and loving care.
Together, they would end up making a 90-mile journey when Mary was nine months pregnant, ultimately ending with baby Jesus being born in a barn.
Through Mary and Joseph’s story, we learn that we don’t love others by accident, but instead make the choice to care for them the same way God does. It’s looking beyond the mistakes or shortcomings to see the unique character God has placed in everyone. When we do, we gain an even greater understanding of the love He has for us.
Pause and Pray:
Gracious Father, thank You for sending Your Son through Mary and Joseph. Thank You for the unique ways they chose to trust and love You. I believe everyone is valuable and worthy of sacrificial care. Please help me to love You and the people around me with the same steady faithfulness. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Joseph was an obedient servant of the Lord who looked beyond the circumstances and chose to believe and obey God. How often do I only look skin deep and choose to go my own way? Too many times to count! I pray to be more like Joseph, open to hearing God’s directions and following them no matter how it inconveniences or embarrasses me.
I know for certain that I am not nor will I ever be like Mary, the Lord’s mother, who was a teen when an angel appeared to her and gave her the news that she would give birth to the Messiah. God looks on the heart and knew that Mary would be a willing servant. I hope that I am getting more like Mary, but some days I look at myself honestly and know for a fact that I would have scoffed at the news from the angel and wanted some kind of proof about what was going to be happening to me. I am not there yet, but I am still on the road of faith and that’s a big deal for me. I like to think that God is pleased with the progress that I am making, but sometimes I know He is disappointed when I take a step back instead of forward. May we all learn to look at God through the eyes of faith of a young, unmarried virgin whose reply to the angel is to be emulated.
God’s Story
This devotional is from the YouVersion Daily Refresh for Sunday, December 22, 2024
Trusting God’s Story
Imagine Mary and Joseph getting ready to become parents. They probably asked a lot of the same questions expectant parents do today: Is the baby healthy? Are we prepared to care for this child? Where will we have the baby? Are we ready for the birth?
Near the end of Mary’s pregnancy, Caesar Augustus issued a decree that everyone within the Roman world return to their hometown for a census (Luke 2:1-4). This meant that Mary and Joseph had to leave their home in Nazareth to take the four-day journey to Bethlehem, the city of David, who was Joseph’s ancestor.
Because of the census, Bethlehem’s inns were full of people making the journey home. And so, when the time came, Mary gave birth to Jesus in the only place available to them: a stable. She placed him in a manger—a feeding trough—because that’s all there was. Surely this was not the birth that Mary would have planned for her firstborn child.
And yet, it was exactly what God had ordained. God showed us a lot about His Kingdom through the circumstances around the birth of His Son.
He showed us that Jesus is humble. Jesus was born in a stable and placed in a manger. The King of all Creation, yet such a humble beginning.
He showed us that the Kingdom of God is accessible. This King wasn’t tucked away in a castle or a mansion, separated from His people and surrounded by luxuries—shepherds and wise men alike were able to come visit Him.
He showed us that we can trust the story. Mary had to trust God’s story. Joseph had to trust God’s story. Imagine how the story would have been different if Mary and Joseph had demanded that room be made for them in an inn, shouting, “This is the Messiah, people! Make room!” But they didn’t do that. They accepted the situation in front of them, trusting God’s story regardless of how strange or undesirable the setting seemed.
And from that surrendered posture and strange set of circumstances, God brought forth His Son, exactly as He had planned.
We can trust the story because God is the Author. Jesus’ humble birth was not an accident—it was a message, a picture to all of us of what God’s Kingdom is truly like. It’s also an invitation for us to surrender our plans, our ideas of how the story should be, and trust the trustworthy hand of God in our lives. We can trust God.
The red lines for emphasis are added by me. That is what stood out to me in this daily devotional. I hope that it blesses you just as it blessed me.
Showing Love
From the YouVersion Bible App Devotional, “Advent, Day 22”
3 Ways to Show Love Today
Over the last few days, we’ve looked at love as following Jesus’ example by treating everyone as valuable and worthy of sacrificial care. But when we reflect on our own approach to loving others, we might recognize areas where we’re more selfish than we are selfless. Or where we’re more concerned about treating people we like as valuable, but struggle to see the value in people who are different from us.
Instead, Ephesians 4:15 encourages us to speak the truth in love. You can advocate for what’s right from a place of respect, honor, and humility, regardless of the topic. This looks like being curious, listening to understand (not to respond with the perfect rebuttal), and remembering that everyone at the dinner table is made in God’s image.
Often, the way God calls us to love others is opposite from what we know or what culture says is right. Love is a process, and it takes time to adopt the ways God calls us to love others. But we all have a step we can take today and this holiday season.
Here are three ways you can show love to those around you right now.
1. Stand up for what’s right.
The holiday season can be a time when tensions run high. We all probably have that one uncle (or aunt, or cousin, or neighbor—you get the idea), who will bring up a hurtful topic at the dinner table. When this happens, the tendency might be to correct the behavior or ignore it altogether, and neither of those options are loving.
When you do, you’re bringing value and dignity to the people around you, and to those who might not ever know they were a topic of conversation.
2. Be generous toward others.
Last week, we looked at generosity through the lens of joy, and how it also influences how we show love to others.
Generosity is sharing what you have to help someone else. This includes our money, but also everything else we have. In a time of year when consumerism can run wild, you can pause and take inventory of what you have. What gifts or passions do you have that might bless someone around you? How could you leverage finances as a tool to show God’s love to someone in need?
When you practice generosity, you’re checking your heart’s posture to ensure it’s aligned with God’s. It can help you be more conscious as you make your holiday purchases and help you to be more aware of the people around you.
3. Know when to practice boundaries.
As we consider the sacrificial care we’re called to show others, it’s important to recognize the difference between love and enablement. Occasionally, there will be situations when we need to love from afar.
However, boundaries can also help us identify how we let others into our lives. Instead of drawing hard and fast lines and kicking people out of our lives completely, we can choose how we engage with them. In doing so, we’re able to best show up with love toward everyone we interact with.
As Christmas gets closer, consider one way you can show love to others through one of these three ways.
Pause and Pray:
Heavenly Father, thank You for loving me with an unconditional, unwavering love. I want to be someone who shares Your love with everyone I meet, but sometimes that feels difficult when I’m stretched thin, overwhelmed, or burned out. Please give me everything I need to love the people around me well today and always. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Speaking the truth sounds easy, but it is especially difficult if the person to whom you feel you must speak is someone that does not like to hear the truth. This is something I need to practice. I tend to avoid confrontation with most people and I am finding more and more that I am doing them a disservice by not saying how I feel or how their opinion or lifestyle does not line up with God’s expectations for them. I need boldness. How about you? And I need to know how to combine that boldness with love.
In this season of giving, everyone is scurrying around trying to find the perfect gift and then getting frustrated when you find it and it’s all sold out or not available until after the holiday. The perfect gift is the one given from your heart, just as God gave Jesus as His gift to us. And He is always available.
We learn to love by living through Jesus. He resides in our hearts because we invite Him in, and then daily He gives us directions about the way we should go through life, if we are only attentive and listening.
Love is not always easy. Understatement, right? Yet we are called to love. There are some people in my life who are easy to love. They agree with most of my opinions, are kind and generous and loving to me. And then there are the disagreeable ones, those who don’t tell me what I want to hear and who are generally the cloud in my sunshiny day. But God says to love because Jesus loved…not because we feel like it, but because He gave us that example and we are to follow it.
My Neighbors
From the YouVersion Bible App Devotional, “Advent, Day 21”
Who Are My Neighbors?
Yesterday, we learned that Jesus’ two greatest commandments are to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves. When you read these commands, you might question or wonder who your neighbor is. And you’d be in good company with people in the Bible.
In Luke 10, someone asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus replies by telling a parable, or story, which became known as the parable of the Good Samaritan. In this parable, a man is attacked by robbers and left for dead. Everyone who should have helped this man—a priest and a Levite—crossed the road instead of helping the man. Then a Samaritan saw the man, helped him find a place to recover, and covered the cost of his stay.
In this culture, the Samaritan would have had many reasons to cross the road and leave the man like the priest and the Levite did. Instead, he went out of his way to help and show mercy to the man.
So, who are your neighbors? Whoever comes to mind, the answer is yes. And this includes people who are harder to love, different from you, or have a social barrier of any kind that might keep you from engaging with them.
Remember, love is following Jesus’ example by treating everyone as valuable and worthy of sacrificial care.
We see this in the parable of the Good Samaritan, and we see it through God’s people in the Old Testament. In the Book of Kings, we’re introduced to a military general named Naaman.
He is described as a great and respected warrior who was famous for his many victories over God’s people. Scripture also tells us that he had leprosy, an incurable disease that would likely disfigure and kill him over the course of a few painful years.
In one of Naaman’s raids, a young girl was captured and forced to be his wife’s servant. This girl was now living in a foreign land away from any remaining family she might have and shared the same roof as the man who likely destroyed her entire community.
Yet, she had compassion on him. Through a conversation with Naaman’s wife, she shared that she knew a prophet who could heal his disease. Instead of taking revenge or holding a grudge, she showed love and mercy toward Naaman.
Ultimately, Naaman would experience healing from this otherwise incurable disease. And it’s because the young girl chose to share the love and mercy of her God with someone in need.
Pause and Pray:
Lord, thank You for the example of love You have shown us, and for the people who are also examples of Your love lived out. Please give me the strength to love everyone in my life the way You have called me to. I can’t do it on my own. In Jesus’ name, amen.
I have always been fascinated by the story of the Good Samaritan. A man who was ostracized by the Jews is the one who stopped to save a Jewish man who had been robbed and beaten. How many times do we avoid people who are different than we are because we don’t feel comfortable around them? I can think of several people right now whom I have avoided or limited my contact with them because of their differences of their past actions towards me. There is a former student in my Sunday school class who in the last few years decided she is transgender and has “married” a female. Her actions make me uncomfortable, but at the same time, I know she heard God’s truth and actually listened at one time. She has fallen away and needs to come back to God. God continues to remind me that I am not her judge; He is. There is the neighbor who attacked my husband over a decade ago. We still don’t speak to each other and he seems to go out of his way to act angry and belligerent around us. The protection order from the court long since went away, but we still have no contact. I do pray for him, that he will come to know the Lord and stop depending on alcohol as his crutch. But I am afraid to approach him because he can be violent. Finally, there are my many liberal friends and family who think that I am somewhere lost in conservative land and don’t want to even talk to me anymore. I try to find what we have in common and call and talk to them about those things. God doesn’t distinguish between Republicans and Democrats. To Him, we are all lost sheep in need of a Savior. So, who is my neighbor? Everyone whose life I touch and whose life touches mine.
Vickie's Book Nook and Meditation Corner 