It’s nothing, really, just a wide mouth mason jar, glass catching and bending Light the way gifts do, filled with our favorite homemade granola, Mexican Hot Chocolate, the flavors warm and rich and spicy, like life. It’s nothing, really, but somehow, it’s also everything when I walk it outside to the kind driver who takes […]

Kevin and I have curiously studied the rule of margins for years, have even developed a lingo for our real-life observations that, where little margin exists, something will always come along to take up even the tiniest bit that remains. Ask me if I feel squeezed, especially this time of year, and if, in the […]

Some invitations take a while to receive, and this one had surely waited for me, the corner of an old letter just barely visible at the edge, below a stack of things desperate for sorting, until came the day when, all that clutter finally gone, I at last took it up in my hands and […]

Three days I bake cookies as big as my hand—golden, caramel-sugar sweet, studded with chocolate and candy, a palm-full of sweet for the kids we will love in our church, with our church, on the last Sunday before Christmas.  A fat stack of self-sealing bags imprinted with snowflakes, for the cookies, sits on the bar […]

There’s something about sitting barefaced in the morning flanked by friends, the table strewn with gifts and paper and ribbon, steam curling over our mugs, the conversation like rivers meandering, that has me mulling a repeated snatch of scripture, stacked like ancient memorial stones, down deep below the surface of the living water. The Lord […]

Riley leans against the kitchen counter, waiting out a two-minute timer that counts down while chunks of chicken sizzle in the pan.  She holds a fork aloft as she alternately considers the cooking meat and the digital display, as she murmurs to herself about what’s next.  I watch her head nod gently as she speaks, […]

Josh hands Riley a gift bag, jolly red and green, plump with surprises and spilling over with tissue, and we all sit forward, anticipating grace. All through Advent, I have been thinking:  On the surface of things, at least according to the understanding of their time, Mary and Joseph should never have married.  I’ve been […]

It can feel like I’m stuck in the dark. And it can feel like life’s too loud. I made a centerpiece for our table out of evergreen boughs, a silver wreath accented with bits of mirrored glass, like gems, tall blood red candles, and a few ancient ornaments.  Christmas decorations always need two things, in […]

Riley walks in carrying a package, her arms wrapped wide around a big plastic mailer, and I suddenly remember to receive God’s gifts and give thanks. “There is a package for Mom,” she says, her chin bobbing against the load,” and I’m guessing it has something to do with Christmas.” She’s right, of course. To […]

The grass glitters with frost, twinkling Messiah-lights that will remain long after Christmas. Long after we have packed away our bulbs and vacuumed away all traces of the tree; after we, traveling on to January, have stopped announcing our King, all creation still will proclaim His praise in a language understood in every nation. I […]