Jesus' Nativity

 

I noticed every little flaw in my decorations for this year’s Advent Tea table, but it still got rave reviews. The theme was nativity scenes, and the centerpiece was a set that I crocheted many years ago. Then I surrounded it with photos I had taken in other settings.

But the focus of the decorations was a 2006 photo of the creche that shows up in our church’s fellowship area every year. Since you can’t really see it in the photo at the top of this post, I am including it below.

I highlighted the creche in three ways, using the same photo for all of them. First, I had Shutterfly make placemats from it. Unfortunately, it must not have blown up well. It looked fine on my computer screen but wasn’t sharp on the placemats. Even so, people liked them.

Second, I used it to customize plastic coffee/tea cups. I bought some cups with a clear exterior and a white interior that were built to come apart so someone could place a paper design between the two pieces. I made the design by printing a copy of the photo on one side and “Advent Tea 2022” on the other. I was disappointed that they didn’t snap together more permanently, but as long as you don’t lift them by the top, they work.

Finally, I made jigsaw puzzles of the photo for the favor, although the women at my table got to take their placemats and cups, too. The puzzles didn’t work quite right, either. I printed the photo on one side of card stock and a puzzle pattern on the other and cut one out using the interlocking pieces in the pattern. Unfortunately, there were two problems with it. First, it took forever to cut out. I could have handled that, but when I put it together it didn’t want to lay flat and stay in position. So I ended up cutting the puzzles into rectangles instead.

Even with all the issues, people liked my table and appreciated the work I put into it. More importantly, the program and the food were excellent, and so was the company.

Because I can’t help writing, I did create a very elementary poem to go along with the puzzles, and I’ll leave you with it.

A Jigsaw Puzzle World

The world was in pieces,
     Broken by Sin,
Then Jesus came
     To put it together again.

He Comes at Advent . . .

 

I decorated my third Advent Tea table in 2014 using the seasons of the year as my theme. That  sounds like a stretch. After all, what do the seasons of the year have to do with Advent? But the actual theme, listed on a note card at each place, was “Jesus is the Reason for Every Season.”

The centerpiece had four vases displaying items such as branches and dried flowers reminding us of each of the seasons. and they were surrounded by photos taken during spring, summer, winter, and fall.

But the highlight of the decorations—and that year’s favors—were the placemats. When I went through my pictures, I picked out four other seasonal photos and had Shutterfly make two placements from each one.

Then I tied it together with another poem, which was included on the note cards. This one was written specifically for the occasion. Here it is.

He Comes

He comes in summer
In thunderstorms and showers
Cleansing the earth.
 
He comes in autumn
When trees proclaim his glory
With blood-red leaves.
 
He comes in winter
As white blankets cover seeds
Soon to awake.
 
He comes in spring
When a tiny robin’s egg
Brings forth new life.
 
Jesus comes all year
Into the hearts of Christians
Saved by His grace.

 Next week I’ll tell you about this year’s table.

Advent and Lighthouses

With scheduling conflicts and years when I was a simple attendee, it was 2012 before I decorated my second table for an Advent Tea. My theme was lighthouses, and that is my table in the photo at the head of this post.

The centerpiece was topped with a ceramic Big Red, the lighthouse at Holland, Michigan, which is displayed year-round in my living room. It has a light inside it, but I had no way to plug it in. For the tea, I surrounded Big Red with photos of other Lake Michigan lighthouses that I had taken on a sailing vacation the year before. I used my best dishes, and I suppose the set-up came close to being elegant, although that wasn’t my intent.

It was easy to tie the theme in with Advent since Jesus came as the Light of the World. To emphasize it, my favor that year was a laminated copy of my poem “The Lighthouse,” which I wrote in 2011. The poem follows:

The Lighthouse
 

A light has come to save the world,
            A lowly baby born,
It shines its beam on rocky shoals
            From evening until morn.
 
When storms of life beat on my boat,
            And winds begin to blow,
The beacon shines across the waves
            With its resplendent glow.
 
Mist and haze may hide the reefs,
            Clouding up my sight,
But though they blind my eyes at times,
            They cannot veil the light.
           
As lighthouse keeper I must go
            And rescue those in danger,
For one in peril on the sea
            Can never be a stranger.
 
The harbor light beams steady on
            Wherever I may roam,
A welcome blaze when life is done
            To guide me safely home.

 May His light shine on you this week

Not an Elegant Advent Tea

 

My church holds an Advent Tea approximately every other year, although COVID interfered with that schedule. It’s a women’s event where each hostess decorates a table. She can invite friends to join her at the table or let the organizers fill in the empty seats, or it may be a combination. Some years I’ve had conflicts or simply attended, but I’ve hosted a table four times, and the first received mixed reviews.

The first time I hosted was in 2006, and most of the women at my table had been assigned by the organizers. There was one elderly woman I didn’t know, and, although I’m sure we introduced ourselves, I still don’t know who she was.

I had chosen “Children’s Christmas Books” as my theme. Unfortunately, I don’t have a photo of my table. I probably used my nice dishes, but the centerpiece was composed of books that matched the theme. The favor I gave out was also inelegant. (More about that later.)

Most of the women at my table loved the creativity, but the elderly woman mentioned above complained rather loudly because she hadn’t been placed at an “elegant” table. My decorations from subsequent years would probably have disappointed her, too, because I don’t aim for elegance. I do aim for creativity, however, and this month’s blog posts will discuss those subsequent tables.

That first year, each of the participants at my table received a typed story compiled in booklet form. In keeping with the theme, I had written a children’s story about Christmas. Looking at it now, I would probably have done a few things differently, but I’m going to reprint it as they received it. Here it is:

Susan’s Christmas Holiday Christmas

            “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”  Susan muttered under her breath as she entered her father’s store. She was playing Mary in the Sunday School program, and she wanted to get it right.

            “Watch out!” Her father’s voice brought her back to the present. She looked up and stopped—just inches from a plastic snowman.

            “That wasn’t here last year,” Susan said.

            Her father sighed. “No, it wasn’t. I changed the holiday display this year.”

            Susan’s eyes grew wide as she looked around. Snowflakes hung from the ceiling, and there were plastic figures everywhere. Plastic snowmen. Plastic reindeer. Even plastic candy canes.

            But something was missing.

            “Where’s the manger scene? And why does that banner say ‘Happy Holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas?’”

            “I don’t want to offend my customers,” her father said. “This is when I make most of the money we live on the rest of the year.”

            “But Dad, last year you said Christmas was the best time to tell other people about Jesus. Don’t you want to do that any more?”

            Her father looked down at his feet. Then he took a deep breath, looked straight at Susan, and smiled.

            “You’re right. Who cares what other people think. God is the only one who matters, and He wants us to tell everyone about Him.”

            “Good.”  Susan smiled too.

            “Let’s get the manger scene and the ‘Merry Christmas’ banner out of the back,” her father said. “But first, let me change the music coming over the loudspeaker. How does ‘Away in a Manger’ sound to you?

            “Perfect.” 

            And it was.

If you sit at my table at an Advent Tea, I can make you this promise: It won’t be elegant.

But it will be creative.

__________

I took this photo at the 2012 Advent Tea and am using it to show an example of an elegant table. Unfortunately, I don’t know who decorated and hosted this table, so I can’t give her the credit.

Writing is Hard Work



Good writing is hard work. Sometimes the words flow easily, and sometimes they don’t. But even when they do, they usually require a lot of editing. Here are a few quotes from established writers.

“Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you – as if you haven’t been told a million times already – that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching.” Harlan Ellison 

“I would never encourage anyone to be a writer. It’s too hard.” Eudora Welty 

“A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades, 1947 

My church holds a women’s Advent Tea every two years, and each table has a hostess who decorates it and provides the dishes. One of the fun things about the event is the table viewing before lunch is served. Some of the tables are elegant and others are whimsical, but all have either an Advent, a Christmas, or a winter theme.

The first time I acted as a hostess, I used children’s books about Christmas for my theme. Last time I used lighthouses, inspired by a poem I had already written. The tie-in there was easy, because Jesus is the light who came at Christmas.

I’m a serious amateur photographer, and I looked through my pictures to see what I could use this year. Although I have photos of Christmas displays and family dinners, none of them struck a chord. I’m not sure why, but it was my seasonal photography that caught my attention. So I decided to use the four seasons as my theme.

But how could I tie that to Advent? I knew how it fit, but would the people viewing the table figure it out? I wasn’t sure, so I decided to spell it out in a poem.

That’s where the hard work began.

At first it flowed well enough. And after I got a couple of verses to a point where I was happy with them, I realized that each one had a 5-7-4 pattern: five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and four in the third.*

But then I started writing the verse about winter, and nothing seemed to work. Either the wording was clunky or dull or the syllable count was off. After a lot of reflection, thesaurus work, and wording changes, I finally came up with a winter stanza that I thought I could live with. It went like this:

He comes in winter

Among barren gray branches

Appearing dead.

Then I sent the poem off to my online critique partner. She though that stanza was too negative to fit the general tone of the poem. She made a similar comment about one of the words in the autumn verse, but the reference to blood was intended to remind us of Christ’s sacrifice, so I left it.

I had never been happy with my winter verse, however, so I went back to work trying to come up with something better.

Here is the finished poem. It isn’t a masterpiece, but it served its purpose. You can decide for yourself whether my hard work paid off.

He Comes 

He comes in summer

In thunderstorms and showers

Cleansing the earth. 

He comes in autumn

When trees proclaim his glory

With blood-red leaves. 

He comes in winter

As white blankets cover seeds

Soon to awake. 

He comes in spring

When a tiny robin’s egg

Brings forth new life. 

Jesus comes all year

Into the hearts of Christians

Saved by His grace. 

__________

* There is one exception to the 5-7-4 pattern. Each stanza starts with “Jesus comes in [season].” Since “spring” has only one syllable, that line has four instead of five. I chose to sacrifice the syllable count to retain the wording repetition.

Born of a Virgin? Really?

Yesterday was the first day of Advent, and I’m going to use my December posts to explore some questions about the first Christmas, starting with the virgin birth as told in Luke 1:26-37 (ESV).

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”

And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.”

That last line is key. The Bible tells of an omnipotent (all-powerful) God. What is impossible for us is possible for him.  

How did God make the virgin birth happen? I have no idea. Did He do it? I have no doubt.

I can understand people who believe that the Bible is all fiction. But I can’t understand the ones who pick and choose what they want from it.

If the Bible is true, so is the virgin birth. Some “scholars” argue that “virgin” is mistranslated and really means “young woman.” But if that were the case, why would Mary ask how she could be pregnant? She was already betrothed, so presumably she had been told the facts of life.

Okay, so what she really said was, “How can this be?” Some might argue that she was questioning how she, as a young woman, could become the mother of a great man. But that interpretation has its problems, too. Many young women raise great sons, and that was no different in Mary’s time and before. And the angel didn’t simply announce that Mary would be the mother of a great man. Her son was described as “the Son of the Most High” and “the Son of God” who would “reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Great men die. Mary’s son would be immortal.

And then there is the account in Matthew 1:18-25. When Joseph discovered that Mary was pregnant, he knew he wasn’t the father and thought she had committed adultery. But as he was getting ready to break off the engagement, an angel appeared to him in a dream, saying “that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” Then Matthew goes on to quote these words from Isaiah 7:14:

Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel.

If “virgin” meant simply “young woman,” would Joseph have been appeased by the angel’s words? If he still thought there was an earthly father, wouldn’t he have wondered why he wasn’t the one given the honor of helping Mary conceive this holy child?

If God is God, He is omnipotent. Any other type of God is impotent, and an impotent God is no God at all.

I believe in the omnipotent God of the Bible. That’s why I answer the title questions this way:

Born of a virgin. Really.

* * * * *

The picture at the top of this post is titled “Praying Virgin” and was painted around 1720 by an unknown Italian artist. The original painting is in The Art Institute of Chicago’s collection.

Preparing for (Next) Christmas

I've already started working on my Christmas cards for next year. No, I don't have obsessive-compulsive disorder. I won't address the envelopes until Thanksgiving rolls around again, and I never start my Christmas shopping before January.

But I do like to be prepared. I make my own Christmas cards, and I need a new photograph to grace the cover for 2013. If I wait until next year's decorations are up, it'll be too late. So I drove around the neighborhood Saturday taking pictures of nativity scenes, and I'll be on the lookout for other subjects all month.

Advent is the season for preparation, anyway. As we prepare to celebrate Christ's birth, we also get ready for his second coming.

Besides, I'm only starting a year in advance. God prepared his plan for our salvation before the beginning of time as we know it. Then he waited for just the right moment.

"But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons." (Galatians 4:4-5, ESV)

Are you prepared?

It's Coming!

Well, Christmas is coming. Advent is already here.

My church usually holds its Christmas concert on the first Sunday in Advent, and this year was no exception. Yesterday afternoon was the first concert under our new choir director, and it went well.

The day before that, the women's ministry held its bi-annual Advent Tea. Volunteers decorate the tables, and the variety is both interesting and fun. That's my contribution in the foreground of the picture.

A lighthouse theme? What do lighthouses have to do with Advent or Christmas? A lot. Advent looks forward to, and Christmas celebrates, the coming of the Light of the World. I wanted the women at my table to make the connection, so I gave them each a laminated copy of my poem, "The Lighthouse," which starts with these words:

A light has come to save the world,
A lowly baby born,
It shines its beam on rocky shoals
From evening until morn.

For the rest of the poem, see my December 26, 2011 post.

Actually, Advent celebrates two separate comings by the same person. The most obvious is the one that happened 2000 years ago when Jesus came in his humility, born in a manger to be our Savior. The other looks forward to the last day when Christ will come again in his glory. Except it won't really be the last day for those who worship him. Instead of the end, it will be the beginning of something so much better than I can imagine.

That's why I say:

Come, Lord Jesus.