Tag: Christmas
Christmas Changes Everything
The story of our lives has more to do with what God is doing than our ability to manage it. Gail Johnsen This is my all-time favorite quote about Christmas: “God has interrupted our ordinary expectations, as cherished as they were, to conceive something. We cannot manage it. We can’t even understand it. All we ...
Christmas is the most wonderful, awful time of year.
Christmas is the most wonderful, awful time of the year. Often we have created an image of Christmas that centers around a perfectly pinterest-decorated home, candlelight, neatly (or extravagantly) wrapped presents, and intact families cozied by the fire reading Christmas stories and eating cookies. Not that this is bad. It’s just not reality for many ...
Crazy Joy!
Choose joy! We hear it all the time. In this way, we often think of joy as simply a choice we make. It’s where we are in control; we muster up the strength, gather all our internal resources and make a cognitive decision…and “will” our way to joy. Choosing can only take us so far. ...
This is Advent
I am mindful that this year Advent begins against a sweeping backdrop of pain and brokenness. It seems there are few places in our world that have not been touched by violence and injustice. And our hearts ache. Sometimes the ache feels unbearable. Our first and most basic reaction is to silence or dull the ...
Free Advent Resource 2013
“I just want Christmas to be different this year.” How many times have we said that either to ourselves or to our families? How often have we considered the approaching holidays with dread? We want to live differently into the Christmas season…more reflective, less hurried, with more margin in our lives to give more…of our ...
Gail Johnsen 