Mary's words, our hearts

As I ponder these words, dripping with love and emotion, we are two weeks, 14 days and nights, from Christmas Day. We are days -- cold and crisp like ample cubes of ice in fresh juice -- and nights -- dark and mysterious like a journey into Jehovah's unknown -- from the wondrous-ness of the birth of a baby whose capability to love was and is unprecedented.

Traveling at the speed of hope, these 24-hour chunks will soon be done up in silver paper and greenery.

My dear friend, John Wynn, writes these words ...

"O God
We are thankful that you have given us
Eyes of Faith.

"We can look at a Star and see a Place

"We can look at a Baby and see the Future

"We can stand at the beginning of a New Year
and see Hope

"For we are the people who know the end of the story as well as we do the beginning.
Amen."

My friend, John Wynn, captures the emotion of a birth, THE birth, and allows us to come along. Two weeks before the event, we are invited to the event.

Mary said, "Oh, how my soul praises the Lord. How my spirit rejoices in God my Savior."

What a wonderful time, a wonderful moment. He is coming; He is near; He is here.

I was reading this gloomy cool December morning that the practice of putting up special decorations at Christmas has a long history. In the 15th century, it was recorded that in London it was the custom at Christmas for every house and all the parish churches to be "decked with holm, ivy, bays and whatsoever the season of the year afforded to be green." Wow. Things would be colored to symbolize the coming to earth of our little Savior, this child Jesus.

The heart-shaped leaves of ivy were said to symbolize Jesus' coming to earth, while holly was seen as protection against, well, pagans and witches. It's thorns and red berries represented the Crown of Thorns worn by Jesus at the crucifixion.

As early as 10th-century Rome, nativity scenes were made popular. My man, Saint Francis of Assisi, helped spread them across Europe, like some lively and unknown X-Box of the middle ages. Decorations for trees and such were used, with the first commercially produced decorations appearing in Germany in the 1860s.

I think we have some of those in some old boxes in our parsonage. No, really, we do. Or something like that. There were times when we had much, much more things and they all came out at Christmas time and made their way onto trees.

All in all, these decorations, these lights, all this stuff we put in attics and such for much of the year, are about Him. Nothing less. Nothing more.

"Oh, how my soul praises the Lord. How my spirit rejoices in God my Savior." Mary's words. Our hearts.