Sibling sympathy

Busy packing today. We had a vigorous exchange with Jacob over the number of books that it would be reasonable to include in his carry-on luggage. Rebecca quietly went off and drew him this love-heart card (with a crocodile picture on an accompanying sheet) then dictated the message for Dave to write:

Happy New Year

Thanks for reading and commenting during 2009.

I'll be having a break from blogging over the next two weeks, but will still be posting a few old posts that I've dug up from the archives.

Happy new year!


Pic from stockxchng.com

My 'baby' is now 3!

It is Elsie's birthday today. Christmas is an interesting time of year to have a birthday - when we asked her whose birthday it was first thing this morning she said "Jesus?". Having Christmas a few days earlier does mean that we've had a lot of celebrating and exchanging of presents by the time the 29th arrives (which is why we mainly celebrate her 1/2 birthdays). But on the positive side of things, it does mean that family are all on holidays (and are in Sydney this week!), we're all relaxed and it makes for a nice day. Today we had morning tea with Dave's parents (who live in Queensland), then we went to my parents place for dinner (where my sister and her family are staying at the moment). Here are some photos:

Glory

I've had this poem in my head since before Christmas and finally got around to finishing it today.

Glory

A shiny spectacle
arrives here
once a year,

Inflated Santas
hang from rooves and climb windows
like obese trapezists.
Reindeer gather round baby Jesus
vacantly staring,

a long way from home.

Tinsel grows down walls
like mutant fern-fronds.
Blinking lights
along the low horizon of the guttering
blare out a starry parody.

And hidden
behind the flashing lights on the facade
in a nursing home down the road
an old woman pushes soggy peas around on her plate

waiting for some real glory to shine in.

Christmas highlights

In chronological order...

- Christmas Eve dinner at our place (Dave's Aunty L was meant to come but was unwell so we visited her in the afternoon). I made Gwneth's roast again, frozen Christmas pudding for dessert and we started eating the Gingerbread house Rebecca and I had made.

- seeing our kids' faces on Christmas morning when they went outside and saw the trampoline we had set up for them in the dark on Christmas Eve.

- Church on Christmas morning was great - friendly faces; quite a few visitors; joyful singing; a punchy, convicting sermon; and lots of people lingering around over morning tea and not rushing off to be somewhere else; and quite a few people heading off to Christmas meals that they had invited overseas students and other people without family in town to share with them.

- a lovely time catching up with our families - my family on Christmas day, and Dave's family yesterday. The kids loved the chance to see their cousins as well - and both days were huge successes in terms of cousinly interactions, especially given that it was raining and all interactions needed to take place inside!

I got to the end of Christmas Day and Boxing Day and realised I had not taken any photos! Too busy having fun I guess (and possibly still very tired from the late night Christmas Eve). Luckily my dad took a few on Christmas day, and Jacob took a few on Boxing day (with his new camera which is actually our old camera that has been sitting idle for the last couple of years!).

Christmas Eve:

Christmas Day:

my sister Louise with her daughter Evelyne

watching Ice Age 3 in together in the afternoon

my beautiful mum with the beautiful Evelyne

Boxing Day:

Elsie enjoying her new tea set

... and with her cousin Isabel

sitting around after lunch (cousins Caleb and Isabel are in the foreground with Dave's sister Kathryn; his parents and I are in the background)

Happy Christmas

Sorry I didn't post this earlier, but we were up late last night trampoline-wrangling - then a busy day today.

They showed this little clip in church this morning. Hope you find it a good reminder!

Christmas, Christmas, Christmas

We've been busily enjoying the 'Christmas season' around our house for the past few weeks. Here are some things we've been doing:

1. Attending various carols events. Our church had a great night the other night with a carols service followed by a BBQ and big games of cricket and soccer - lots of fun. Tuesday night we went to the carols in the park at the end of our street - and saw lots of neighbours and friends from school. Both nights the kids went to bed waaaay past their bedtime - but they had a great time!

2. Seeing the lights (we've had a lot of late nights lately!!).


3. Lots of craft:

Rebecca made a nativity scene using leftovers from a craft I did with my Sunday school class. Jacob's one (left) is the one he made in class - it is meant to look shed-like and the caption says 'Jesus was born in a shed'. When Rebecca made hers, she covered it with pink glitter and sparkly 'jewels' - which kind of misses the point, but looks good!

We made gift tags using an idea from the cards edition of kids craft weekly.

And I got the idea of making decorations like this from Ally - I'm not going to show them now because some family members are getting them!

4. Cooking - We've made rocky road and chocolate balls and gave them to our neighbours and various friends. Rebecca and I decorated a gingerbread house the other day - which has now become an annual mother/daughter tradition. And yesterday Elsie and I started a new tradition and made Christmas cake together using my nanna's recipe (who is Elsie's namesake and died when I was 6 - I felt a bit teary as we did this one!).




5. The kids and I went to a kids Christmas party that friends from church held at their place the other day. It was SUCH a great idea. My friend just invited her friends with kids (believers and non-believers) and made it fairly casual fun afternoon. The kids played in the backyard, made some decorations, ate ice cream and we had a birthday cake for Jesus at the end. It worked really well!


6. Dave and I are winding down a bit at nights - after the evening's work is done - and watching re-runs of Mother and Son (love that show!).

7. Various catch ups with friends and family - and more to come (yay!).

I am EXHAUSTED already, but having a lovely pre-Christmas time this year. How about you?

Jerusalem Widow

Here's a poem I wrote around this time last year...

Jerusalem Widow
Luke 2:36-38, Lamentations 1:1-2, Isaiah 54:1-4

Married seven short years,
Jerusalem widow
alone and childless,
makes the temple her home.

She does not know
the chatter of children
squeezed around
a table filled with food.
Just the hard knot of hunger,
fasting day and night.

She has no comfort
in the night.
No warm arms
slipped around her belly
as she sleeps.
Instead, she weeps into the dark,
And waits a lifetime.

But when a baby comes
one ordinary day,
She knows.
Her wait is over.
She takes the baby,
and holds him.

Jerusalem widow
(like widow Jerusalem)
cradling salvation in her arms.


Arent de Gelder 1645 – 1727, Simeon and Anna Praise the infant Jesus,
oil on canvas (94 × 107 cm) — c. 1700
Mauritshuis, The Hague

CHRISTIAN mums

Ying writes: "...Christian mums are firstly CHRISTIAN mums rather than Christian MUMS..."

You can read the rest here.

A Child My Choice, by Robert Southwell

This week's Christmas poem is by Robert Southwell, who was a 16th century Jesuit executed under Queen Elizabeth I. His poetry was greatly admired by Ben Jonson who said of another one of his Christmas poems, 'The Burning Babe' that “so he had written that piece...he would have been content to destroy many of his.”


A Child My Choice

Let folly praise that fancy loves, I praise and love that Child
Whose heart no thought, whose tongue no word, whose hand no deed defiled.

I praise Him most, I love Him best, all praise and love is His;
While Him I love, in Him I live, and cannot live amiss.

Love's sweetest mark, laud's highest theme, man's most desired light,
To love Him life, to leave Him death, to live in Him delight.

He mine by gift, I His by debt, thus each to other due;
First friend He was, best friend He is, all times will try Him true.

Though young, yet wise; though small, yet strong; though man, yet God He is:
As wise, He knows; as strong, He can; as God, He loves to bless.

His knowledge rules, His strength defends, His love doth cherish all;
His birth our joy, His life our light, His death our end of thrall.

Alas! He weeps, He sighs, He pants, yet do His angels sing;
Out of His tears, His sighs and throbs, doth bud a joyful spring.

Almighty Babe, whose tender arms can force all foes to fly,
Correct my faults, protect my life, direct me when I die!

Book of the Week: 'A Christmas Carol'

We've been reading A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens together over the past week or so (since finishing The Best Christmas Pageant Ever).

It was a long, long time since either of us had read it, and we had forgotten how much it was a short book for adults rather than a book for children! But the kids weren't deterred at all and have been begging Dave to continue reading it to them, both morning and night. Dickens writes so vividly that even if you can't understand every 5th word or so, there is still enough to hold your attention! Perhaps it's something to do with the fact that he wrote his books in the expectation that they'd be read aloud (and was famous for reading them aloud himself).

The penny-pinching, wowserish, Puritan-rationalist-Malthusite hybrid that the book is written against is not a phenomenon that we see much of these days!! But I suspect there is always room for a reminder to be joyful and exuberant and open-handed, and to channel the extravagance of the Christmas season into generosity and away from self-indulgence.

Miniskirts, Mothers and Muslims: Book Review

I've just finished reading a book called Miniskirts, Mothers and Muslims by Christine Mallouhi (which I quoted from a couple of weeks ago). A friend lent this book to me. Here's what I liked about it:

• It helped me understand the challenges of cross cultural ministry better - especially in a Muslim context, but also to a lesser extent in other contexts. It gave me an insight into some of the cultural barriers that cross-cultural missionaries face.
  

• It motivated me to want to pray even more for friends who are missionaries in Arab countries.


• It helped me to understand the Muslim women that I come into contact with at school and in the wider community, and motivated me to try and get to know them and understand them individually.


• I appreciated the way that she held up a mirror to our Western values and assumptions. She highlighted many ways in which Arab culture is much closer to Biblical models than the individualistic culture of the west. It helped me see how much western Christianity has taken on some of these cultural biases unthinkingly.

There were points at which I thought she overemphasised what Christians and Muslims have in common; I also thought she understated the importance of sharing the Word together as an experience at the heart of our common life as the family of God - Bible reading and Bible study are not modern, Western, rationalist, individualist inventions, even if some of the ways we do those things are rationalistic and individualistic.

Nonetheless, I would still recommend this book for the depth of insight into a culture of which most of us in the West are largely ignorant. Also for the way the author's desire for wanting to see Muslims come to know and love Jesus spills out onto the page and is infectious.

Ribbon dance

Another discussion between Jacob and Rebecca as a result of Table Talk (we're doing "Christmas Unpacked" at the moment - and it's great!).

The passage was Luke 1:39-45 where John the Baptist leaps for joy in Elisabeth's womb when she meets Mary. As a follow up question, Dave asked the kids how they could demonstrate their joy in Jesus:

Jacob: By being kind to others, without complaining.

Rebecca: Well, I would do a ribbon dance.

Jacob: Oh Rebecca, what good would that do?

...I'm glad we have both perspectives represented in our family!!

J.I. Packer on 'the Christmas Spirit'

For the Son of God to empty himself and become poor meant a laying aside of glory; a voluntary restraint of power; an acceptance of hardship, isolation, ill-treatment, malice, and misunderstanding; finally, a death that involved such agony - spiritual, even more than physical - that is his mind nearly broke under the prospect of it. It meant love to the uttermost for unlovely men, who "through his poverty, might become rich." This Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity - hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory - because at the Father’s will Jesus Christ became poor and was born in a stable so that thirty years later he might hang on a cross. It is the most wonderful message that the world has ever heard, or will hear.

We talk glibly of the "Christmas spirit," rarely meaning more by this than sentimental jollity on a family basis. But what we have said makes it clear that the phrase should in fact carry a tremendous weight of meaning. It ought to mean the reproducing in human lives of the temper of him who for our sakes became poor at the first Christmas. And the Christmas spirit itself ought to be the mark of every Christian all the year round.

It is our shame and disgrace today that so many Christians - I will be more specific: so many of the soundest and most orthodox Christians - go through this world in the spirit of the priest and the Levite in our Lord's parable, seeing human needs all around them, but (after a pious wish, and perhaps a prayer, that the Lord might meet those needs) averting their eyes and passing by on the other side. That is not the Christmas spirit. Nor is it the spirit of those Christians - alas, they are many - whose ambition in life seems limited to building a nice middle-class Christian home, and making nice middle-class Christian friends, and bringing up their children in nice-middle class Christian ways, and who leave the submiddle-class sections of the community, Christian and non-Christian, to get on by themselves.

The Christmas spirit does not shine out in the Christian snob. For the Christian spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor - spending and being spent - to enrich their fellow humans, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others - and not just their own friends - in whatever way there seems need...."You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich" (2 Cor 8:9).'

J.I. Packer, Knowing God, pps 70-71

My 'best of' for 2009

Read them at The Sola Panel.

'Nativity', by John Donne

I'm continuing on with the Christmas theme this week, and discovered this one by John Donne. The first line grabbed me - it establishes a pattern of paradoxes that runs through the poem, and the second-person address to Mary that seems to alternate with a second-person address to "thou, my soul", inviting the reader to identify with Mary's sense of wonder at what is taking place.

Nativity

Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb,
Now leaves His well-belov'd imprisonment,
There He hath made Himself to His intent
Weak enough, now into the world to come;
But O, for thee, for Him, hath the inn no room?
Yet lay Him in this stall, and from the Orient,
Stars and wise men will travel to prevent
The effect of Herod's jealous general doom.
Seest thou, my soul, with thy faith's eyes, how He
Which fills all place, yet none holds Him, doth lie?
Was not His pity towards thee wondrous high,
That would have need to be pitied by thee?
Kiss Him, and with Him into Egypt go,
With His kind mother, who partakes thy woe.

Adoration of the Three Magi by Paolo Veronese, from allposters.com

Book of the Week: 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas'

Another Christmas book this week. This one always gets read a lot this time of year in our house. It has good memories attached to it for me, because it was a tradition in my family growing up to always read it together on Christmas Eve. It's obviously not a Christian book, but I do like the anti-materialism message that comes with it (although I always wonder why Dr Seuss didn't allow the Grinch to dump all those presents over the edge!). It's also well-written, like all Dr Seuss books, which makes it a pleasure to read.

If you're not familiar with it - here's a version I found with Walter Matthau narrating.

Christmas Recipe Meme: White chocolate frozen Christmas pudding

Meredith has tagged me for a Christmas recipe meme. Here are the rules.

1. Link to the person who ‘tagged’ you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Post your favourite Christmas recipe - something traditionally festive or something that has become a tradition in your house.
4. Tag four people at the end of your post.
5. Let each person know they have been tagged by commenting on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know the entry is posted on your blog.
7. Post your own Christmas recipe within a week of being tagged to keep this on the move.

Whoops! I've just realised that I've broken rule number 7, but hopefully Meredith will forgive me!

I've decided to share a recipe for a frozen pudding that I make most Christmases. To my friends in the Northern hemisphere having a frozen Christmas pudding might not make much sense, but believe me, in Australia, the frozen pudding is very appropriate for the climate!

White Chocolate Frozen Christmas pudding

INGREDIENTS

1/2 cup craisins (dried cranberries)
1/2 cup glace pineapple
1/4 cup brandy (or 1/2 tsp brandy essence)
2 litres vanilla ice cream
2 cups vienna almonds, chopped coarsely (or scorched almonds)
360g white chocolate, melted (you can use other chocolate if you aren't a fan of white chocolate!)
icing sugar for dusting

METHOD

1. Line 1.75-litre (7-cup) pudding basin with plastic wrap, extending plastic about 5cm above edge of basin.

2. Combine fruit and brandy in bowl. Stand 30 mins.

3. Place softened ice cream, fruit mixture and almonds in a large bowl, stir until combined. Spread the ice cream mixture into the prepared pudding basin. Cover with foil and freeze overnight. Place the cherries on a baking paper-lined oven tray - freeze until firm.

4. Turn the ice cream pudding onto a tray, remove the plastic wrap and return to the freezer.

5. Cut a piece of paper into a 38cm circle to use as a guide. Cover the paper with a large sheet of plastic wrap.

6. Spread the chocolate over the plastic wrap. Remover pudding from the freezer, quickly drape plastic, chocolate side down, over the pudding and smooth the pudding with your hands.

7. Gently peel away plastic, trim base and use large egg slides to transfer to a serving plate. Decorate with frozen cherries and dust with sifted icing sugar.

Now I need to tag some people. I'm going to tag Ally, Melanie, Aimee and Jenny.

'The whole human experience'

A few months ago the kids were having a conversation which had been provoked by the passage we had read come out that morning while doing 'Table Talk'. Rebecca had been wondering aloud about something that Dave had said, and somehow Jacob got on to talking about the incarnation of Jesus (he didn't use that word though!).

"You know Bec," he said, "Jesus was a real human - he had to live a normal life - and when he died it would have really hurt him. And," he said hesitantly, "it doesn't say this, but I think it would be have been hard when he was a kid too".

As I listened to this interaction I was touched at what the incarnation meant to Jacob, as seen through his seven-year-old eyes. It sounds like an abstract concept - but the fact that Jesus came to earth as a real, human baby is a critical part of God's plan for us, with some concrete implications. Dorothy Sayers wrote:

For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is—limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death—he had the honesty and courage to take his own medicine. Whatever game he is playing with his creation, he has kept his own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself. He has himself gone through the whole human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When he was a man, he played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile. (Dorothy Sayers, The Greatest Drama Ever Staged, 1938.)

In the gift of Jesus at Christmas we see God's willingness to enter into our sufferings here on earth - not just the extremities of human suffering and death, but the trivial irritations and frustrations as well. As John Donne wrote (with a theological point that survives even when you make allowance for the poetic exaggeration):

The whole life of Christ was a continual passion; others die martyrs, but Christ was born a martyr. He found a Golgotha even in Bethlehem; for, to his tenderness then, the straws were almost as sharp as the thorns after; and the manger as uneasy at first, as his cross at last. His birth and his death were but one continual act, and his Christmas Day and his Good Friday are but the evening and morning of one and the same day. (John Donne, A Sermon Preached at St. Paul's Cathedral in London on Christmas Day, 1626.)

What an enormous encouragement to hope and perseverance when you find yourself chafing at the bit as you struggle with the daily challenges of life as a seven-year-old school kid or a thirty-something-year-old mum!

Pics from istockphoto

Come, thou long-expected Jesus

A few years ago, when I decided to start a whole host of Advent traditions in our family, I decided I would also start a tradition of reading something relevant to Christmas for myself as well. The reason for this is that with all the craziness of December the end of year Christmas concerts and parties, present shopping and preparing for the day - my mind ends up elsewhere. And I figure that if my mind is elsewhere, I'm probably not going to convey the type of excitement and joy and wonder as I ought as we read the Christmas story with our kids, or when I teach it in Sunday school, or when I'm talking about Christmas with my neighbours. I don't want to give others the impression that Christmas is a burden - or worse that I don't really care about it because we don't drape our house in Santa Claus. I want them to know that I think Christmas is worth celebrating - because we're celebrating our Saviour's birth.

So each year I've set myself a little project. Nothing too long or demanding - but something. A couple of years ago, I read The Real Mary, by Scot McKnight. Last year, I really benefited from Rachael's notes on Luke's gospel in the lead up to Christmas (if you missed them, maybe you could use them this year!).

This year I've picked up a copy of Come Thou Long Expected Jesus, by Nancy Guthrie and I'm loving it so far. It's a book of Advent readings which have been collected by Guthrie, written by a range of different authors, from theologians like Martin Luther, Charles Spurgeon and George Whitfield to contemporary pastors like John Piper and Tim Keller. I've found that they have been challenging and encouraging and heart warming. They've helped me see beyond the craziness of this time of year and focus back on the meaning of Jesus birth - reminders that will benefit me long after the gifts have been opened and the wrapping paper recycled.

I'll probably share a few quotes throughout the month - I hope you'll be encouraged by them as much as I have. And it's probably not too late to get your hands on a copy if you want to read it too.

Pic from stock.xchng

A Song for Simeon, by T.S. Eliot

I'm continuing on with my Christmas 'Poetry Monday' series today. No Christmas poem collection would be complete without one of T.S. Eliot's Christmas poems. Three of his poems in the 'Ariel' series were poems relating to Christmas - The Cultivation of Christmas Trees, Journey of the Magi and A Song for Simeon).

'A Song for Simeon' is my favourite, so I've chosen that one.

A Song for Simeon
by T.S. Eliot

Lord, the Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and
The winter sun creeps by the snow hills;
The stubborn season has made stand.
My life is light, waiting for the death wind,
Like a feather on the back of my hand.
Dust in sunlight and memory in corners
Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land.

Grant us thy peace.
I have walked many years in this city,
Kept faith and fast, provided for the poor,
Have taken and given honour and ease.
There went never any rejected from my door.

Who shall remember my house, where shall live my children’s children
When the time of sorrow is come ?
They will take to the goat’s path, and the fox’s home,
Fleeing from the foreign faces and the foreign swords.

Before the time of cords and scourges and lamentation
Grant us thy peace.
Before the stations of the mountain of desolation,
Before the certain hour of maternal sorrow,
Now at this birth season of decease,
Let the Infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken Word,
Grant Israel’s consolation
To one who has eighty years and no to-morrow.

According to thy word,
They shall praise Thee and suffer in every generation
With glory and derision,
Light upon light, mounting the saints’ stair.
Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy of thought and prayer,
Not for me the ultimate vision.
Grant me thy peace.

(And a sword shall pierce thy heart,
Thine also).

I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me,
I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me.
Let thy servant depart,
Having seen thy salvation.

Simeon's Song of Praise by Rembrandt (unfinished).
This painting was reputedly (and appropriately!) Rembrandt's last.

Advent posts at harrysdesk

I have just discovered that Ally is blogging her way through her Advent celebrations this year. Not only does she show us the beautiful pockets she has made and give us the readings they've used, but she shares the special activity she has included each day. There are some really lovely ideas here which have inspired me - like "write a letter to the oldest member of the family" and "tell each of the girls how they are a joy and delight to us….and what things we have noticed about them that we think would make them great in the eyes of the Lord". Then there are some really fun ones like "play a game of charades with lolly pops in our mouths". I really like the way her ideas combine family 'fun' and with some meaningful things which will bless others. I am really looking forward to reading the rest of her advent ideas and stealing a few of them along the way!!

(Photo of one of Ally's pockets - from her blog)

Book of the Week: 'The Best Christmas Pageant Ever'

This week we've all started reading The Best Christmas Pageant Ever together as a family after dinner. It's a bit of a family tradition (which I noticed Sarah's family shares!). If you haven't read it, I really recommend it as a book to read over Christmas.

It's all about the year that the Herdmans - the "worst kids in the history of the world" who have never heard the Christmas story before - take part if the church Christmas pageant. It's a very funny book, which really amuses us as well as the kids. But as well as being funny I think it has something to say about grace and the transformative power of the story of Jesus.

It only has 7 (longish) chapters so it's easy to read the whole thing sometime in December!

Things I've learned about missional motherhood this year

This year has been an interesting year for me in my thinking about 'missional motherhood'. There have been many exciting things that have happened as well as some heartbreaks - but most of these things I can't share in detail here! But what I can share is what I've been learning and being reminded of this year, and through the missional motherhood posts in November.

* I'm continually being reminded that this is something that Dave and I are not naturally good at! For us, trying to get to know our friends and neighbours actually takes quite a lot of effort and can be quite exhausting. (If you're an extrovert that might be hard to understand, but it's true!). I've found that I've needed to think through what other areas of my life I can cut back on, so that I have the energy and time for it.

* Being a control freak, I find the unstructured and unknown aspects of being 'missional' hard to cope with at times. This year, I've had moments of great doubt and panic: "what if I put in all this work of teaching and discipling my kids and they don't keep loving Jesus?"; "what if I spend all this time with the other mums from school, and no one is ever saved?"; "what if I having nothing to show for my life?". I've been reminded that being a disciple of Jesus does not come with guaranteed 'results' - but I still need to obey him and share the good news.

* A related issue is that, like Jenny, I've found that the more I've become involved with the community around us the less I've been able to be involved in church. Now, we still are involved in our church, but it's taught me that it's important not to spend all our time doing "church events". I also think that having unstructured time during the weekends - so you can have a conversation with the neighbours over the front fence, or invited one of the other families home for a BBQ after Saturday sport - is crucial.

* Another thing I've noticed (which relates to the last point), is that being more missional means constantly fighting against the pull to do other things that would get me more glory - including more 'up front' ministry. I still am tempted to say 'yes' to things that are visible and get me praise from my fellow Christians, when having a few more cups of tea with friends and neighbours is more important.

* I still struggle with sending my kids out into the world as Jesus' disciples. This year I've been reminded again and again that having children who are open about the fact that they love Jesus (and want their friends to love him too) will probably mean that they won't always be the most popular kids at school or preschool. I've discovered, to my great shame, that while I pray for boldness myself, I still get anxious about my 7 year old's professions of faith in the classroom. I say that I want my kids to be disciples - so why do I constantly feel the pull to over-protect them?

* Following on from the above point, I've found that my kids and their concern for their unsaved friends can teach me a lot about the urgency of sharing Christ with my friends.

Thank you again to those who shared your stories over November - you greatly encouraged me. I'm looking forward to doing it again next year!

Beginning of Advent

With all the beautiful entries to the Christmas giveaway coming in lately, I've been feeling a little guilty that I had done NOTHING to prepare for Advent this year. So yesterday, as well as watching political developments unfold on TV with the girls, I also got my act together for Advent.

During the day, the girls and I made some star biscuits that we made into Christmas trees:



And then when Jacob and Dave got home we put up the Christmas tree and tinsel and lights together with much excitement - and we ate some of the star Christmas trees and some more healthy ones I made out of fruit:


We started our Advent calendar readings last night. We're going to do Luke and Matthew readings this year - we just did Luke last year, but I missed having the Magi!

'He's here!'

Meredith wrote last week on this blog about how well The Jesus Storybook Bible works for Advent. I've found it to be a great resource with my kids, in giving them a 'big picture' view of the Bible (although I'm not sure it works as the only Bible to read to them as it skips so much stuff, and adds so much commentary and interpretation and imaginative reconstruction).

I was very excited to discover this clip this morning, with David Suchet reading the Christmas story from this Bible. It's really delightful. If you have kids - make sure you show them!



Thanks Gordon!

A confession...

I got home from walking Jacob to school this morning to discover that Playschool had been cancelled in favour of a live cross to Canberra, to cover the leadership spill in the Liberal party. I had a momentary twinge of disappointment - that Playschool time can be pretty crucial! But it was quickly replaced by the rush of excitement at a bit of Canberra political intrigue.

So the girls and I settled down and watched the broadcast together - an hour or more of Barry Cassidy making conversation with Annabel Crabb while they waited for the outcome of the meeting, then the blockbusting announcement from the Opposition Whip and the press conferences from the victor and the vanquished.

At times I must confess that I have fantasised about being Annabel Crabb (or at least having her job!). But this morning, curled up on the lounge with my girls, answering their questions ("What's a vote mummy?") and initiating them into the political process, I couldn't think of a job I'd rather have more than my own!

Elsie and me in Canberra on election day 2007 - her first exposure to the thrills of federal politics!

And we have a winner!

Thank you to everyone who has entered the Christmas giveaway competition. All the ideas that have been sent to me have been so varied and interesting and aesthetically pleasing! I hope that many of you will have found an idea you can use amongst the ones that were sent in. I'm just glad that I decided at the beginning that I wasn't going to decide the winner on merit, because I wouldn't have been able to choose!!

But I did promise that at the end of the month I would pull a name out of a hat and announce the winner of one of Ally's lovely decorations (see pic below) - so I'd better keep my promise. This afternoon, Rebecca and I put all the names in a hat and pulled out Miriam's name (from this post). Miriam, if you email me with your address, I'll post the prize to you. And for everyone else - if you've missed out and feel disappointed, you can always buy one from Ally's etsy shop!


And something I haven't told you yet is that this ended up being a bit of a joint project for Ally and me (maybe the first of many?)! Ally asked me to write a poem inspired by the concept of the double sided tree and here's what I came up with:

Two trees

One old green tree, bewitching, dark
Bore fruit for death, all poison-red;
Another, red, and soaked with blood
Bears green, green fruit of life restored.

I've tasted that red fruit too long
And turn despairing from its lure
To gaze upon the other tree
And feast upon the fruit of life.

We're putting up our tree and starting our advent calendar readings tomorrow afternoon, so I'll share some of my pics later in the week!