….regardless of our worthiness.  How lovely it is to celebrate a season that was shaped and formed by grace. From Week Two // Day Three: How is it going for you?  Jesus came to Bethlehem to show us what it is like to see grace walking around in a body.  He has bestowed grace on us so that we can offer it to others.  Who are the people in your world that could use a touch of grace this week? Who has blessed you with grace?  

Every year I see Christmas cards like this one that came in the mail today. “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”  Isaiah 7:14 But the story behind this birth announcement is unsettling.  What is it about the heart of God that puts guys like Ahaz and promises like Immanuel in the same story? Go to the Advent Video page or click here to listen to Day One, Week Two: Wrapped in Grace. If it had been up to us, we would have chosen to wrap this promise in prettier paper, but God chose to wrap his announcement in Grace.   How does the story of Ahaz and God’s promise of Immanuel widen your perspective on grace? How can you be intentional about living as an extension of God’s grace?  

I have always loved the way things connect to make a whole.  One of my favorite memories as a little girl was a time with my family, walking through the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan — staring for as long as the adults would let me, at the intricate doll houses representing various periods in American history.  Every detail mattered. Tiny dishes, intricate wallpaper and miniature furniture. I had never seen anything like it. I wished we could have stayed in that one room all day. Sometimes when I stare in wonder at the pieces of God’s story, and get a glimpse of how every detail matters, it reminds me of the dollhouses. I don’t want to miss anything. I want to linger a little bit longer to see what else I can see – those things that maybe I missed the first time. Over the past year, the way Hannah’s story has come alive again in Mary’s story is a link that has captured my attention. The details in Hannah’s story mattered for Mary. The very words she used when she prayed modeled words of praise for Mary. I love those instances when a story seems wonderfully complete, but God is thinking thousands of years down the road to when that first story will make another story richer. We will come back to Hannah and Samuel’s story in a couple of weeks for more connections to Mary’s story. In the meantime, what are the stories that are serving as tutors for your story these days? What stories are you telling the children in your care or under your influence? How will you instill within them the belief that God wants to keep telling his story through them?        

What a whirlwind it has been since the books arrived! Thank you to all of you who purchased and gifted books so that we could get most of the 500 copies out before today, the beginning of Advent 2015.  I am looking forward to sharing this season with you. One of the requests I received several times over the past year was for an audio book.  I would love to do that sometime, but I ran out of days this year to tackle that project.  In lieu of that let’s meet here at the beginning of each of the four weeks of Advent.  I will read Day One of each week and post it under the Advent Videos tab.  Grab a cup of coffee or tea and join me as we begin each week of this Christmas season. (For those of you who stopped by yesterday for the first reading – I apologize!  I completely lost my voice last week and sounded like a coughing frog. We all have expectations and plans around Christmastime, right?  I wrote that and want to be flexible, but ugh…I really wanted to be here yesterday.  Thanks for understanding – I will get that video reading up today. I will also post the journal questions here on the blog page whenever they show up in the book — two to three times a week —feel free to respond to the prompts here if you would like to. I’d love to hear from you throughout the season.   Day One Week One: How will you carve out time to ponder the miracle this season?