Cultivating Faithfulness

When I was a child, we celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve with our extended family (and sometimes a few extras) at my paternal grandparents’ home. All my aunts, uncles, and cousins, along with friends we’d pretty much adopted as family during the years of Sunday after-church lunches. Nanny was a famous southern cook in our small community, and there was always fried chicken, vegetables from Grandad’s garden, homemade deserts, and cornbread and biscuits. Looking back on it, I’m pretty sure Nanny stayed up nearly all night just to get the feast prepared and cooked, but to my childlike wonder, it seemed to appear, like magic, on the antique side board…

Ordinarily, when I sit down to write each week, I set aside a block of time (without distraction) to focus and to pray and to gather my thoughts. I typically do not work on the post in fits and starts, but rather hammer it out in one sitting. Today, however, in that time when I usually have quiet, my husband turned on the television and started a show depicting a small team of people who were preparing for a Victorian Christmas. In his defense, he did ask me if I minded, and I was quick to say, “Not at all, my love. I’ll be fine. I can concentrate.” Not only…

Last week I proposed to you that waiting serves a purpose in us. It teaches us to hope. How do you use the word “hope” in your everyday language? What does it mean to you? Maybe you say things like, “I hope the weather clears up” or, “Let’s hope that doesn’t happen” or, “I hope you get well.” Years ago, when my eldest son was in the fifth grade, he had a vocabulary homework assignment in which he had to match a series of words to their correct definitions. One of the words was “prayer.” He brought the paper to me, and said, “Mom, something is wrong with my homework.…

I’m a firm believer that one of life’s greatest and most exquisite treasures is the experience of anticipating a sure and delightful thing. Remember the delicious agony of waiting for Christmas Day when you were a child? Or, looking forward to that birthday when you would no longer be “something and a half”? Maybe, it was the last time you stood at the window waiting for a dear friend to arrive for lunch, and longing for sweet fellowship to be enhanced by sight, touch and smell. When we are young, these waitings seem to hang on the slow march of time. Somehow, as we grow older, these waitings become more…