Yet as I sit and type this post I am fretting over a rather long to-do list. Actually this post was procrastinated so that I could get some of the list done. Somehow I think that if I put stuff on a list it will "magically" get done. Like a bathroom remodel taking place two days before Christmas. Yeah, not going to happen. I am not going to be waking up on Christmas morning to a new sink and fresh paint. If I'm lucky it will get done before school starts. Even still there is a lot to do. Ahem..wrapping presents and sending cards (hey cards will make it before the 12th day of Christmas). And it's not like I can set aside all the normal stuff of every day in order to do the Holiday stuff. Laundry and dishes still pile up, meals need cooking, kiddo's and dogs still need bathing. And who can forget the floor, it needs sweeping multiple times a day because of the mud that gets tracked in, and the dog hair. Keeping up with four kids is hard this time of year. I love it. But it's hard when school is out and Christmas is right around the corner. They are not wrapped up into Santa. Well, the two youngest kinds of "believe" in Santa this year, but according to them the guys at the mall are fake. So one thing we don't have to worry about is standing in line for two hours to get a shotty over priced picture. However, this also means that my four precious sinning children can't be fooled into being on their best behavior either. The Wagner house has been more like the opening scene of The Grinch these past few days.
So have I made it through my to-do list? Have I checked it twice? Nope. And the list seemingly just gets longer. It a good thing that Christmas is 12 days long, right? The advice of many may be to just keep things simple. But simple can be really complicated sometimes, just take a gander on Pinterest. Simple is simply not simple, but often times just another way of keeping up appearances. It's just way to easy to get caught up in the details and the way the perfect family Christmas looks on those grocery store commercials that are so sentimental they make me cry. Yes, I'm a sap! It seems more like just rushing through the season, going through the motions when the simple details of ideology take over my life.
So What Should Really Matter?
Yes, I still have a ton of stuff to do, and a good bit I want to do but... It's not all going to happen. Who cares if there's a huge pile of laundry in my room on Christmas morning. It's all just little details. There really only a few things I care about. Primarily going to church and receiving Christ's gift of Word and Sacrament. After all God didn't wait for us to to complete some lofty list before He sent His Son. That baby was born because we can't be perfect, make things perfect, keep the law, or simply get our lives in order enough. The Word became flesh to dwell with His creation to take up our ideology and sinfulness to give us His perfect righteousness. God's simple gift is His Lamb. So as we gather to worship tonight on Christmas Eve and tomorrow on Christmas day, we receive Christ simple gifts of baptismal waters, absolution, and the supper of simple wine and bread, His very body and blood, for the forgiveness of our sins. We get a foretaste of the feast to come as we hear and sing the words of the angles. Glory to God in the highest!
Having the peace of Christ I can slow down and enjoy the blessings of this Christmas time. I can then simply enjoy my family. I can take comfort in the forgiveness that they also have received. I can teach my kids to be grateful and kind to each other. I sit and enjoy time with my wonderful husband. We can sing together. We can celebrate. We can marvel at the Christmas lights. There is no need to fret that our house is not the image of a magazine or that all of the Holiday events are not perfectly orchestrated. It's a good thing that Christmas is 12 days! Many of the other details, like making cookies and fudge, will be nice additions to stretching out our celebration of the birth of our Savior.
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