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The Christmas China


That moment when my kids came racing down the stairs- except for the baby.  She stayed at the top because she said she wanted a photo alone!  She is her own person and moves at her own pace.  Always.  Even Christmas morning.  They grab the stockings- this year we wrapped everything.  Then my kindergartener called everyone to a halt.  We must pray first she yelled repeatedly.  I am pretty sure I owe her sweet teacher for this one as I have never prayed before presents.  It was precious.

Warmth.  Smells that beckon and tastes that delight.  Classical Christmas music dancing around us.  Flames on the screen because in Georgia it’s too hot for the real ones.  Squeals of delight and shredding of paper.  Bows flying and eyes full of wonder. Hugs and thank you’s. 

I set the dining room table that once belonged to my great grandmother with the china that once belonged to my other great grandmother.  And it felt a bit surreal… as if I was connecting with those generations before.  I found myself picturing Christmas dinner around that table 100 years ago in a farm house in Alabama near the mill.  And how my other great grandmother would have washed and wiped those same dishes with such care.  They were one of her prize possessions.  But not the main one.  Her bible, worn and tattered was most dear to her.  And I felt rich.  Not monetarily.  No.  But rich in my inheritance.  My spiritual inheritance.

Sometimes we only see the torn wrapping paper on the floor or all the things to be prepped or washed or the long list of gifts to buy.  But God sees the generations.  I can only imagine who sat around that table and what they might have said.  But He has recorded every word.  It’s not so far away for Him.  Nor is the future.  Where we will meet again.  Nor the past.  When that baby was laid in a manger and that teenage girl didn’t eat on china or have a fireplace on her flat screen or buffalo chicken dip for a snack.  Where it was cold and stinky and there were animals- real ones.  Not the battery powered pets my littles unwrapped. 


It seems so far away.  And truthfully.  Sometimes hard to imagine.  And so, well so plain uncomfortable.  Would any of us choose that for ourselves?  From our cozy beds and warm recliners, would we choose it?  And some of you have had gaps today.  Empty spaces that needed filling.  Maybe there were loved ones there to fill them.  And maybe not.  Maybe there are wonderful memories echoing but now they just echo.  Reaching from the past.  He is there, friend.  He is and was and is to come.  And He came into our broken world on purpose.  Where time erodes beauty and sin and pain steal joy.  He came with a purpose.  To break the chains of… well, all that.  To break through it all and rescue us from the echo.  The old. The wrong.  The death.  Of bodies and marriages and dreams that don’t last.  Laying there in that stinky straw was the beginning of the unfolding of a plan.  A baby whose purpose reached all the way to my 100 year old table and into the conversations around that china.  And it will reach past us into the future, too. 
So this Christmas I am enjoying the moments.  Entrusting the echoes.  Embracing the Hope.





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