This is the ‘Love Month’!   :)   Not only this month, but sometimes I am just flooded with thoughts of all the people I love – too many to mention here.   But, included in those is family, of course.  I have just spent considerable time with my grandbabies, and oh, how we love each other!   And then, outside the ‘norm’, I think of how much I loved, and still love all the homeless folks I worked with for three and a half years in Providence, RI.  I know you know how much I love ‘my’ babies and kids (orphans) in Romania.  I am IN love with them!  And, way ‘outside the box’, people I don’t even know but of whom I read – including Prisoners for Christ in countries around the world.

It was such a cold, blustery Sunday evening several years ago when my boys and I were on our way to church across town for the service.  It was that ‘bitter cold’ that a January offers us in New England.  It wasn’t just freezing, it was literally below freezing!  And besides that we had so much snow that the banks where the plows had tried to keep us free to move about were piled so high that it was nearly impossible to see around a corner to get out of a street.  And, some of the back roads were plowed to only a car and a half-width with the snow frozen on both sides.  These were snow-packed back roads with only an occasional sighting of a glimpse of tar.

I just love the Holiday Season.  From a child, it started with Thanksgiving.  We would draw the cornucopias, fat, colorful turkeys and boy and girl pilgrims at school.  On Thanksgiving Day, the older ones would watch football games most of the day.  And then ultimately, we would stuff ourselves silly on holiday.  The next thing we knew, we would be all a-twitter about buying Christmas gifts, finding and decorating just the perfect Christmas tree, hanging up decorations, baking Christmas goodies, and getting ready at church for the Christmas pageant.

O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever!   –  Psalm 30.12b

I read this recently from a Ravi Zacharias writing – that for the Greeks, it was knowledge.  For the Romans, it was glory.  But for the Hebrews, it was light.  He used several verses including, “The people that sat in darkness have seen a great light.”  (Matthew 4:16), “There was the true light which coming into the world, enlightens every man.”  (John 1:9), and “For God Who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness’, is the One Who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”  (II Corinthians 4:6)