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| Toast on the Hearth, Carlton Alfred Smith |
Getting back into routine after being away for a few days for a Christmas visit with my parents and sisters in Alabama. Amidst the baking of three batches of biscotti to share and other holiday goings on, Mom and I enjoyed going to her favorite quilt shop and starting to work on her wall quilt. I turned a little coupon money into a few lovely cuts of fabric. It's fun to visit quilt shops and to savor their individual character. The weather was unusually good this time of the year for traveling, and although distance is no friend to families for a lot of reasons, I'm thankful for interstates and scenic back roads. Looking forward to a visit with my daughters right after Christmas and hoping the weather is conducive to their travel as well. Many times they've come or gone over treacherous conditions.
I was chatting with the postal clerk yesterday as I dropped off some Christmas cards, and we were discussing our current culture's Christmas. It takes a concerted effort to avoid it and to keep Christ as the center of celebration. I'm convinced staying out of the stores as much as possible is a great benefit toward that end. Oh, but that doesn't include quilt shops! I think one of the things I really like about them is the human touch that naturally goes with the fabric as we gladly offer labors of love through it.
Reading from The Incomparable Christ this morning and sharing just a brief paragraph with you.
The mystery of the incarnation will never be fully explained until "we know even as we are known." But it is not the only mystery in this mysterious world, as Lecerf said, "The presence of mystery is the footprint of the divine." We are daily surrounded by mysterious facts, which are facts nevertheless. We may not understand how Jesus could be at the same time fully divine and yet really human, but that need be no insuperable obstacle to faith. The fact has been believed by many of the greatest minds of the ages.
~ J. Oswald Sanders
Painting ~ Toast on the Hearth, Carlton Alfred Smith 1853-1946
Wiki Commons public domain
