I had a low moment today.
Everything I touched seemed to fall apart. I felt utterly pathetic, unimportant, and trivial. These low moments are becoming familiar:
- The clean table gets messy again
- another new toy breaks
- freshly cleaned laundry mysteriously gets unfolded and mixed up with dirty clothes
Rinse, repeat. Day in, day out.
Does any of it matter? Surely these mundane tasks cannot be what God has in store for my life of following Jesus, right?
This is why moms need Christmas. Because Christmas reminds us how important the small things truly are. And moms are EXPERTS on small things. My foot was basically married to a lego for 12 milliseconds today and I cursed all of Denmark (where Legos originated). Whether it’s cheerios or legos or tiny sticky bits of half-chewed banana stuck to your floor, you probably feel weary more often than wonder these days.
Thank goodness for advent.
Whether you observe an advent wreath or calendar, you are probably counting down the days of December to the 25th. If we let it, this 5-week journey could remind us how important God sees the small things:
- The untidy atmosphere, like a stable in the cold.
- The sometimes perpetual chaos, like a busy Bethlehem.
- The pathetic and trivial and seemingly meaningless, like being born into a carpenter’s family instead of a king’s.
This is our Emmanuel: God with us in the small things. To redeem them. To restore joy in them. To place utmost importance on faithfulness, not impressiveness.
Because Jesus did the impressive stuff on the cross, so we don’t have to. He also did the ordinary stuff, so we would have the power and perspective to do them with joy also. (see Hebrews 2)
Leave the cheerio dust on the table for a moment, open your Bible, and find yourself lost in the wonder of someone else’s chaos for a moment: Mary’s shock, Joseph’s predicament, the inn-keeper’s house busting at the seams, the shepherds uncontainable excitement, Jesus own diminishing into our mess (Matthew and Luke are good places to start).
I pray you can rediscover all the wonders of Emanuel this December.
xoxo,
Becky
PS: This Advent video series from Axis sparked this renewing of my perseverance in the small things. I highly recommend it for everyone, especially families with teens in the home. Watch it together and find the right fit for your family’s observation of advent. Also, feel absolute freedom to start the advent journey a couple days late if needed! You will still be immensely blessed!
Speaking of families with teens: this Bible study makes a fantastic Christmas present for the young woman in your life. Give her the gift of discovering and celebrating her true identity in Jesus! Recommended for ages 14-21, this study also comes with a Mother-Daughter Guide so you can enjoy the journey together!
Leave A Comment