O Tidings of Comfort and Joy

Sometimes at this time of year, I have huge mood swings.

I go from happy carefree dancing around with my kids to fun Christmas music

to bawling when I read them A Tale of Three Trees.

Really, who can read that without crying?

I get so excited with Simon about all the fun Christmas things, then I grab him and get all teary-eyed telling him what a gift it was, that God became a little boy .... "Think about what it means, Simon! Jesus was a boy, living here on earth, just like you, so when you pray, you have a great High Priest who can sympathize with you ...." Well, I am a bit clumsy with my words with 5 year old Simon, but it is so exciting despite my articulations.

And ... here is something exciting for you ....

related to the word .... "comfort"

Maybe you'll think of it when you sing,

"O tidings of comfort and joy...."

this season

"God's comfort doesn't walk on tiptoe, as in a sickroom; it marches.

There is steel at its backbone.

It is a bugle call for reinforcements.

It makes us remember that the word 'comfort' is derived

from the word fortis - which means strong.

God comforts us with strength by adding resources.

His way is not to whittle down the problem but to build up the resources."

-- Catherine Marshall in To Live Again - a book I planned on skimming but had to give it more attention than I had planned

And from one of her late husband's (Peter Marshall) sermons:

"There is no hint or intimation anywhere in the Gospel

that they who follow Him shall never hunger

or be out of work

or be left alone.

No, there is no hint of such immunity....

But there is the promise of something far better....

the promise of deliverance...

not from these things...

but in these things.

There is an air of reality about the Gospel....

It is not a fairy tale in which Cinderella's rags

are changed into the robes of a queen...

but rather a promise in which Cinderella in her rags

becomes more queenly."