Home for Christmas

We are home, sweet home. :)

We had a lovely holiday (I’ll post some photos soon), despite the rainy weather. Just being at Nature’s is an incomparable soul balm. We got to spend quality time with my folks, the de Koks, the Prozeskys, the Groblers, the Paynes, the forest, the fynbos, the river, the beach... Awesome. And Cam, as always, absolutely loved every moment, swimming until he was blue and shivering, and building sand ‘Christmas trees’. He didn’t mind one bit the howling wind or the drizzle (or the fact that he had tonsillitis)! :) He also discovered a baboon in the house one morning. I’d made coffee for us and brought it back to bed, leaving the kitchen door open for Lola. Cam wandered through to the dining room and we heard what we thought was Sue making coffee... and dropping a few things...? Cam returned to our room and calmly informed us that ‘there was a black dog playing on the table’...! Fortunately we believed him, realised it must be a baboon, and hurtled through the house to chase out the hairy, biscuit-thieving intruder. (We don’t always believe him. Like this morning, he told me, ‘Peacocks are scared of tumble driers’...?)

Scott is not quite at beach holiday appreciation age, but he had a happy time nonetheless. He is so responsive now, and his face lights up adorably when one of us comes into a room or talks to him. He was three months old on the 20th December and he is growing like a mushroom! I just can’t get enough of his enormous blue eyes and his chubby little tightly grasping hands. Such a glorious thing, to hold and love a baby.

And now it’s Christmas! There’s nothing about Christmas that I don’t love – from Bony M to mince pies. But most of all I love that Christmas brings hope. Here’s an acronym I made up a few weeks ago for a cell group Christmas study that we did:

C – Christ incarnate; comfort
H – hope; heaven a reality
R – renewal; refreshing; restoration; rejuvenation; rejoicing
I – inspiration (to be all we were created to be); inner change and healing; intimate relationship with Him
S – salvation; sealed in the Spirit; sanctification
T – Trinity made tangible
M – motivation (to live God-honouring, abundant lives); ‘magic’ in the pure, glittering, tinselly sense of the word...; magnanimity of God in sending His own Son (I wouldn’t be able to...)
A – amazing freedom; adoration of God on high who came to dwell among the humble (shepherds!); adoption; armour of God
S – serenity (peace on earth and goodwill to all men)

And some awesome Christmas links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-1OTVpOtyc (John Piper on ‘Why Christmas?)

http://www.thomaskinkade.com/magi/servlet/com.asucon.ebiz.search.web.tk.SearchServlet

http://www.stalbanscollege.com/africanchristmas/

May this Christmas, and 2011, be a time of renewal and refreshing (2 Corinthians 4:16) as you hope in Him, the source of abundant life, peace and lasting joy.