So Blessed

We traveled all the way from California to Arkansas on Friday to see our wonderful family and friends that live here. We have been very much looking forward to some time away from the crazy life we have been leading these last few weeks and just resting our weary little feet, hands and heads ;)

Flying is such a great time to reflect. You see the world so differently when you are looking at it from so many thousands of feet up. It's amazing to think about how incredibly small we are. Little people living in our own little worlds. We often forget to gaze upward and see things from a broader perspective as we go about our day to day affairs. We get so ingrained in our own lives, our families, our friends, that we see only a small portion of what I believe the Lord is often whispering for us to see.

It's also amazing to me that the God who formed and fashioned the earth, who breathed life into all living things, who is all knowing and all powerful, desires to know the ins and outs of each of our lives. It's such a simple fact and truth, yet such a profound one.

I'm so glad He knows my anxious heart and desires to see peace in my life. I'm so glad that He sees my often discontent heart and desires to bring about an eternal contentment. I'm so glad He sees my sin and covers it with Himself. I'm so glad He sees my aching heart and rather than overlooking it, He comes in to mend it in the places it's broken. I'm so glad HE IS!

As tomorrow marks six months since Tyler made his new home in Heaven with the Lord, I also reflect on the very hope and wonder and significance of celebrating Christ birth in two days. We often focus on the baby in the manger, but sometimes we have to remind ourselves that that precious baby was the Lord over all creation and the King of Kings. That baby would grow to be a sinless man that would die for you and me. He is so much more than a baby laying in the hay.

I am so blessed in so many ways, but I especially see with much more clarity than years past, the preciousness of Christmas. I am so grateful to a God who did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but He humbled Himself to the position of a slave, becoming like men. He was and is God, but just as He came to live among mankind 2,000 years ago, He longs to dwell in each of our hearts and be invited in to each of our lives today and everyday.

Come Lord Jesus, come! Come dwell among us today and fills the gaps where our hearts ache, come make us whole where we are empty, come provide peace where we are restless.

I am so thankful that because of Jesus and His work on the cross, none of our stories end in death. I am so glad that Tyler's story does not end in death, but in life. What a hope it is we have! So this year, I celebrate not only Jesus' birth, but the life we all can freely partake in because of Him. May we all feel richly blessed because of this truth!