Advent 6 Christmas Weather

Weather.  If you don't like it, wait a minute.

My brother-in-law in Omaha was trapped inside for two days over Thanksgiving weekend because they had an ice storm.  Thanks be for football. 

On Wednesday, at the same time I was weeding the flower beds by my front door, my sister Nance was watching snowflakes trace the outlines of the trees in her yard in Illinois. 

Pulling weeds is not my favorite thing—although it can be very therapeutic—but I was really enjoying myself because being able to weed in December felt like such a treat.  The soil was chilly but soft, and the weeds looked bright green and thriving, so when I spotted them en route to placing the wreaths on the doors I decided to take twenty minutes and pluck them from their happy home.  (The weeds, not the wreaths.)  The alyssum I spared, leaving it like little white explosions in the pots that flank the front door.

For a completely different weather experience, our son and his wife went to Grand Cayman today; we look forward to pictures of turquoise and purple and fuschia Christmas lights closely wrapped around the trunks of palm trees:  Christmas Caribbean style.  A high of 88 degrees there today, according to my phone.  Way too hot, right?

The temperature in Jerusalem has been in the fifties this past week; it’s supposed to be in the very low sixties next week.  Hardly “the bleak midwinter” but certainly not conducive to riding around on donkeys and sleeping in barns.  If you were thinking of doing that. 

Speaking of Jerusalem, I wonder if there are any decorations in the Church of the Nativity in nearby Bethlehem?  If there are they must look quite different from the Christmas trees and poinsettias here in the States--or so I imagine.  Palm branches, maybe?  Although perhaps that would smack too much of Palm Sunday.... 

All around the world, people are preparing.  They are preparing differently but they are preparing for the same thing:  Immanuel, God with us.  

There's a lovely Church of England hymn, The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, Is Ended, that speaks of the whole earth as one praying community:

As o'er each continent and island

The dawn leads on another day,

The voice of prayer is never silent,

Nor dies the strain of praise away.

The sun that bids us rest is waking

Our brethren 'neath the western sky,

And hour by hour fresh lips are making

Thy wondrous doings heard on high.
 

OR, as somebody much less formally theological than the Church of England once put it:

Welcome Christmas. Bring your cheer,

Cheer to all Whos, far and near.

Christmas Day is in our grasp

So long as we have hands to grasp.

Christmas Day will always be

Just as long as we have we.

Welcome Christmas while we stand

Heart to heart and hand in hand.
~Dr. Seuss

Any weather, any landscape, any time zone.