Month: December 2025

Holiday Spirit

Are you listening to carols on the radio? Have you bought all your presents? Are they wrapped? Are you headed to a Christmas party or luncheon or gathering? Do you have your festive clothes laid out? Have you made cookies? Is your mantle decorated? Are you in the Christmas spirit?

I am exhausted just writing this! Do I have time to write this? Do you have time to read it?

We all know that this is not what the true Christmas Spirit is, all this hustle and bustle and decorating and eating and gifting. But the pull is strong. We remember our friends and family and want to celebrate with them. We want to hear that glorious music, and the fun, silly songs as well. We want to cry when Clarence gets his wings and laugh at the leg lamp. We want to make those cookies with Grandmother’s recipe. We want to don our red and green attire and sip champagne.

All of this is wonderful if exhausting.

There have been Christmases when I was better at finding the quiet moments to contemplate the incarnation of God. There have been Christmases when I never found that moment, never took that moment.

I was at a lovely Christmas luncheon the other day and a young couple was entertaining us. In the middle of their rendition of “All I want for Christmas is You,” a wave of grief overtook me. Fortunately, all eyes were on the singers as my throat constricted and the tears threatened to roll down my cheeks. I can’t have what I would really like, at least not in this life. My husband is gone; my heart is broken and empty.

Perhaps that’s what all this merry making is about, filling the void in our hearts.

“What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.”
– Blaise Pascal, Pensées VII(425), 1672

This was true 350 years ago and it is true today. We cannot find happiness with the Spirit of Christmas. We can only find happiness, joy, and meaning, with the Spirit of Christ.

We will put our holiday decorations away in a few weeks, send our families back to their own homes, and try to lose the extra pounds we gained eating all those cookies. We’ll shift our thoughts from commemorating 2025 to embracing 2026. But that hole in my heart will still be there unless I invite His Holy Spirit to fill it.

Do you sense Him calling you? In the middle of all the celebrating and hustle and bustle, do you hear the still, small voice of God calling you?

Listen! I am standing at the door knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come into you and eat with you and you with me. Revelation 3:20.

And not just for a Holiday meal, forever.

And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age. Matthew 28:20.

Are you in the Christmas Spirit? Take a moment this season and let the Spirit of Christ be in you. That is the only way that the infinite abyss of our hearts can be filled.

Love in Christ, Betsy

A Mouse in the House

I was watching tv the other night when a mouse ran across the hardwood floor in front of me. I froze. My blood pressure skyrocketed, and I felt my heart in my throat. Disgust gripped me over this two-inch mammal. It had to go.

For years I had cats. To be fair, I probably had mice then too, but the cats kept them at bay. When my last cat passed away at nineteen, I chose to replace my living room floors and furniture instead of replacing her. I finally have a fur and scratch free living room, but I also have a mouse.

I put out those friendly traps that supposedly poison the rodents, but this one seems immune. (At least I hope it is only one, although that sounds naïve.) I put out the ‘humane kill’ boxes and baited them to no avail. Every day I looked for signs of its presence and cleaned more of my kitchen, my closets, any potential hiding place.

And still, I would catch glimpses of it running down the hall, triggering my panic response. At night, my dreams would be nightmares of mice. (If only a nutcracker prince would kill them all!)

I finally laid down those sticky pads in multiple corners and around all the bait traps. It worked, but slowly. What a horrible way to die. Despite my aversion to rodents, I felt sorry that it had to die that way, stuck in place. But nothing else worked. And it had to go. For my sanity; for the cleanliness and sanctity of my home.

Do you think God looks at our sin that way?

There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that run to evil, a lying witness who testifies falsely, and one who sows discord in a family. Proverbs 6:16-19.

Do you think He tries to rid His house of these things? Not just his church, but me, one of the houses where His Spirit lives? When I look at another with ‘haughty eyes,’ with disdain and contempt, does His pulse race and His stomach turn? When I ‘embellish the truth,’ does He set out traps to catch me in my lies? And when I ‘outsmart God’ in His attempts to humanely rid my life of sinful ways, is He left only painful and miserable ways to get rid of them?

I hope that I can be diligent in cleaning out my internal closets and cupboards. I pray that God will show me the evidence, the signs of sin’s presence in my life. And having seen my actions through God’s eyes, I pray God gives me the strength to keep my sin at bay.

My apologies if you are one of those people who decorate for Christmas with cute little stuffed mice dressed in holiday garb. I know at some level that mice are just doing what they do, that they enter my home for warmth and food and safety from hawks. But this is not the place for them. My home will not be a sanctuary for mice.

And my life will not be a sanctuary for sin and demons. I want my life to reflect God’s love for me, for you. I, like those football players, want to say. “First, all glory goes to God our savior.” I want to get rid of my sin for my sanity, for the cleanliness and sanctity of my home.

Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in a way everlasting. Psalm 139:23-24.

I may get a cat in the spring. I could use help keeping the rodents out of my home. I thank God for the Holy Spirit to help me keep the sins out.

Love in Christ, Betsy

Planting Garlic

I planted my garlic this past weekend. It’s got me thinking about the seeds we plant in the “off season,” when all the focus is elsewhere.

December is a time when I am consumed with gatherings – family, friends, every group of which I am a part gathers this time of year. Ostensibly to celebrate the birth of Jesus the Christ, but usually just for the opportunity to dress up and gather, eat, drink, and perhaps exchange gifts. It’s a time to celebrate here and now, our family and friends. Anything beyond the here and now tends to focus on the past, childhood memories, family traditions.

The church calls this time Advent, the coming, and encourages us to look forward. We are asked to prepare ourselves in anticipation of the wonders God is about to perform. He planted a seed, the unformed nucleus of God enfolded into a perishable body, which grew into a man and lived among us for thirty-some years. He gave us a small child who changed the world, whose Spirit continues to change the world.

The word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory of the father’s only son, full of grace and truth. John 1:14

This is the week when I put away the pumpkins and fall colors and bring out the red and green. (I know, some of you are far ahead of me on this task.) And, in the middle of this, I planted garlic bulbs that I won’t dig up until summer.

Garlic cloves need to be planted after the first frost and before the ground is frozen solid. Like many bulbs, they need to spend a season underground in the cold, storing up nutrients and preparing themselves to grow. Unlike my sugar snaps and tomatoes, I need to plant garlic long before its growing season. I plant in the cold looking forward to the hot sun and lazy days of summer.

God planted a seed in my heart as well when I was cold-hearted and consumed with my immediate needs and wants. That seed took a long time to bear fruit in me. Now I think of the seeds that I have planted, that I am planting in my own life and in the lives of those around me. It may seem pointless, burying a seed in the cold and dark and trusting that God will transform it into fruit for His kingdom. But that is how seeds work.

Amid all our celebrating and gathering and living our lives, we can take a moment to plant a seed, a seed of love, a seed of kindness, a seed of connection. We can trust that God can transform that seed into a relationship with Him, even if we never see it or know of it.

This is Advent, the coming of Christ into the world. Not only as a one-time event two thousand years ago, but also as a daily event here and now. Christ comes to live with us, within us, within those around us. Perhaps all that is needed to sense His presence in the world is for us to take a moment and plant a seed.

You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God. 1 Peter 1:23.

I hope to plant more than garlic this Advent season. I hope to plant love. I hope God uses me to answer someone’s prayer. I pray that another will see how much God loves them through my words and actions.

Gather in celebration this Advent. Gather in love and plant some seeds.

Love in Christ, Betsy