To Bring Him Joy

I was invited to a baby shower not too long ago in which all the attendees were assigned a letter to bring along with a usual shower gift. Evidently it is a new thing to have the alphabet on your baby's wall in all different styles, colors and fonts. So this was the idea. If you know me very well, you know that my creations very often have a deeper meaning than what you just see on the surface. So when I was assigned the letter "M", I thought; "Messiah - I could print out all the verses in the Bible that contain Messiah, over and over until I've covered the letter."  Well, when I went to research those verses, in the version that I use and that my friend uses there were only two verses!! So I then wondered if there were any names of God in the Old Testament (you know the Jehovah something names like Jireh and Rapha) that started with an M. So I searched and there is - Jehovah Mekoddishkem or the variant spelling that I went with Jehovah M'kaddesh which ...

  “ Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?” Isaiah 53:1 Christmas day in our household was weird as it usually is. Of course, we don't really know what is normal for everyone else but we assume ourselves to be weird. A lot of times we are ok with that – other times we struggle. It is who we are. We didn't get a tree put up until Sunday evening and it was never adorned with anything but the lights that came on it. (Actually, it is a simple kind of lovely.) Also, I still hadn't purchased any presents for anyone. Only one of us had achieved buying a present for every member of the family. Others were at various stages, two of us had attempted but came away empty handed. So there I was on the day our Christian culture opts to celebrate the birthday of our Saviour even though it probably is not the anniversary of His birth, asking ,with a bit of whine and angst, “God, what are we going to do? What do You...