Dark into Light, Rich into Richer

Today we entered into our Advent journey- a journey from darkness into light. 

A friend reminded me today of an old practice that I have fallen away from.  For a long time I had a standing “date” to meet a good friend online each night around 10 and we would chat about our day, often mentioning what “made us rich” that day.  When my girls came along, this also became a part of our night time ritual.  I would ask, “What made you rich today?”, and one of the girls was the scribe and we kept track of it in a little notebook.  Somewhere in this house I feel sure those notebooks that we filled with riches are still floating around.  While I can’t put my hands on them right now, I can tell you with certainty that you could look through every page and you would be hard pressed to find mention of anything that money could buy.  There were plenty of cardinal sightings and visits with friends or books we were reading.  But never once a mention of “stuff”.  How I hope that my girls never reframe their understanding of wealth.

That said, this is my list for today:

• Walking into the church and finding it lovingly prepared, the stage fully set, to guide us through the journey of Advent together. 
• Dinner tonight of wonderful Ethiopian food shared with a large group of church friends and our Eritrean refugee family in a local restaurant.  It was toasty and cozy inside and the food was great and the conversation interesting, and we were all beautiful at that big table.
• A brief street corner visit with neighbor friends.
• Feeling well fed and well loved and ready to rest to rise to meet a new week.

Thanks be to God for the wonderful gifts of this day.