ponder

It starts early in the season for me, this preparing and packing.  I make lists and shop and then wrap and pack.

^{For me it is a race to get done.  Many years ago, I had this crazy dream that literally haunts me to this day.  I wake up in the dream to Christmas eve and have slept for so many days I have nothing for the children’s Christmas.  I am quite literally the Rip Van Winkle of Christmas.  In my dream, I am terrified of the reaction of my children to a gift-less Christmas.  I race around the house wrapping little items I have stored away from years previous.} 

^{It is an oddity that this dream/nightmare dictates my behavior but each year we shop in October, wrap in early November, pack and seal our treasures in plain brown boxes and then delight on December 25 to see boxes opened whose contents we literally cannot remember.} 

^{I am good at packing.  Christmas afternoon, I begin to store ribbons and bows.  By New Years, the storage tubs come out and we carefully bag ornaments and wrap china and store wreaths waiting on the next 11 months for the festivities to begin again.}

^{I am crazy in love with asking the kids dozens of times what surprised them.  What they will remember about the holidays,  what was their favorite event etc.  I hope to pack up memories we will relive for years to come.}

^{I want to pack the glory of this day in my heart.}

^{I wonder how?}

^{This seems a magical time where the tyranny of urgent cannot triumph over the day.  It is more than a day off work, it is a day of reflection of pondering of procrastination and joy.}

^{I think of Mary “pondering in her heart.”}

^{How do we become ponderers for more than one day in the year?}

^{This day, this event that we hold sacred above all other days, how do we store it into our heart and let it seep into the days and weeks to come.} 

^{I think of this private place that Mary found and wonder if I can find it too.}

^{How do I find a place in my heart where only my thoughts and Jesus live?}

^{Grief, joy, expectation, wonder, disappointment, failure, frustration….  how do we keep them for Him such that He can fashion them into what brings Him glory?}

^{Isn’t that the essence of it all?  This living, isn’t it a journey of experience married with the joy of our salvation?  It feels like a tug of war.  The natural with the supernatural.  The mundane with the miraculous.  The transformation from isolation to salvation through the gift of the Holy Spirit.}

^{How does it seem so clear on one perfect day and so oblique the next?}

^{I think we rely too heavily on the preacher to teach it.  This dance of pondering is for two,  us and Him.}

^{It is the storing up of truth insolating against tyranny.  It is the runner training for the race.  It is the wonderer never losing site of the wonder.  It is the allowing of Him into the secret places.  The inaudible understanding of a Good the outpaces the bad and a Truth the usurps every lie.} 

^{It is the quiet space of glory;  it is the heart that ponders.}