the christmas road: a repost

Grandma is still hanging on. She continues to decline, but I find it so fascinating that only in birth and death do we really have no control over the timing of things. In a day when everything is scheduled, booked, and reserved, unassisted birth and death come with a whole lot of mystery. We wait expectantly for life to naturally come. We wait peacefully for death to naturally happen.

I came across this blog and wanted to share it too. It's one of my very, very favorites. And a great post to kick off the start of the Christmas Season.

My grandma sends a devotional email to her family almost every day. Recently she wrote about another christmas memory:

Merry Christmas, dear family. We had a little coating of snow last night. Reminds me of years ago when snow was always expected and accepted at Christmas. Dad and Ed Hybbert would plow roads thru the fields where the snow wasn't so deep in order that we could worship on Christmas at Immanuel. Think of all the fences they had to cut and then repair later.

Just picture that! New roads just for Christmas! Plowed through farm fields three miles away.

I love the community picture this paints, neighbors working together all going to a white steeple church in Southern Minnesota to celebrate the birth of the Christ Child. Weather didn't stop them...they busted up fences on the way.

What a glorious example they were to their children, getting them to church, raising them in the faith, believing with might that God is indeed with us.

Haste! Haste! To bring him praise!
The babe, the son of Mary.