Daily Advent Devotion for December 17th - Janet Harville


Advent Thoughts
By Janet Harville


Christmas does bring back waves of memorable family gatherings in my young life. People and places stand out as important reminders that my faith in God was shaped by those who loved me most.

I lived in a small town in Ohio where my maternal Grandparents also resided. I remember good food, like cranberry sauce served in a green glass bowI (I was heart broken when the bottom of that inherited dish cracked as I filled it with the hot sauce years later). There was always cabbage slaw and mincemeat pie. 

My Grandmother loved Christmas and felt each granddaughter should have a new slip, a book, and a doll each year. My cousins and I slept in feather beds at “Mom and Pop’s” house on Christmas Eve and we were sure we heard sleigh bells as we drifted off to sleep. Next morning my daddy would carry me downstairs where there would be piles of presents stacked beneath my stocking which hung from a nail that was there all year long, anticipating another Christmas. Usually we children would get to play in the parlor, and my mother would often gather us around the piano to sing. Late in the afternoon, after a nap (on which Mom insisted), we would have leftover turkey and more pie before we piled all of the presents into our cars and headed home. It was natural to leave our presents spread under the Christmas tree at home for several days where we could admire each one and remember those who had given us something special.

In all of those memories, loving faces appear: a little grandmother who let me cut up her Sears and Roebuck catalog for paper doll dresses, a quiet grandfather who sipped cooled coffee from his saucer at breakfast, caring parents who knew I had to have an Airplane Hostess Outfit to dress up in, special cousins who played "circus" with me before nap time.

This is my Family Tree, small but evergreen, lighted with loving hearts that radiated from feasting, sharing, caring, resting. I did not know that my life was being shaped to accept our Lord as my personal Savior through those family times, but now I can see that God was enfolding me in His circle of love as grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins were intertwined with JESUS, our Brother, born on Christmas Day.

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