Saturday, January 5, 2013

Joy: Twelfth Day of Christmas


Joy to the world! The Lord is come: let earth receive her king;
Let every heart prepare him room, and heaven and nature sing.

With “Joy to the world” in our hearts and minds, I invite you to join me in looking each of these twelve days for instances of the joy that runs through all of creation, especially through experiencing the beauty and wonder of God’s world.

Today’s joys included two sights that seemed just right for the last day of Christmas and the day before Epiphany.

At Christmas we talk about the true light coming into the world, and at Epiphany we talk about that light being manifested to the whole world. There have been several striking sunrises and sunsets during these twelve days of Christmas, and this morning’s sunrise seemed to be all about the light:



Right before Christmas I made a batch of date-nut cookies, cutting them into star shapes. When I took one of the sheets of cookies out of the oven, three of them fell onto the floor. While they were still warm, I poked holes in them to hang them by string for the birds and squirrels. The two stars that had been hanging from a birdfeeder disappeared, though I never saw who had eaten them or if they had simply fallen. Late this morning, though, a squirrel climbed up a trellis where I’d hung the third star and carefully removed it. Then, carrying it in his mouth, he ran up into a tree for a Twelfth Night feast.



Joy to the world! The Savior reigns; let us our songs employ, while fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains, repeat the sounding joy.


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