This is the third Sunday of Advent. So, how are your Christmas preparations going? Have you finished your gift shopping or gift making? Perhaps you are marking off the days on your Advent calendar and already enjoying some of the Christmas treats. How can you be sure they are good enough for your beloved family unless you sample them yourself? I recommend trying more than one sample to be completely sure.
One Christmas, two of our youngest grandchildren found a tin of Grandma’s cookies and took on the arduous task of testing them out for the rest of the family in a corner of the empty dining room. No official count was taken, but they pronounced them suitable for the rest of us. Fortunately, Grandma had other tins well hidden from the junior testers. What could be more an expression of joy than a bunch of decorated cookies shared with a beloved cousin, especially if no one else knew until later?
In all ways great and small, may you feel the hope, love, joy, and peace of the Christmas season. If you can, may you especially sense the JOY of Christmas, as perhaps you did as a child.