Challenge Central: a CBC devotional
By: Laurie Korstanje
What stands 12 inches tall, is made out of ceramic, has a light dusting of snow, and twinkling lights?
You might say a ceramic Christmas tree, I say memories.
I opened a box on Christmas day, a gift from my sweetheart. What was inside made me tear up with joy. It was that tree that I described. Why would something like that make me so emotional?
Thirty years ago, when my mom moved here from B.C., she brought with her a ceramic Christmas tree that she had literally made herself in a ceramics class.
Since there was no room for a standard tree in her apartment, that little tree was perfect. Every year she brought it out and stood it on her side table. She even managed to put a few presents around it as long as they were small.
Every January, she packed all her decorations away in a Rubbermaid bin until the next year.
She moved into my home eleven years later and her decorations remained packed away, she enjoyed ours instead.
When she moved back to B.C. in 2010, there seemed no point in taking that bin with her to my sister’s home, so it stayed.
Missing her that next Christmas, I made a point in getting out that old Rubbermaid bin, excited to put out her little Christmas tree, but it wasn’t there.
I called my sisters and asked if they had it or knew where it was, neither of them knew what had happened to it.
I think as we age, we become more nostalgic. We look back on things, some at the time seem inconsequential, but years later they seem more important.
That is what happened with that little ceramic Christmas tree. It wasn’t that a piece of painted ceramic was important, it was that my mom had made it and she was important.
This year Casey, aware of my fruitless search for that tree, got me one for Christmas. I appreciate that he thought hard trying to remember just what it looked like and hunted til he found just the right one. When I opened that box, I wasn’t just holding a bought ceramic Christmas tree, I was holding memories and that is what was so special.
A tree covered in tiny lights and snow. I took it into the room we spend a lot of time in and turned it on. The tiny lights sparkled in all different colours. As I stared the little glowing tree my memories took me back to sitting in my mother’s living room where there was acceptance, and love and peace. Those feelings are just as palpable now as they were then.
It reminds me of a verse in Galatians:
Gal 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,[23] gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. (ESV)
We’re at the beginning of a new year and I have packed that little tree away for now. (Goodness, I hope this one doesn’t disappear.)
I realize that only God knows what the year will hold for us. But I also know that come what may the fruit of the Spirit is guaranteed to us. Ask, and you will receive.
In John 16, Jesus tells his disciples that a time was coming that they would not see him, and that they would be sorrowful because he was gone. But then he says: John 16:22 … but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. (ESV)
So this year, whatever you face, whatever you do, let your hearts rejoice in Christ where you will find acceptance and love and peace, evermore.
