Craving A Slow Season

This season, I want slow. Mugs of creamy coffee turned cold because conversation rambled on instead. Evenings spent curled up on the couch staring at the tree, lights blurring in sleepy eyes. Mornings surrounded by Bibles and books and pages full of slanted script.

Our hearts needs slow. We don't need more, we don't need hurry, we don't need busy. We need rest, peace, slow, quiet. The songs sing it, our voices join in, but do we welcome it? Do we open up to the silent night, the holy night? Or does the frenzy take us over?

The best of winter, the best of Christmas, is the way it draws us in and close. Around fireplaces, around bright trees, around a manger scene, around a kitchen table, around a living room, around a sanctuary. The cold is outside, harsh and bitter, but we are welcomed in toward the warmth, toward the heart of all goodness and glory. We are invited in to the stillness, the silence of that holy night, invited to shed our stresses as we shed our coats, and sit before a Savior as he sleeps.

The nativity scene isn't a decoration, it's a declaration: our King has come. The infinite as an infant. The Savior as a swaddled babe.

Let's rest in that. Sit slow as that truth floods us. Gather together with the ones we love and share the sweetness of this season. 

Our souls need this. I've never felt that so strongly as now, that we need this rest, this waiting, this expectant anticipation. We try to race to Christmas, rushing through December, but it burns us out and steals our joy. Like the ones who traveled slow and steady to visit a family far away gathered around a manger, let's journey slow and steady to Christmas, absorbing the beauty and the truth and the mystery of it all.