When I looked, it was clear a Christmas cactus was brilliantly blooming despite me! Oh! it was better than a Christmas card! Throughout the year I barely kept it watered; yet out it popped— blooming its fool head off. 

One of our two Christmas cactuses is blooming despite of me! (Or, to spite me! LOL)  Showering me with abundance and color, this cactus almost gobsmacked me with its stunning number of blooms. 

As I await its sunporch companion, which is lagging behind — but budding —I am listening to The John Rutter Christmas Album.

hard to spot — see under watermark!

Familiar carols, haunting and hopeful underscore the season’s crazy, wonderful, scary spirit which engulfs me.

What I Mean

The run up to Christmas is crazy even in an autumn’s garden.  

It’s just crazy how much we want to  pack into the last four weeks of a troubling year! 

So much I should be doing; more that I won’t be doing, and all I so look forward to enjoying. 

The weeks before Christmas are wonderful, though, reminding me God so loved the world He gave His Son — in a way that both baffles and thrills me still. 

The Holy Family by Henry Ossawa Tanner

But  Advent — the time the church prepares for celebrating Christ’s birth — is scary.

The season of waiting creates joy, wonder, and sobriety. And so is a scary time —  reminding me of what our neighborhood Bible study is learning through Daniel.  (Talk about SCARY!  See his visions!) 

We can be caught up in circumstances that can separate us for all we know. Maybe not like the Babylon Exile.

Even so,  some circumstances in which we suddenly find ourselves can test every nerve.

But God — is always working out details; that’s what I relearned in studying Daniel; sometimes in our midst — and always beyond what we could ask or imagine.  (Not that Gabriel has shown up.) 

The surprising abundant cactus blooms  have been ambassadors of hope and a wee bit of JOY.  They are more eloquent than so many of this seasons’ greetings and more constant. 

For happiness one needs security, but joy can spring like a flower even from the cliffs of despair.– Anne Morrow Lindbergh 

 Oh dear friend — thank you for reading — As we are each waiting for understanding, and courage,  may the God of all hope meet you right where you are, and surprise you with His help and love! 

from Garden of Bright Images