joy….to give or to receive…

“I don’t think of all the misery,
but of the beauty that still remains.”
Anne Frank

(the work of a day / Julie Cook / 2017)

Thanksgiving afternoon, I was complaining to my daughter-n-law, dreading the notion
of having to begin the yearly arduous ritual, of “putting up” Christmas.
Some people will go into a feeding frenzy of all things consumerism and
I will go into light mode….

“Why do we do this?” I lamented.
“Why do we work our butts off, schlepping stuff up and down from basements
and attics every year….

Why do we move all this stuff in while moving all the other stuff out…
making way for holiday paraphernalia…
just to turn around to then put it all away again in just a couple of weeks???”

I lament so because I am the one who pretty much does it all….
all the lights,
all the decorating,
all the tree,
all the buying,
all the wrapping,
all the cooking,
all the cleaning etc…
because bless my husband’s heart,
he runs a retail business.

Suffice it to know that our lives are not our own right now…
nor will they be…not until about the middle of January.

Neither my husband or I truly “get” this Black Friday absurdity that consumes
this nation of ours.
He does nothing out of the ordinary for it and I don’t even acknowledge it.
Something about the wantoness of all the materialism consuming this country of ours
just oozes of emptiness.

Why do people stand in line for hours on end when they should actually be
home just enjoying Thanksgiving, family, time off, being outside, being inside, being someplace other than a strip mall, a big mall, etc…
oddly preferring to scoop up “stuff”????
Stuff no one really “needs” to survive.

Places like Syria just keep coming to mind when I see cars parked 4 deep,
wrapped around parking lots, just so folks can buy a flat screen TV or clothes,
a mixer or whatever it is they think they JUST have to have in order to survive Christmas…
along with all the other trivial things no one really needs in order to survive.
Like I say, I just don’t get it…..

So my daughter-n-law reminds me, “well you know he really does appreciate it”
He being my only child and son who was born a week before Christmas.
Christmas is his official holiday….but certainly not his dad’s.

The night our son was born, oh so many moons ago, in the wee hours of a December Monday morning…my poor husband had to leave us shortly after the birth so he could go
open the store and work all day…after having been up all night.
Missing his only child, his new son’s first day of living…
He is remorseful all these many years later, but it was how he fed us,
and for that we give thanks.
Yet how does one ever get back time?
They don’t.

In this family of ours, there is definitely some resentment concerning the consuming madness of holiday shopping…. on all sorts of levels…
and yet our son just adores Christmas…what are those odds?!

Sigh…..

So as I was lamenting, my daughter-n-law tells me about a movie they recently went
to see —-a movie I would never ever consider watching.

They are only in their late 20’s—they watch things on television and at the movies
that I pretty much consider toxic—
of which I hope they too will soon realize as toxic…but until then,
I just pray….

My daughter-n-law relayed a line from the movie which actually resonated with me….

She said that in the movie the main character was grousing, much like I was, about
this whole Christmas business.
In walks the mother who deadpan responds….
“don’t you know, mothers don’t receive
joy, theirs is but to give joy” (a paraphrase)

It hit me like a ton of bricks.

An understanding as to what exactly a lot of this is really all about.
It hit in certainly not a martyresque sort of understanding…but a deeper sense of understanding.

It is an understanding that none of this is about me….never has been.

It’s not about what “I” can get,
not about what I can buy,
not about what I can have….
nor is it about what I want….
but rather it’s about what I can give.

It’s about the ability to give verses the ability to get and receive….
And that giving has nothing to do with stuff—not of things gathered
from a store, or from on-line or from any place else for that matter.
Nothing tangible….

It has nothing to with with savvy shopping, marketing strategy, deals, door busters
or the madness that has become what we know as Christmas in the modern world.
A time that won’t even allow most schools to utter the word “Christmas”
but rather “winter break.”

What this season is about…isn’t about all this decorating,
or about all this consuming, or about all this buying and wrapping of “stuff”….

It’s not about the amassing or consuming….or materialism.
It’s not about the biggest gift, the best deals, the nicest trip to some
exotic wonderland.
Rather it’s about what we can offer and what we can give…

Because the original notion of this holiday Christmas business wasn’t about
Black Fridays and sale margins…it wasn’t about cyber Monday’s or on-line surfing…

It was about a gift…. but not a gift in the modern mindset of what constitutes
as a gift…

It was a single tiny gift that was actually given in order to save…
to save both you and I, as well as all of mankind, actually from ourselves….

He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything
we have done but because of his own purpose and grace.
This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time..
2 Timothy 1:9

leap second

“How did it get so late so soon?”
― Dr. Seuss

(Prague’s Astronomical clock / Julie Cook / 2012)

Huh?
Yeah, I thought the same thing.
What in the heck is a leap second??
Maybe it’s some kind of newly discovered leap frog, or maybe it’s something like a nano second or perhaps some new scientific discovery???

I actually caught glimpse of an article yesterday about this leap second business and curious, I investigated.

It seems that in order to keep the world’s atomic clock on track with the spinning of the earth’s rotation, which by the way doesn’t seem to be exactly constant, we’ve got to add time to our world’s biggest and most important time piece—the atomic clock.
The mother of all time keepers.
THE clock that all computers, data bases, cell phones, mantle clocks and wrist watches claim as the go to for exact, precise and on the money, time . . .
And you thought time was simply relevant. . .

The BBC reported yesterday that “the last second in June, 2015 was actually 61 seconds.

Whoa.

It seems that our dear ol planet’s rotation is not exactly consistent–we’re not spinning around with each rotation at the exact same speed. It appears we’re a bit herky jerky or a bit of stop and go as it were.
So in order to keep up with our rotations, or rather the slowing down of the rotations, we’ve got to add time.
And if that isn’t enough to make you dizzy, we’ve been doing it, on and off, since 1972.

Hummm adding random time. . .

Does that mean we all just got several seconds older or younger?
Does that mean since 1972, I’ve been afforded a longer life?

Here’s what the Washington Post had to say. . .

“Earth’s rotation is gradually slowing down a bit, so leap seconds are a way to account for that,” NASA’s Daniel MacMillan said in a statement.

“Basically, our clocks are better at keeping time than the Earth is. Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC (which is four hours ahead of Eastern Daylight time) is based on an atomic clock, which calculates the length of a second based on (very predictable) changes in cesium atoms. It takes more than a million years to lose a second on atomic time.”

Not so for our fair planet, which is always getting just the teensiest bit slower. In theory, the Earth takes 86,400 seconds to rotate once. In practice, it’s clocking in at about 86,400.002 seconds. For shame, Earth.”

(here’s the link for the full story:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/06/29/on-tuesday-the-world-gets-a-leap-second-are-we-all-gonna-die/)

Okay, so now I’m really confused.
If daylight savings time wasn’t enough to push me over the edge, this whole “lets randomly add time to our lives” is surely the kicker.
And if we’ve been adding seconds since 1972, with what I read being an initial 10 second addition, only to be adding seconds on a regular basis, except for some random 7 year dry spell which was reported, then does that mean I’m roughly 40 seconds to a minute or so older, younger, better or worse. . .?

Time has always been a concept none too easy to wrap this ol brain of mine around.
Time zones, falling back, jumping forward, “I’m late, I’m late”. . .
The one thing I do understand is that I have always prided myself on being preferably early verses regrettably late. Punctuality being a quality I’ve been proud of—that is until now. . because now I don’t know if I’ve actually always been early, right on time or now sadly late. . .hummmmm. . .

And whereas it may make no never mind to either you or I about this whole adding of seconds business, it does however speak volumes to our ever growing dependence on computers— as in it is devastating.

It seems that computers operate on the whole 60 seconds makes a minute, makes an hour, makes a day sort of notion and they don’t take too kindly to a scosh of time here and a pinch of time there.
They pretty much prefer the whole exact, precise, black and white business—no leeway, skimping, fudging or tweaking with them—no sireee, it’s exact or it ain’t nothing. . .no in-between for them.

And now as this is all beginning to sound way too time-traveling and creepy Matrixish. . .

There is but one thing and one thing only that I know with all certainty. . . that for God, time has always been His and thankfully never truly my own.

Who has saved us and called us to a holy life –
not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace.
This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time
2 Timothy 1:9