LOOKING BACK OVER NOVEMBER
November was so much fun!
Having an attitude of gratitude is definitely a wonderful way to live out life.
The whole month of November was geared toward expressing our thanks to God for the abundant love and blessings that He has so graciously bestowed on us. These thoughts were reflected in our blogging themes for the month. Almost every article carried some form of gratitude or expressed a different way of celebrating our gratitude together. You can review any of these articles by going to the blog and clicking on the archives for November 2019. Once there, you will see we have done Thanksgiving in a million different themes. Hope you have enjoyed each time.
We enjoyed this year’s Thanksgiving focus very much.
It was easy for us to step into an attitude of thanksgiving after such an amazing time of worship at the beginning of the fall season at The Feast of Tabernacles.
The spirit of love and thanksgiving carried over into our regular Thanksgiving season. Our visit to a working farm during the Feast of Tabernacles actually helped to inspire our theme for this year’s Thanksgiving celebration.
At this point, after two whole months of thanksgiving; our hearts are full!
So are our tummies.
The food was abundant and tastier than ever. We hope your feast was also so blessed. We shared a few fall recipes during the month. You can find them here: https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/fall-haystacks/ https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/making-some-sweet-potatoes-and-some-gifts-too/___-
The IN SEASON Lifestyle has always been into themes around certain holidays and this year’s Thanksgiving theme was called Thanksgiving On The Farm.
We transitioned our humble home into an imaginary farmyard full of animals and farming activities. This meant that we even had a barn right inside our dining room! It actually made a great backdrop for a few new family photos.
There were fun farm-related toys for the kids to enjoy. Our place-cards expressed our gratitude toward our nation’s farmers who grow the food we enjoy around our tables every day.
Unfortunately, our two grand-guys were in another state celebrating Thanksgiving with their very pregnant Mom and their Papa; but we called them and shared the blessings of the day.
Inside our place-cards we put a place to list your favorite blessings of 2019. This year was FULL of God’s abundance. There were only three spaces available and I had to write in a number four to name just the most significant things. My card recorded the fact that my husband has recovered well from heart surgery, our new grandson is almost here, our son has a sweet new girl friend and our only unmarried daughter just announced her engagement. I guess the smile in the next photo says it all. We all had smiles.
Yes; our Erin has become totally committed for life to the man she has dated for over fifteen years. We thought they would never get around to being serious, and we were surprised and delighted with the announcement on Thanksgiving day when she shyly displayed a very beautiful new ring.
I am now in the process of packing up a toy barn, some farm animals and a few trucks and tractors to ship to the guys who could not make it this year. Maybe they can enjoy some of the farmyard fun we had while their Mom is busy giving birth to their new baby brother!
Our granddaughter loved the farming Barbie who had her very own tractor. That part of our Thanksgiving feast went home with her in a separate bag from the leftovers of the day. She was thrilled.
This child has the spirit of giving for Thanksgiving this year. She worked so hard on making a beautiful sparkly colored page for everyone who attended our feast. Then she proudly presented us with our gifts of her love. Her work of Thanksgiving art now rests over my shoulder on my bulletin board at my writing desk. She will check to be sure it is there on her next visit.
Our day of being thankful is best described in photos; so I will spare a few words here and just show you a few more of the faces and spaces of our day:
It was easy to pull our celebration theme off by using a lot of the seasonal products we have collected from The IN SEASON Community Store. Maybe some of these products belong in your collection too. We love sharing the joy!
UPCOMING CELEBRATIONS FOR DECEMBER
All through December we will be celebrating A Red Bird Country Christmas.
Christmas is always a little bit different here, as we celebrate the Incarnation and the Conception of Christ rather than the birth of Christ, because that is how we think it all timed out on the ancient calendar.
Though we are Christians, we also celebrate Hanukkah; because Jesus did so, and because the miracle of Hanukkah is so very symbolic of the fact that Jesus is The Light Of The World. We know that God did come to the Jews first, but he used them to draw the rest of us into His Kingdom too. As far as I’m concerned there are no “Jewish” holidays; only God’s appointed times.
God has his own calendar and it is so different than the rest of the world’s systems of keeping time. Hanukkah is different in that God didn’t call out the day to Moses. That would have been impossible, as the moment of the miracle of history came years and years later. Still; it is all a part of the story of God and his people and a great miracle that would not have happened if God had not been with them.
Our house may be the only one in the neighborhood that has both a Hanukkah menorah and a Christmas tree; both things giving off the symbolic, pure clean light that reminds us of how Christ has entered the world, given His life as light to lead our way and changed everything by making our hearts new.
So be it.
We believe the Christ Child was born in the early Fall; and we have already done a lot of celebrating the remembrance of that birth this year. We did that at The Feast of Tabernacles back in October.
However; when we encounter the child in the manger which is often displayed during this time of the year by the world, and when we hear the birth stories all over again, we are not disturbed. We simply stop and consider the fact that if we were in that first original calendar year of his precious life; Jesus would now be about three months old and/or if we were counting down the time until his miraculous birth; Mary would have just become pregnant with the Christ Child.
He would STILL be a baby (though a 3-month old baby) and we are wide open to welcoming the Christ Child into the world! So we join in with the angel’s songs and the shepherd’s prayers and we look at the baby in the manger and realize that he is probably already three months old. Yet; nothing says for sure that he isn’t with Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem again during this season for The Dedication of Lights for Hanukkah. Maybe the place where they are staying is in Elizabeth and Zachariah’s house?
That is how we look forward and keep moving through the seasonal calendar. We hold as fast to the truth God has shown us and we do not quench the joy of those who do not yet know the whole story.
On the other hand, as we also look back a bit at the old original dates; we are considering that this was also the probable date (around the world’s time of December) of the beginnings of Mary’s pregnancy.
Can you imagine carrying Christ around inside of you?
I hope so!
This should be happening to all of us who follow Jesus.
So here, keeping as close to the original liturgical year as possible, we think of Advent more as the time of MARY’S waiting on the child to grow and develop inside her body. It is a lot like our waiting for Christ to return again. Many people are with us in considering the “waiting” of advent; and we just look at that in accordance to what we perceive to be the time that Mary gave her answer to God and Christ came to be a baby living inside her womb.
We have formulated our own version of the advent calendar and it is in accordance with the truths that God has shown us. We celebrate those truths during this season. It is our hope to begin to share this new and different Advent Calendar with our readers this year, though it should have already been published and it will be a bit late when it does hit the press. That is okay, it is still progress. We will enjoy the days that are left and we will have it intact and even more beautiful for you in the next year when we hit this season again.
There are lots of parallels here that remind us of how God grows and develops inside of us and inside our spirits.
Looking back we see Mary carrying the child inside of her. Looking forward we see the childhood of Jesus, a time in which he was three months old and the wise men haven’t yet arrived with their gifts.
The childhood of Jesus clearly represents the first stages of our spiritual growth in our relationship with God, and we think about the fact that whether in Mary’s womb, or three months after His birth; Immanuel (God with Us) has come to earth and made everything new.
You probably won’t find many who celebrate in quite this same way; though some people are more and more agreeing with our thoughts. Hence; we try to represent products that tell this story; the way God has shown it to us.
Sometimes all ways of celebrating simply blend together naturally. This isn’t to blend religious practices at all; it is just the simplicity of love reaching across the pages and the ages and pulling all truth together in a way that speaks to all of our hearts from whatever perspective God shows us at this point in our lives.
Love somehow always finds a gentle way to let the truth shine forth from all angles. We do consider this season to be a good time to represent love. The love of God is evident in all of these many blessings. We gather and celebrate with joy as families and friends, hoping to keep our focus completely love centered. Look for our highly favored articles on The Glorious Impossibles; because we will have our eyes wide-open for them this year.
This is what we hope to achieve in all of our seasonal celebrations; and we try to completely avoid anything that we consider to be out-right paganism and materialistic in nature. The ever-present balancing act becomes needed in every phase of life; even our holy days and holidays. There will be articles proclaiming how God hates paganism and we will explain how we have learned to handle all the negativity of Christmas as well as the love and blessings.
If you are curious and open to exploring things in this most unusual fashion that we celebrate the Christmas season (see this link to know what I’m speaking about https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/conception-of-christ/); we think you will love our seasonal products offered in this December store. Much of it is not a bit religious in nature; simply items to reflect the season of winter.
Here is a link to The IN SEASON Lifestyle December Community Store. https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/the-in-season-community-store-for-december-2019/ Be sure to look for more and more good products that will be presented daily in the blog as the month progresses.
If you are not so sure that we are totally correct in our December celebrations; please consider that there are eleven other months of the year; so be patient and stay with us. We do not wish to offend anyone.
The COME AS A CHILD BIBLE STUDY is still our Thursday focus. It is the highlight of our week. God is taking us through the book of Numbers and we are grasping so many new concepts as we walk with our Father.
Welcome to our new participants! We are so glad you decided to join in with us. Your comments are warmly welcomed too. If you have friends who would like to join us; please pass on and share the studies with them. There is a weekly mailing for ONLY the bible study; so request this if you do not want to be on a mailing list for our Newsletters and special offers. It is perfectly fine to be on both – just let us know. Don’t forget to sign up though; we want everyone to enjoy God’s word with us. This week we are still in the Book of Numbers. The weekly mailing will remind you of where to find the related scriptures we are referring to as we move through the pages; one at a time.
I’ll try to come back and link to the articles around each of the themes of many of these products we offer at a later date; as the month and the season unfolds.