Kaleidoscopes. They need to bring those back. As a child, I remember holding one up to my eye and turning it until magic happened. Beautiful patterns and colors, tumbling and remixing as it turned. I also recall seeing one that had broken, little bits of glass, all gray and sad, spilled out.
As we sit here waiting on Christmas Day for the family to arrive, I think about the kaleidoscope of time that I see. Layers of family, going back to Christmases long ago. Jeweled memories, made warm and fuzzy by the buffer of decades. Grandmas and love; fudge and peppermint; trees with their citrusy scents; dolls; dresses; new pajamas; trips to Aunt Ellen's house, where oranges, bananas and Brazil nuts overflowed -- on the way home we'd stop at a life-sized nativity scene at a church nearby; trips to Illinois and my cat-eyed, Tigris-scented Grandma (with Karen Carpenter crooning silky Christmas themes); Christmas Eves where Daddy talked about hearing reindeers outside with their bells; my Mama creating joy out of cocoa, sugar, milk and the Sears Roebuck Catalog. Sweet, happy childhood I was blessed to have. Life moves so fast. I am not a spring chicken, but sometimes I have to remember that I am not a child....that I have to be responsible and hop to it. At the same time, we all have that child in us, that ten-year-old that wants to run free and not yet know about the cynical, the evil, parts of the world.
My tongue tends to find the bad, to report what is wrong about people and about all that is around me. To gossip, to belittle, not ever shutting my trap, in particular to my loved ones. The very ones I influence the most. My heart was afflicted last night, Christmas Eve, as I contemplated the state of my thoughts and words. I tossed and turned upon my bed, feeling the guilt of my failings. I dreamt strange dreams, scary and disturbing. But as the sun slowly began to rise and the pink hue of the morning crept into the bedroom windows, I embraced the hope of the day...the hope of my Savior. How He came as a tiny baby, vulnerable and weak, yet fully God, sacrificing Himself to redeem the hateful, the cynical, the murderer and the gossip, these. The little child, the perfect lamb, in the humblest of places. He defied logic, confounded the wise, and turned the world upside down. His beautiful kaleidoscope. "For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then shall I know, even as also I am fully known." I Corinthians 13:12. Amazing grace, as the old saying goes, "I will understand it better by and by."
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