The Christmas decorations will soon be tucked away to sleep in cozy attic boxes until next December. We are now consuming the last of the goodies on the counter, auctioning off the remaining slivers of pie, rationing slices of southern caramel cake, and grazing through an isolated box of Trader Joe's gingerbread cookies discovered way back in the pantry.
But tacked to the cabinet doors are still all the Christmas cards, the greetings, the smiling faces of family members we rarely get to see and friends who linger from so many stages of our lives, so many locations, and embedded in so many memories.
Those images comprise my other Christmas list. Because I know far deeper than those smiling faces are often wounded hearts and difficult situations of which I may never be aware. But God knows. And He has placed these people in my life for His purposes. They have been a blessing to our family in one way or another and a measure of God's grace to us. Their pictures remind me to pray for them.
I will eventually take down the greetings from the cabinet doors, but I will not soon discard the cards. God calls us to pray for each other into the new year. There are not many things we can do for those who live so far away, but we can always pray. And that is never out of season.
I thank my God always
when I remember you
in my prayers.
Philemon 1.4
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