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With the Christmas season fast approaching and lots added to our “to do” lists, I wanted to take a moment and help you reflect upon this season.  We as women can get so wrapped up in the “doing” that we forget the “being” part of Christmas time.  I wanted to write this devotional to help us identify with each of the nativity people.  This will be presented in a 10 part series–each day signifying a different person.  You can download it here for the complete devotional to use in your ladies group–includes all scripture NKJV.  Or you can enjoy a new person each day through my blog.  Be blessed as we go about remembering the reason for this season.

A great way to present this devotional is to use a nativity set and hold up each person as you are speaking about them. You may not have some of the people, and will have to improvise on some of them.

Day 1  Zachariah

Read : Scripture
Luke 1:5-22 New King James Version

The birth of Jesus begins with this man, Zachariah. Zachariah was a man who was old. He and his wife had no children and they prayed for one so that they would not be shamed in their community. It was a shameful thing not to be able to produce a son to be able to give all that you had worked for in life.
When he was visited by the angel, the angel reassured him to not be afraid, and that he would have a son who would be the forerunner to the Messiah. Can you believe it? After all of this time, he had been praying for years to have a son of any sort and now this angel is telling him that he was going to be having a child who was going to be the forerunner to the Messiah! But when he was told, he did not believe. Even though he had been praying for years for this, he doubted that it would ever happen.

Instead of rising to faith……he sinks to doubt!

From his lack of faith, he was unable to speak for nine months. Those nine months must have felt like an eternity. But during this quiet time of being able to listen to God and reflect upon what was told to him, his heart changed. From this he birthed out a new son(through his wife) and God filled him with the Holy Spirit. He then prophesied from the Word of God. From those moments of silence is when he was able to listen to God the best.

Isn’t it interesting that God begins the greatest event in all of the world with silence?

How Zachariah relates to us
We need not to be filled with unbelief that God can do anything.
Do we nurture an attitude of disbelief? If so, read Psalm 51—Davids prayer of repentance. Ask God to create a new heart, renew within you a steadfast spirit, and release the joy of salvation.

Don’t ever despise the quiet times in your life. Those quiet times are when God can birth something great from inside of you.

Are you like Zachariah and in need of a season of quietness this Christmas season?  Do you need to seek the  Lord more consistently through prayer and reading of God’s Word?  Ask the Lord to show you more time in your day to be able to spend with Him.

part 2

With the month of December, already here—can you believe it?  Time surely does fly! It usually brings with it lots of activities, extra events to attend, and more need for time to do “fun” things.  How is it we can still get all of our homeschooling work done without being so stressed out trying to enjoy the Christmas season?

My advice, and I am only a Mom who has been homeschooling for the last 15 years, would be to RELAX!

When we first started homeschooling, I felt that we needed to be consistently doing work just as the public school system had taught us.  Later did I realize how much wasted time was spent doing frivolous things in public school.  I realized how much we could actually get done in one day’s time without all the extras and that led to more free time.  We used to take time off just as the public school system did and that worked fine.  But I had found that when I wanted to get those “extra” family traditions and activities in that I saw all the other homeschooling families doing, it was more stress for my life—and it wasn’t worth it–in my eyes.  If you can’t enjoy something and your children are seeing you stress out about trying to get things done, that is all they will remember from it.

Then, some years would come and we would have so much to do, that we would take off the entire month of December and just enjoy doing all those family activities. Guess what? My children still completed all of their schooling requirements that year—-without stress:)  Plus we got to enjoy making some great family memories.

Now, we have many children and I realize the importance of having somewhat of a schedule in our home so I plan for our school work to be “light” this month.  We stick to the basics and cut back on all the “extras.” This makes for a month of more freedom.

We then take this month and enjoy doing extra fun things that we don’t normally get to do.  This includes:

• baking Christmas cookies and inviting friends over to decorate
• making snowflakes and other paper crafts to hang in our home–coffee filters work great for snowflakes–already round and inexpensive
• making salt dough ornaments for gifts
• watching Christmas movies together
• having a special dinner that we look forward to each year
• making homemade gift cards
• wrapping gifts together
• read a christmas story each night to your children–think short
• learn about some Christmas traditions from around the world and how they came about to us in America

Building life skills, I have found is just as important as cultivating academic skills in our children.  Making holiday memories and having family traditions is a memorable part of our children’s childhood.

Remember in all things be FLEXIBLE.  There were many years that sickness struck our family, financial problems occurred, and life just happened.  I couldn’t do anything about the physical situation we were going through but I had a much to do with how we all responded.  If you are sick–you stay home and watch movies together, if you are broke—you find free and inexpensive craft ideas to do together.  There are many ways to cultivate a love for family in your children’s hearts by just relaxing and being flexible to things around.  It is okay if you don’t get that same holiday photo around the tree, or if you can’t make it to Aunt Ruth’s home for dinner, or you couldn’t make the 14 different kinds of cookies for your family and you settled on a store bought package.  Leave the stresses behind and just BE in the moment and enjoy.