Last night I got to watch and listen to a wonderful Christmas music performance by students from kindergarten to eighth grade. This helped me remember to smile during the stressful holiday season. The kindergarten students ringing their various colored bells on queue made me smile. The 4th graders playing their recorders and surprising us with their kazoos made me smile. The middle school band playing “Joy to the World” made me smile. Tonight I am playing my keyboard for the first time at a large church Christmas tree sale. I think I am going to smile if a chain saw cranks up during “Silent Night.”  🙂

Looking back on Thanksgiving and many blessings to count, I am reminded to be content.  What if I were to exchange the words “thankful for” and “content with” in the same sentence as I count my blessings?  I am thankful for food and shelter.  I am content with food and shelter. I am thankful for the work I have to do. I am content with the work I have to do, etc. This is what the song “Contentment” from “The Voice” CD is about. Learning to be content.  To remember life’s blessings and to have gratitude for life’s blessings along the way. To grow in my contentment.

Very interesting that I “happened” to discover today’s reading from L. B. Cowman’s “Streams in the Desert” (edited by Jim Reimann) . . . “Is there any note in all the music of the world as mighty as the grand pause? Is there anything that can touch our hearts like the power of stillness?”  I love meditations on God’s “gentle whisper” that can only be heard when we find that place to “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).