Tonight it’s cold for here in Arizona – we’ve got freeze warnings up and I’ve got plastic bags and insulating material all over our more sensitive plants.

Not sure I’m ready for the holiday season – there’s been so much going on that I haven’t even considered that it’s this late in the year – my! my! time flies! This whole year has been so eventful and breathtakingly hectic that the idea of laying low and just letting the holiday wrap you up in some quiet, protective quilt seems a foreign and impossible to do. We’re still working on a patio redesign, we have a trip back to Massachusetts next weekend for a Goodboys wedding, and there’s a bunny speed dating effort about to be teed up between the newly-arrived Butterscotch (photo forthcoming as soon as she trusts us enough to stay still for a time!) and Geronimo.

All early signs point to an active year on the Christmas lights front in our subdivision as three houses already have their lights up. Gee whiz.

Hard to believe a new Church Year is about to begin; looking at the Christmas lights on a Thanksgiving night’s walk reminded me just how welcome the lights are and how much this world, and my own heart, hungers for the light of Christ to permeate the weary darkness of our collective souls. Even if it doesn’t know it or even rejects the whole idea of it. This world is soul-sick; all any of us can do is try and make our own little corners of it a better place to live in and reach out to the best of our abilities to help others in need.

Oh come, oh come, Emmanuel.