Change

I love this time of year for many reasons, but one reason I particularly like the week after Christmas is that it is a time of change. We have new stuff, we're anticipating a new year, and we're getting rid of the Christmas decorations.

At our house, we always decorate for Christmas right after Thanksgiving. I'm not a Martha Stewart type, so this is the only season for which we radically change our decor. All the usual nic nacs and many of the pictures get put away and replaced with nativity scenes, angels, Santas, holly, garland, and all that stuff. It's a pretty radical transformation, further impacted by the addition of a tree to our already crowded living room. Then, right after Christmas, we take it all down. Sometimes we put everything back the way it was before and sometimes we don't. Either way, it feels fresh and new because it's been different for a whole month.

Making this change to our house is great preparation for the new year. There's something refreshing about newness, whether it's a new furniture arrangement or the prospect of new adventures in the coming year. We hope for something more out of it, in whatever form that might take. We embrace change in a way we might not at other times of the year. We're ready to let God do something new in our lives.