The Tree in My Living Room
We are putting up our tree late this year. It is five days until Christmas, and we still do not have one up in our living room. This has made me sad multiple times, but there really has not been an opportunity to go and get one.
The Lord surprisingly sent my husband to Tijuana and San Diego to minister to a parish there and then his grandmother in Carlsbad. In the middle of December, we were apart. I am sure that I am capable, but I was not confident that I could go and get a Christmas tree and chase my nineteen month old at the same time. Also, I wanted to go as a family and pick one out together, so I waited and waited and waited.
This morning after mass, we looked at the trees for sale adjacent to our parish, but there was no one there to make the sale. We returned to the car, and I really was… sad.
Yet these Advent evenings, the same nights when we could have packed up the Subaru to drive purchase a tree, we have lit candles instead. These nights have been spent deep in the Presence of God. I have been on my knees in my living room praying for a parish in Mexico I have never known and a grandmother I have never met. I have never known so strongly this desire of mine for the will of God to be accomplished.
I have been praying for generational curses in my family to end, worshipping with the few guitar chords we know, and prophesying over people miles and miles away on my phone. These nights have been spent, poured out, wasted on the only One worthy — thanking Him — because we have seen that as we wait to celebrate we have His Tree prominently standing in our living room.
And prominently, on that Tree, I see cancer, I see shoulder pain, I see injuries, I see Kappa Kappa Gamma, I see shame, I see masonic curses, I see pride, I see addiction, I see hopelessness, I see confusion, I see death.
We have plans to buy an actual Christmas tree, but I see that my grief in the absence of a decorated fir is the grief of my Father when He sees His children without a Tree. It is His grief when He sees that even His children have bare Trees.
Because He gave us a miracle two thousand years ago, and it is this:
When you put the astrology, the tarot cards, the yoga, the sickness, the disease, the death, the confusion, the lies, the pain, the hopelessness, the regret, the control, the addiction, the resentment, the unforgiveness, the wounds on His Tree, that is when it glows.
So my prayer for you is this:
That you would have a Tree in your living room that looks just like mine.
That you would know the beauty of the Cross.
Because I look underneath mine and see signs, wonders, miracles, dreams, visions, encounters, and destiny.
I look underneath mine and see Jesus — my Savior who was born again in my heart.
He is lifted high in my living room, and my Tree is aglow.
When Jesus heard that John had been imprisoned, He withdrew to Galilee. Leaving Nazareth, He went and lived in Capernaum, which is by the sea in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali, to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah:
“Land of Zebulun
and land of Naphtali,
the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan,
Galilee of the Gentiles—
the people living in darkness
have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of the shadow of death,
a light has dawned.”
From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”
