Last weekend our family gathered in Santa Barbara to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas, since we won’t all be together in December. One of the things I wanted to make sure we got done was a family photo, so we planned to meet at 4:00 at Butterfly Beach.
This beach is significant for many reasons, one being that we all gathered for a family photo there back in December 2014, just after Mark had met with a doctor who suspected a cancerous tumor in his leg. We had no idea what to expect in the next months, let alone years, ahead.
I guess I looked at this present moment as another foothold in God’s healing and mercy after a long stretch of loss and grief over many recent years.
So we planned for 4:00, figuring we had plenty of time for pictures before the sun actually went down at 4:57. What we didn’t plan for was long naps by the grandkids after we tuckered them out at the zoo. When I gave up all hope of us being able to pull this off with enough daylight left, Carl, Kelli, and the grandkids parked in a red zone, got into our already-set formation, and we snapped the pic.
I guess the moral of the story this Advent is, “Be patient in the waiting!”
It is in the waiting that God shows up and reminds us of His promises and presence. It may not look like things are going to work out the way WE planned (and sometimes they don’t), but God is still bringing something special into whatever circumstances we find ourselves. His presence…that’s the power of Christmas.
