It winks and shines and teases. The minuscule particles stick like super glue to my skin. Glitter remains my constant companion and overzealous friend from the end of October, until all the Christmas decorations are banished to the attic.
I’ll think I scrubbed it gone, and boom, it hides in my eyebrows or sticks to my upper lip. How is it still on my face after a hot shower and a good nights rest? Sigh… But the thing that makes me giggle is when I’m dining with The Preacher and I look across the table to spy a shining speck on his cheek. No one is safe from me, The Glitter Queen rules.
I heard an environmental group is trying to outlaw glitter. Can you imagine a Christmas with no glitter? Just…no way. With all our technological advances, will someone please invent biodegradable glitter?? I don’t want to hurt the little fishies, but I don’t want to give up all my glittery thingamabobs either.
And then there’s that other sticky stuff. The ick we try to scour away and hide. Sin sticks like duct tape deep inside my soul. I scrub it away only to look in the mirror, and see it’s ugly self rearing two heads again. I wash and rinse, and despair of ever getting rid of the stain.
But my Lord and my God can.
“I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist. Return to me, for I have redeemed you.”Isaiah 63:9
And in this Christmas season, I want to shuck the swirling crazy and remember that most magnificent gift, a tiny baby born lowly, to a teenage virgin. He the holy one, raised in a hardscrabble life by she and a Godly stepfather.
“…an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” Matthew 1:20
Jesus changed every person he touched as he grew to be a man-on-a-mission for his heavenly Father. He pushed to the surface what was lurking in their souls, like an underground spring bubbling through the crusty earth.
He found the good in Zacchaeus the tax collector, who returned money he had stolen.
He found the value in the broken soul of a prostitute, who bathed his feet in perfume.
He found blackness in the Pharisees, and condemned their holier-than-thou hearts, which would turn them into murderous fiends.
And as the centuries fall away to the present, true to his word, he redeemed me so my glittery, sinful self could tread anew each day as a beloved daughter of the King.
Now I can walk with a spring in my step and joy in my heart.
Move over Santa, Jesus is the real deal,
The one and only Reason for the Season.
“For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors,” 1 Peter 1:18