Show Us

Show us the people we'd like to be. The prettier people, happier people. People with more money, more time, more of what we want—Or think we want. That's who we'd rather see, than who we actually are.

"I like that blouse." My daughter and I are looking through a catalog at clothing and fashion accessories.

"That's pretty, but I wouldn't want it." "No? Why not?" "I don't like the sleeves." "But, Mom—it doesn't have any sleeves."

"That's right. It looks great on that model, but that model isn't me...and that's what's wrong."

"Oh..."

Isn't it funny how stores and businesses sell products? Do people look at those models or mannequins and think they will look like that in those clothes?

Role models are good for us only as long as they are good role models. It is foundational that we know what our goals are and we evaluate them for worthiness.

Looking better, feeling better, being successful, all of these things can be worthwhile goals, but the why is as important as the what.

Why do I want to look better? So I can make someone else feel jealous? And feeling better? Is that a healthy feeling better, or a one upmanship of someone else?

Success? What is success? Climbing the corporate ladder? Having more money? Driving better cars?

If we depend on outward show to define who we are and what our success looks like, we can lose all of that in an instant.

I have to laugh at this picture. This tree reminds me of so many trees I've had in the past.

When I was growing up we didn't make a large to do of Christmas. I don't think that the depression was the real reason my grandparents didn't celebrate Christmas.

There have been rumors that my Grandmother was Jewish, but her parents celebrated Christmas. She used to tell the story of when she was very small.

One year her parents had gone to town for some reason, leaving the children home. Grandmother was the seventh child in a large family with older children, so they should have known better but...

The older kids knew where the presents were hidden. There was a space/room behind the large piano. The kids rolled or moved the piano out of the way, played with the toys then put them back before the parents got home.

Only one small problem, Grandma, being a very small child, didn't know better than to spill the beans. The next day she cried and cried because she wanted to play with her 'orse'.

Apparently her present was a rocking horse...or would have been. The parents took all the presents back to the store, as Grandma told it.

But my grandparents didn't choose to do the Christmas celebration for whatever reason. My Adorable Cousin's mother told her the story that, one year my mother spent all her Christmas vacation polishing her old shoes.

She polished them until they looked like new. When she went back to school, when everyone else got to show off their presents, they thought she had gotten a new pair of shoes for Christmas.

***

With our family, for our Christmas tree, we go out and find one of our cedar trees from the field or road ditch. To say that these trees are a challenge is an understatement.

But the story of my trees is this, we are like those ugly brown cedar trees, with their branches going in all sorts of ways. There isn't always much good to see in them.

*A friend of mine many years ago shared that she would put green food coloring in the water for their trees. That of course 'greens' up the tree.*

The rest of the decorations is similar to God's ability to take an old worthless, brown tree, that looks dead. God can take us, breathe new life into us, give us ornaments, beauty, grace and best of all salvation.

God shows us how to live and gives us hope for when we die. Unlike our Christmas tree that will lose all its decorations, grow old and be tossed out, when we through obedience, let God have our life, we have hope for eternal life with God, who loves us.

2 Peter 1:3 "According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue: 4) Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust."