Cast the Net Far and Wide

                                                              A Christmas Reflection             I remember one Christmas when I had no money to spend on gifts.   My husband and I had got past the need for expensive presents and learned to enjoy the intangible gifts of nature and family.   But how my mother’s heart ached for my two teenagers.             A few days before Christmas, I felt stirring up in me an idea for two individualized wall-hangs.   I found some brightly striped canvas, dowels, scraps of felt, inexpensive gold ornaments and a tube of “Goop” glue, which will affix anything to anything and never come off.             For my musical son, who thought Sesame street characters “cool” at that time, I designed a wall-hang with Bert, Ernie, Oscar and Big Bird playing musical instruments, labelled “MUSIC!”             What fun I had making the characters, planning the design and colours.   For my daughter, active at church, I placed gold angels, violins, flowers and fl

  HIS ADVENT INTO MY LIFE At Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, the promised Messiah.   I would like to share some of the process of receiving Him into my own life, for His advent means nothing if He is not received personally.     My mother read me Bible stories as a child, along with other literature.   I remember enjoying the story of Baby Jesus’ birth, as well as the story of Samuel, hearing God speak to him.   In Grade Three I had a Christian teacher who taught us all the children’s hymns during five-minute breaks of standing beside our desks.   Later, in Grade Five, the Gideons came in and gave each student a New Testament.   All the way through elementary school, religious instruction was scheduled, and many ladies came in with Bible flannelgraph stories.   I remember in Grade eight hearing about Pharaoh’s dream of the seven fat cows and the seven lean cows.   We also said the Lord’s Prayer every morning at school.             As a teenager,