There is a beautiful dance of the old, the traditions, when it reaches for the hands of the new.

And says come dance.

There is a tension between the comfortable, the familiar, the routine and fresh new thinking and living.

How do we place a foot strongly in tradition and step a foot off the curb into the new.

And at Christmas when family traditions are steeped in continuing and following familiar rhythms of life and faith.

But what if we had an expectant heart for the new.

What if the soul of the family would seek the unexpected.

Gabriel announced new, the shepherds doing the mundane were surprised by extravagant change, life-changing wonders.

Mary gave herself over to miracle  with an all in  servant’s heart. And faced a path rich in the unknowing of a baby conceived as a Virgin.

What if we lived out the hours of our Christmas Days expecting holy surprises and awestruck wonder. What if we cracked open our hearts, the very eyes of our hearts and looked for 2012 miracles.

If the God of today is the same as the God of yesterday, could this Christmas bring miracles of healing and discovery and redemption and new thinking.

I want to open wide the door and welcome Him in in all His glory and all His unbridled majesty. I want to look for wonder all around and to be an instrument of change.

Giving more, and taking less.

Serving, blessing, and sharing more extravagantly.

Can Christmas look today like it did on the first sacred year, the Day of Christ’s birth.

Doesn’t an extravagant Creator God long to lavish his children with surprise and wonder, even miracle.

If I walk out my days as if I planned them, as if my calendar and to do list dictate my every step, have I left room for the miracle to move and breathe and deliver its glory into my days.

If I live as though I know what’s coming next I don’t live as though I actually know who came. On the day of the Savior’s birth. A radical change from a God who saves and loves and longs for us to receive all that He has.

A Manger Miracle.

A Heavenly Showering of Love.

A virgin birth, amazing grace. The child of God came to earth, was God incarnate. Miracle.

An Extravagant Offering from Heaven, which changes and changed and forever will change our very lives.

I want unbridled Christmas, and I want to unshackle the very chains that are an invisible ceiling, a threshold on the movement of The Spirit in my world, our world.

And I can’t catch that which I do not have my arms wide open to receive. I have crossed my arms and held them tight to my chest; gift and the unexpected bounce off the rigid and fall to the ground.

Open to receive and expectant of Joy, oh the longing oh the desire for the holy surprises.

What power He has when we allow Him room to operate and  bless and breathe and touch.

What a power of old and new, the perfect blend of surprise, the unexpected, the life-changing touch of A Living God.

May we all be surprised by Joy, surprised by Christmas Joy.

He is not boxed in, cramped in, stuffed in a Christmas of our making, of our limited vision and design.

So may we prepare Him room, plenty of room to surprise us this Christmas.

His love knows no bounds, His mercy and Grace are unfathomable.

May Love come down and walk and breathe and heal our very lives, and the lives of the broken.

Merry & Mary very surprised Christmas Season.

And a Joyous  Advent filled with making Him room. Plenty of room.

And hoping we catch the Joy, catch the miracles, releasing them to a hurting world …all these Christmas days of our lives.

I’m bursting with God news, I’m dancing the song of my Savior God… His mercy flows in wave after wave on those who are in awe before Him.  — Luke 1:46

Joining Eileen, Jen,  and Heather today. Writing in community is a privilege and a joy.