'Tis the Season...

...for Christmas themed blogging. Last year it was the 25 days of CHRISTmas, with the goal of establishing CHRIST firmly in the DePriest Christmas holiday. The goal for 2009 of course remains the same, I want to make sure the "reason for the season" is clear here in our home, but the plan for the process this year that's on my heart is different.

I have to be honest, I haven't been very excited about the holidays. Money is tight and as most people are, we are struggling and juggling. My husband and son thought they had busted me on a false "bah-humbug" attitude yesterday because they hear me singing "Jingle Bells" in the shower, but honestly I think I picked it up somewhere like a virus. It was not an overflow of Christmas cheer.

Then I headed off to church yesterday. As I was driving down the street alone I was rooting around behind myself trying to find my bible and keep my eye on the road at the same time. As I grabbed hold of it and plopped it into the front seat, I noticed my relatively new bible is starting to show signs of wear. Immediately I realized the wear is truthfully from lack of use and too much time sliding around in the back of my van. It's a stark contrast to another bible I own, that is severely tattered and worn. The big difference is that its battle scars came from use, extreme use. It literally is coming right out of it's binding. As I the thought came to me, I knew it was the Holy Spirit pricking my heart.

It was also a preparing of my heart for the message I was to hear at church yesterday morning. My pastor was exhorting us to be in the word. It was actually a great sermon that both challenged and encouraged me, but it's not the point behind this post, so if you want to hear it for yourself, just click here and listen for yourself to the 11/30 message called True Revival. Go, have a listen, I'm sure you will be blessed.

Bottom line for this blog's purpose though, was I walked away inspired, not only to be better about getting in the word, but also about getting my kids deeper into the word too.

So, tomorrow we will have daily devotional times. Different than before, we used to all sit together and read out of a family devotional and pray together. But all my kids are readers now, and so what's going to happen is every day for 30 minutes, all the TVs and computers and iPods, etc., will be shutting down, and we'll divide and each have our own personal devotional time. Then we will gather back together for a Christmas themed family devotional.

As I was driving to work this morning I got an inspiration. I'm not really sure how it's going to all come together, and it may even turn out to be a bigger bite than I can chew, but I'm going to give it a shot.

So here's my goal: every day I want to pick a different Christ-centered Christmas carol (seems like that should be redundant, but it isn't) and explore the deeper meaning, talk about the Truth that lines up with it. And if time and inspiration permit, I think also I will post here about it too. I'm not making the same "25 days" commitment I made last year, because let's face it, it could be a big bomb, but if I hit something insightful or a tad bit inspirational, I will be sure to blog about it here. I hope there are 25 carols worth digging into.

Tomorrow I'm kicking it off with one of my faves, Joy to the World, come by and check to see if it makes the blog!

Merry Christmas!