Grafted Together

Here's Deacon and Grandma's tree. We're all having good time visiting with family, eating, playing games, driving around looking at lights, eating, and enjoying Christmas concerts.

Here is our special gift under the tree. Deacon's in his special Christmas PJ's, mostly oblivious to what's going on except for the new things to explore (ornaments, decorations, bows on gifts, etc...).

Of course the symbolism of rejoicing over the gift of Deacon into our lives is especially poignant during Christmas. As we've been blessed with Deacon, the Gift that's made it all possible is being celebrated.





We have this ornamental tree in our yard that is made from grafting two trees together into one. The tree often puts out different branches with slightly different leaves. When I spent more time on the yard work (read pre-Deacon), I'd often get out the trimmers and trim back the branches that were out of sorts. It was there when we moved in and now it seems just about right for us, with its different branches doing their things. Not only is our family grafted together, another baby long ago made it possible for us to be rejoined with the God of all creation. In fact, he loves us so much that he "moved into the neighborhood" as the Message version of scripture says.






So we celebrate the time when our neighbor moved into our midst. We celebrate by giving gifts to those we love and receiving gifts into our hands and hearts.