The Twenty-Four Days of Christmas: Day Seven

We interrupt our regularly scheduled blog-cast.....

...Actually, we don't.  While the following may not seem like a celebration of Advent, it is.  Remember that this is a season of anticipation and preparation.

Last night I decided that it is time to start getting my home ready for Christmas.  I was thinking about bringing bins up from the basement, going through different decorations and remembering where they came from and why/how they are significant to our family.  Then I looked around at the home.  Oh my!  The last few weeks I have spent so much time crafting, blogging, tending sick family (and giving in to my own sinus/cold stuff), and generally avoiding housework, that I have not done much for my home.  

It wasn't quite this bad...

So before I can do any decorating, I have to do some cleaning.  Just because this task is important and has a great deal of value does not mean that I love doing it!  However, I dragged out the Pine-Sol, the rags, the Windex, the paper towels, the step stool, the duster, the fortitude and got to work.  

Don't I look efficient?

My pastor was nice enough to come perch on the kitchen table while I worked and keep me company and talk about How to Study the Bible,  I love how he will stop mid-thought to let me go move something to another room or change the water the mini-blinds are soaking in and then pick right back up where we left off without missing a beat.  

So I am looking at a kitchen with a clean ceiling (how does dust get up there, anyway??), clean windows, clean walls, clean stove and getting ready to finish the counters, sweep and mop, and move on to the rest of the house.


Cleaning the house to get ready for Christmas can have some interesting spiritual allusions, can't it?  The need to periodically examine our hearts and lives to make sure we are living a life that reflects God to all who are watching us, to take stock of problem areas, repent of sin and move on.  I'll leave you to think about that.  I figure that is a conversation for you to have with the Holy Spirit rather than a woman who has dust on her kitchen ceiling!  I'm going to go finish getting my physical house in order so that tomorrow I can share with you some of the decorating that I plan to do.

And for those of you who have won prizes for commenting in the last 24 hours, that dust kept me home today, but I'll get to the post office tomorrow, James 4:15.