Celebration

Celebration is important in my life, and in our home. We attempt to make every day a bit special by celebrating everything, big and small. This includes setting aside time to pray and reflect on the anniversaries of things God has done in our lives, as well as inventing our own holiday to welcome winter, sucking every last drop of fun out of Christmas itself, and accomplishing adventurous items on our bucket list. I've been pondering recently, during this Christmas season, the reasons why celebration is important for me. This is what I came up with:

1. It promotes a thankful heart. Every day we are given a thousand different opportunities to choose between grumbling and gratefulness. Many, many times I choose grumbling. Just the other day, in the midst of Christmas fun, I found myself filled with an irate and complaining spirit. We had prepared to go to conduct a Christmas party at an orphanage. The car was filled with about 60 Christmas gifts, a couple of pinatas, game supplies and a few other things. The orphanage Christmas party was just the first of many things that needed to happen that day. I was inwardly thanking God that we had a car and that we weren't having to walk and squeeze into rickshaws this year with all our Christmas supplies. As we pulled out of our parking lot the watchman for our housing society pointed out that the entire street directly in front of our building had been dug up and there was no way for us to exit. He smilingly shrugged his shoulders and sent us back in. We backed the car up and began the process of reorganizing and reshuffling so that everything could be carried out to the street so we could wave down a rickshaw. As I piled my arms high with stuff and tried not to squash the Christmas cookies we'd slaved over all morning, I was muttering and grumbling to myself, ready to strangle someone, anyone, who was responsible for disrupting our plans by putting a big hole in the road. I just couldn't get over the idiocy of it, nor the fact that we hadn't been warned, nor the fact that no one was even apologizing to us. Of all days, why today? (I mean, come on, we were doing Christmas for orphans!!!) As you can see, I have a tendency toward complaining. So I, as I often have to do, began speaking truth to myself. Truth about the goodness of God. Truth about the smallness of the problem. Truth about my own attitude. Truth about how blessed we are to have a car at all. Truth, truth, truth. As truth began to invade my heart and mind, I was filled with thankfulness once again. By the time we arrived at the doorstep of the orphanage my spirit had been revived and I was able to joyfully enter into the fun and celebration. But my reminders to be thankful have to be deliberate and frequent, or I can easily give in to the tendency to grumble and mutter about every little inconvenience. That's why I put celebrations in as often as possible.They are like little thankfulness parties. I find that during winter my choice is to complain that we don't get a proper winter and I never see snow, or I can thank God that we get cooler weather at all. Creating Happy Hoodie Day to celebrate the beginning of coolish weather helps me to choose thanksgiving over complaining. Instead of bemoaning the fact that I never get to experience a winter wonderland of any sort, I find I am incredibly thankful for weather in the 50s and 60s - because I choose to celebrate it.

Happy Hoodie Day!! Celebrated with hot chocolate, s'mores and hoodies.

2. It helps me remember the goodness of God by setting up these 'stones of remembrance'. The past two and a half years have been HARD. But God has done so, so, so many good things for me. Just like the Israelites, I find that I forget each and every thing that God has done, if I don't take the time to remember and to celebrate. One of the days we plan to celebrate each year is the beginning of June, when, in 2012, God gave us a new home. It was wonderful and miraculous how it all came about. He moved the hearts of officials and our landlord. He orchestrated the timing and moved mountains for us. We were so delighted with God's goodness that day, and I don't ever want to forget it, so we take the time to celebrate it in June. Other special days include the day I moved to India, and the day we started ministry through the local church (all by the faithful and providential hand of God). The kids pictured below all come regularly to our kids club now and were a part of our nativity skit this year. Many of them come from Amrapali, the slum area near our house. What we are prone to forget is that last year Bec and I used to take walks by Amrapali, praying that God would give us a way to minister to the families and children there. It seemed like a far fetched dream. Now when we drive by Amrapali there is rarely a time when we don't hear kids calling out "Emily didi! Bec didi!" What good things God has done for us, in answering our prayers and giving us the blessing of ministering to these little ones. May we never forget what He has accomplished.

3. It keeps me from getting overwhelmed with the discouragements, setbacks and frustrations. Boy are there discouragement and frustrations aplenty! When you work in ministry, or simply when you follow God, there are so many difficult relationships and sin issues and barriers that can cause you to despair. But celebration helps me focus on the positive, on the ways that God is at work in peoples' lives, rather than the ways in which sin and Satan seem to be victorious. Celebrating with these nine girls was a sweet delight last week. To laugh together while also thinking about how far they have come since last year. Some have grown in spiritual maturity to the point that they are now serving and ministering to others. Others are now bringing their unbelieving friends to church and Bible studies. A few are still soaking up the truth, hearts wide open and searching. The moments we have had of speaking tough truth in the form of rebuke and exhortation, or nights spent in a mental hospital, or the frustration of circumstances beyond our control that keep the girls from coming to church - these things all fade away for a time and we hold on to the hope and joy and delight of being together and celebrating Christ.

4. It gives me a foretaste of heaven and the joy that we will continually experience there. It seems that nearly every one of my post comes around to touching the anticipation of heaven. The hope of heaven is something that gets me through each day. The very title of this blog indicates how very much I look forward to that day when we stand before God, face to face, rejoicing and worshiping forever and ever. Each little spurt of happiness or feeling of pleasure is a foretaste or shadow of that coming joy. So I promote celebration in my life to remind me and to point me to the day when our joy is unmixed with sorrow and sin. I posted this quote by Piper recently on my fb page: 'And foretastes are good. Unless they become substitutes. O, don't let all the sweet things of this season become substitutes of the final great, all-satisfying Sweetness. Let every loss and every delight send your hearts a-homing after heaven.' That's why I celebrate with focused purpose. To stir up my heart to be happy and excited for the heavenly, eternal celebration that is to come.