the reason for the season

Faithfully Thinking: Making Pockets of Jesus’ Peace this Christmas season

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 8 Comments

As many of us know, Jesus may not have actually been born on December 25, but instead, he was most likely born a couple months earlier. No matter the exact date, this is the time of year when we as Christians unite to celebrate his birth, to remember he came as God’s ambassador to us – as a way to bridge that gap between the divine and humanity.

Finding peace in the midst of the Christmas season can be a challenge to those who are planning parties, cooking for family gatherings, or trying to figure out what to buy for gifts.

We may not all be as busy during this time of year but almost all of us find our attention being pulled away from the focus of the real reason for the season.

The gift of Jesus is more important than any gift that can be left under our trees or in our stockings. Through him, we were given salvation – eternal life with God in heaven despite the sins we have committed. We have been shown grace, divine love, and supernatural forgiveness and restoration.

No piece of jewelry, new clothing, good food, or even good company can compare to that gift.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t enjoy the celebratory nature of the holidays, but while we enjoy our family time or holiday parties we can pause and reflect on the peace of Christ, which can help bring us our own peace. Jesus gives us peace beyond our understanding.

If we want to have peace during the holiday season, we may need to create moments that will facilitate it. Waiting for small spaces of calm won’t work when the world itself doesn’t wait.

We have to make those pockets of calm for ourselves or they might not happen.

I first wrote about pockets of peace and our need for them in a blog post earlier this year.

In that post, I mentioned that to create small spaces of peace for myself I had to do things like putting my phone down and getting off social media, shutting off the TV, keeping myself away from any news or information from the outside world, and not ruminating on all the tasks I need to be doing.

“They were little pockets of time in my day where I could regulate my thoughts and my soul, even if only slightly,” I wrote in the post. “It helped give my nerves and mind time to calm down, instead of continuing to race and raise my cortisol to dangerous levels. I even made a point to pull a blanket over my lap and make a cup of tea during those times, mentally envisioning myself in a type of comfort zone.”

The idea for Christmas pockets of peace is the same. If you do play music make it sacred Christmas music that will remind you of Jesus’ place in the season. If you read, make it something that will remind you of the birth of our savior. If you watch something, watch something that will also bring you back to the reason we celebrate in the first place.

One way to do this might be to find a devotional you can read during the weeks leading up to Christmas. I didn’t do that this year and I regret that but I hope to look for one on my You Vision app this week.

You could also watch a dramatic representation of the nativity story, such as the ones presented by the creators of The Chosen over the years. I’ll link to those at the end of the post.

However you choose to decompress from the busyness of the season, I encourage you to remember that your pockets of peace don’t have to be long to be impactful. Even five to ten minutes of listening to a calming song or reading an inspirational devotional can be enough to remind you what is really important this time of year.

The Star

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 10 Comments

This is a post I wrote in 2017 about the star my dad puts at the top of the field next to his house.


He and my son set the star up yesterday but I missed the photos because I didn’t realize they’d already done it. I was sitting inside a warm house talking to my mom instead. Oops.

Here is the post from 2018 and some photos from 2017, 2019, and 2020.

They carried the star up the steep, snow-covered hill because the truck’s tires spun and sent the hunk of metal skittering sideways toward the old dirt road. In the end, they left the truck in the field and slid the star, made of wood and strands of Christmas lights off the roof. Their breath steamed patterns out in front of them as they walked and the sun, a misleading sign of the outside temperature, cast long shadows onto the untouched surface of the snow that fell the day before.

Ropes were looped and tied and hooked on a pulley, the ladder was climbed and the star was hoisted with a couple reminders from father-in-law to son-in-law to “be careful of the lights! You’re hitting the lights on the tree!” But finally it was high enough and nails were hammered in to hold it in place.

Dad built the star several years ago and put it at the edge of the woods, at the top of the field and where people driving by on Route 220, across the Valley could see it. It has become a beacon, you could say. A beacon of good will, or peace, or joy or whatever it represents for each person who sees it. It can mean a lot of things for a lot of people but for Dad it is a sign of hope and the real reason behind Christmas. After all – isn’t that what the birth of Jesus was all about? Bringing hope to a hurting, fallen world?

So on this little hill, in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania, my dad hangs his homemade, 50-some pound star, and with it hangs a little bit of hope – hope for health, for peace, for love for all, hope for the broken, the weary, the shattered souls.  And it reminds us who is the hope of the world.

Isaiah 9:6-7

6 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 

7 Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the LORD Almighty will accomplish this.