What’s right with this picture?

Do you remember that game, “What is wrong with this picture?” I used to love to play that.  You would decide what doesn’t belong in the picture and circle it.  I still like to play the version of this in the back of People magazine where you point out what is different in each picture.  For today, we are playing, “What is right with this picture?”

This morning I was thinking about what I wanted to post for the “Tuesdays Unwrapped” link up that I’m doing with http://www.chattingatthesky.com/.  We are supposed to look around at our everyday, messy lives and find blessings…we are to celebrate the small things.

My daughter took this picture in our living room and I thought it was perfect.  The things it represents are not small in any way but they are things that many of us (including me) take for granted.  Of course, the tree represents Christmas.  God loved the world so much, He sent His son to redeem us.  Wow.  No small thing. Actually, He was a small thing.  A tiny little baby.  A beautiful, perfect savior born on that Holy Night.

I love the American flag in the back of the picture too.  No small thing.  We fly our flag every day, year round.  I sometimes have guilt about flying it at night without a light or how it sometimes waves in the rain.  I’m not sure of the rules exactly, I just know I love my country and I know I want to honor it.

Same goes for God sometimes.  I don’t know all the rules exactly.  I just know I love God and I want to honor Him.

So this picture is what I’m celebrating today.  Both the flag and the tree represent my individual freedom and they represent Freedom in a bigger, more universal sense too.  One is the freedom of now, here, in this country, in my circumstance and one is the other kind of freedom, the everlasting freedom from sin and death.  So maybe we can call them the small freedom and the BIG FREEDOM.  But again, we are reminded, neither of these are small things.  People are dying for these freedoms every day.

My son was playing with this Nativity set the other day.

My friend gave me this one because I love the Peanuts (especially Snoopy and Woodstock).  One of my other friends she doesn’t know if she agrees with Woodstock standing in for Jesus but I love it.  It’s the Peanuts Christmas Play.  Another reminder that yes, I’m a Christian but I’m an American too so that means the “Peanuts Christmas” is part of my tradition.  I’m embracing all of it.

As my son was playing with the set he was singing…”My country ’tis of thee…” Seriously.  No joke.  “Sweet Land of Liberty”… “of thee I sing”.

No… it’s not “Silent Night”… but it is a song about Freedom.  Isn’t that what Christmas is all about?

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