The Family's Christmas Outings

"Faith is the voice in the back of your head telling you to listen to the voice in the back of your head." Dennis Miller

This quote caught my husband's eye and stuck there...for it tells deeply and concisely exactly the way faith has worked for us this last couple of years.

And what does that voice say: no matter what life may throw your way, it is not praise you should be hearing from Me in those times when you need nothing, nor should you be hearing condemnation from Me in those times when you need everything. Only trust and prioritize our relationship in whatever state you find your life. This is what the back-of-the-head voice says.

Now here is the quote that caught my eye, sent to dance with my husband's focal quote:

Experience is a gateway. not an end. Beware of building your faith on experience..." Oswald Chambers

Two experiences are available for illustration, and they take the form of the "Christmas Outing." Families tend to give special significance to "the family outing" during the Christmas season. We are no exception. But the outings took very different forms last year and this year.

The scene from last year's abundance laid alongside the scene from this year's need:
We piled into the car and went to King's Island.
We piled into the car and drove a few miles to see a commercially produced light show.

At King's Island, the shops glowed with Christmas wares, lights and garlands glittered; with not a single decoration forgotten that might be required to make that historic "holiday cheer" come alive.
At the light show, a parade of Christmas lights portrayed scene after scene, from Noah's ark to a circus, from a farmer sowing seed to ice skaters on a pond. And the children were still enraptured.

At King's Island, Santa was only available for distant viewing as he rode waving, high atop a sleigh, moving through the park in a spectacular parade.
At the farm-implement store that hosted the light show, Santa was available for a free personal visit, and the visitors made their own parade through the store to get a turn with him.

At King's Island, the smell of baked goods wafted from every eatery, and fake snow crunched underfoot near the artificially-made ice skating pond. The children dined on hot pastries and cocoa and skated.
At the farm store, the smell-wafting came from the crumpled but free bags of popcorn, which also provided the crunch underfoot as children were--amazingly--allowed to climb around on tractor after tractor, turning wheels and pulling levers on machines bearing tags that proclaimed their value: up in the thousands of dollars. Instead of fiddling with skates, they disconnected spark plugs on lawn mowers until moms stopped them. ( And I wondered how many a mom at King's Island would have even known that the wire her three-year-old just pulled loose had anything to do with a spark plug? I know I bowed in wonder to that unimpressive-looking mom's superior knowledge.)

At King's Island, a group of minstrels played live music by request just for us in the middle of a not-so-busy pathway.
At the tractor store, the only music came sporadically through the door from the "Santa cart" placed decoratively just outside. It wasn't live music, and it wasn't any great loss when the door swung shut and cut it off.

Finally, at King's Island last year, we took our child out for a Christmas memory-maker, one birthed from our wealth; and our five-year-old gave it his stamp of approval: "I'll never forget this."
But this year at the tractor store, he had his first "real" one-on-one visit with Santa. Clutching his complimentary John Deere tractor in hand as we left, he said: "I'll never forget this."
I hope, neither will I.