December 1

Over at The No Clutter Mom, we are talking a lot about thankfulness this Advent Season. One of the ways I am incorporating my old tradition of taking a picture every day of Advent and posting it on Instagram, and the thankfulness challenges, is to take pictures and write why I am thankful for that specific thing.

This is an icon of Christ Pantocrator. It summarized two thankfuls.

1. I am thankful for God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Creator, Savior, Sustainer. Each day I feel that I am only beginning to know how thankful I am for God, so I don't know how to write more.

2. I am also thankful for studying Eastern Orthodoxy. Having my faith turned completely upside down helped me begin to understand what are cultural expectations and what is truly faith. By encouraging me to begin each day as if it were the first day of my conversion, it has helped me begin to step outside of measuring my growth in faith and sanctification, causing me to fight pride and complacency, and accept Christ's forgiveness as a gift, not something I have to measure up to. It has challenged my understand of Church, of Community, of Morality, and of Spirituality. I don't feel that I have even begun to scrape the surface of what I want to know, but it is changing my life one prayer at a time.

This is my first thankful because during this next month, we get to celebrate Christ, the Lord of all, become Immanuel, God with us. He, who made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! 

I know that isn't the end of the story, but let's not rush ahead yet. The anticipation is half the fun. Christ is coming.