Christmas Traditions


 Here is a pic of my peeps.  Haha..  This is our ladies GLOW group from church.  GLOW officially stands for Godly Ladies of Worship, but various of our husbands have referred to it in other terms, one being God Loves Old Women.  In fact all ages are welcome.  Unfortunately our youngest member, at age 16, was at work at the Catfish Cafe.  

As a general rule we meet monthly at the church where we have a devotion, do a craft or a project, then have lunch. This time one of the ladies hosted the group.

Our Christmas meeting in December traditionally involves our secret pal reveal and a cookie exchange.  I forgot to get a picture of the cookies.  We did pretty well at bringing a variety of cookies, though there were 3 different kinds of sugar cookies, just decorated differently.  

Also for this meeting we got an assembly line going to make cards and then make small gift bags for each of the residents of the nursing homes the youth group will carol at next week.  We actually finished about 200 of the 250 cards needed and managed to packag up most of them along with a pair of fuzzy socks and a snack.  

These ladies are the best group.  We all get along well; we laugh and cry and help each other through life, as the good Lord intended that we do.

In the past 2 months there have been 3 surgeries amongst this group; gall bladder removal, hip replacement and shoulder replacement.  And we have all taken part in one or the other of meal prep, grocery store runs, medication pick-up, house decorating, visiting and general assistance wherever needed.  Sure, we occasionally have disagreements, but no one ever cops an attitude or gets their nose out of joint, nor are there ever any scenes or untoward drama.  In fact, the worst drama we had this meeting was someone was paying more attention to the conversation than to her water glass when she was filling it at the dispenser and overflowed water all over the kitchen floor.  We all laughed, the hostess got the mop and cleaned up and we poked gentle fun at the water-spiller off and on the whole morning.   

Our fun and fellowship puts me in mind of the following Bible verse:

Psalm 133 : 1 How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity! It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard, running down on Aaron's beard, down upon the collar of his robes. It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion.

If you do a bit of research on this verse, the geographical references are interesting.  Mt Hermon is the highest mountain in that area and it stays perpetually capped with snow, I've read.  So when the rest of the area is in the dry season parts of the snowcap melts and waters the surrounding areas with either runoff, or mists and dews.  

There are obviously many spiritual parallels you can draw here, one being the Spirit of God, symbolized in the Bible by both oil and dew, will refresh us in times of need.  For my point here, as ladies, we all have our individual lives where we can get mentally and spiritually drained.  As we come together in fellowship we are refresh each other with our devotional Bible studies and our camaraderie and laughter.  

I am thankful for this group of ladies and I look forward to meeting with them every month.

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