The Potter's Shed

This week the boxes that need opening are not the ones under the tree, mostly because I don't even know where the tree box is, nor under how many other boxes it currently sits.  Rather, they are the ones that remain to be unpacked from our move.  We are functioning well in our new home, but there is still quite a bit that is unsettled. How do I prepare an appropriate welcome for Christmas is such a disarray?

As I dig through closets jumbled with items that need to find their proper homes, I wonder how Mary did it.  How did she travel to a far off city, give birth in a barn, and then set up house as a young mother with few if any relatives around to give assistance.  Perhaps she didn't have all the boxes, but how do you welcome a new child in such uncertain and unprepared surroundings?

But did it she did.

Does it matter that we are pulling our Advent bit-by-bit from boxes piled in a corner?  Does it matter that our celebrations and remembrances are hobbled together from a bit of scotch tape and wrinkled drawing paper?  Is it enough to welcome Him?

It surely must be.

If Mary and Joseph can hobble together a nursery for the King of Kings from a stable and a feed-trough, certainly my hampered preparations will be blessed.