Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all of you. We don't have big plans except to visit with Isaac, have a nice dinner and do some work on the kitchen. Why not? It's our Christmas gift to each other (and ourselves) this year. Don't worry though--we're having dinner with friends tomorrow and will see my family later this week to celebrate Christmas "properly."

I was saying to Troy recently that I couldn't wait until we could plug the small appliances into the wall and would no longer have to deal with the mess of the power cord we are currently using. "And," I excitedly said, "it's already done." And it is. Troy has supplied power to all the outlets in the kitchen. They are ready to use. Can be used any time. We aren't yet using them because the counters aren't ready and there's other stuff still to be done. But at that moment I was flooded with delight that it was accomplished even as I was still cooking in the dining room.

It occurred to both of us that this was an analogy of the new kingdom. It has been accomplished. It is done. But we're not there yet. We are prevented from fully living in it.

But at that moment of excitement when I knew I had power in the kitchen and was living that experience even though I still was forced to use the power cord in the dining room, I really had a glimpse of how we can live in the knowledge of and in some way experience the new heaven and new earth even though we aren't there yet.

Then Troy tried to take things too far and claim that this analogy makes him God since he was the one that hooked up the power...