Dreaming of a White Christmas

The news of the East Coast Snow Storm of the decade (?century) has been a bit hard to take here where dry season has begun to bake us in the oven of sunshine and dust. The only thing very white about our Christmas is us. But being a family of Scandinavian heritage (Scott's dad is of Norwegian origen, and mom Norwegian/Swedish) we have imported some of those traditions even to the equator. So yesterday the kids spent the morning cutting out the most intricate and amazing snowflakes, which we suspended from the ceiling with fishing line. Then we set up the front room for an authentic White Dinner Feast for our team. The idea in Norway I guess is to have a dinner where everything is white: fish, potatoes, bread, fruit salad covered in cream, even cauliflower as the veggie. Heidi has added in the first course cold cucumber-yoghurt soup, and everyone on the team brings some white food specialty, topped off with a coconut cake for dessert. And I give my all to the lefsa, a potato-tortilla that is rolled with butter and sugar. Scott said the table blessing that his grandfather always prayed in Norwegian. We ended the evening out on the patio with our final advent readings, focused on the theme of home, how we miss it as pilgrims and strangers on this earth, how the longing points us to our real home being prepared for us (John 14, Isaiah 25, 65, and Revelations 21).

And in this mountain

The LORD of hosts will make for all people

A feast of choice pieces

A feast of wines on the lees,

Of fat things full of marrow,

Of well-refined wines on the lees.

And He will destroy on this mountain

The surface covering cast over all people

And the veil that is spread over all nations.

He will swallow up death forever,

And the LORD GOD will wipe away tears from all faces;

The rebuke of His people

He will take away from all the earth;

For the LORD has spoken.

Waiting, in Bundibugyo, for that day, and tasting the signs that it is coming.