Elaine and Sawyer Play with Doc. Cadence Plays with Army Men. December, 2011.
More than I can Imagine
My daughter Elaine was four the first year we baked cinnamon rolls together for breakfast on Christmas. This year, she’s twenty-nine. Saturday night, for the twenty-fifth time, we’ll knead the dough and sprinkle the cinnamon, making pinwheels of goodness for our breakfast on Christmas morning.
Last year, when I wrote about our tradition, I couldn’t imagine an end to it. This year, when Elaine told me that the Navy was sending her husband to Hawaii, I refused to think of an end to it. And as things worked out, our tradition lives for another year. She and her sons have already returned to California; her husband Rob will join us tomorrow. Whether we’ll be making cinnamon rolls together next year is anybody’s guess, as it appears that Rob’s orders will take the family to Guam in 2012.
But we won’t worry about next year. On Christmas Eve, after church, after prime rib, we’ll don aprons and scald milk and measure flour and watch as the yeast works its magic, growing a small lump of sweet dough bigger and bigger. Every year, when we return to the kitchen after the dough has risen, we find more in the bowl than we’d imagined.
That’s really Christmas, isn’t it? God comes down not as the conquering king everyone expected, but as a baby. That tiny infant, sleeping under a shining star in the east, was more than anyone imagined: a promise fulfilled, salvation for all humanity.
One thing I know about my God: He is more than I can imagine.
This Christmas, as my daughter and I watch the dough rising, bigger and bigger, I’ll see Jesus there.
How about you? Where will you find Him this Christmas?
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. 5 The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
1 John 1-5 (NASB)
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