When the radio crackled out its first broadcast on Christmas Eve in 1906, listeners tuned in to the voice of Reginald Fessenden reading Luke 2– the birth of Christ– before he picked up his violin and played “O Holy Night.” Yes, that’s right. The first song played on the radio, after years of exclusively morse code, was a hymn depicting the birth of Jesus. The song was written in French as a poem originally by Placide Cappeau in 1843 and set to music by Adolphe Charles Adams for a Christmas Eve mass in 1847. Although the church accepted and loved the hymn at first, it was eventually banned after leadership found out that Adolphe was Jewish and Placide walked away from his faith. Eventually, about a decade later, the hymn would fall into the hands of an American minister, John Sullivan Dwight, who would change some of the lyrics to be the ones we know today.

Picture this: The world seems to hold its breath and is eerily still. The wind whips through cold, damp trenches as the minutes tick into the wee hours of the morning. The year is 1914 and you are a soldier in the army holding down the western front against the Germans in World War I. The war began earlier that year at the beginning of the summer, and has been relentless ever since. If you were crazy enough to poke your head out of the trench to look across No Man’s Land, the bodies laying out in the cold would be staggering– a fresh dusting of snow being their only burial shroud. You miss your family, your hometown, and your own warm bed. It almost seems like a lifetime away as you sit at the bottom of this trench, the soil packed hard and unforgiving. You count the days since you’ve been here when it occurs to you; it’s Christmas Eve.

Today, we begin with a laugh: Sam was scrolling through Twitter a few nights ago and started to chuckle. When I asked him what was so funny, he told me that someone asked via tweet, “Who is Harold Angel?” Of course, this person would be confusing Mr. Harold Angel with the opening line of the same Christmas hymn called, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” The lyrics were originally written by Charles Wesley as a poem and later put to music by George Whitfield in 1753, when the original first line– Hark, how the welkin (heaven) rings– was revised to what we know and love today. What strikes most historians about this hymn is the lyrics; not only are they theologically sound, but they are beautifully put. In three stanzas, this song presents the Gospel in a meaningful and succinct way, which is probably why it has stood the test of time– almost 300 years to be exact.

If you’ve been with me since the beginning of this little devotional site, you’ll know that every year, for five years, I’ve tackled the Christmas story in the weeks after Thanksgiving leading up to the big day. This year, I pondered how I could make my Christmas devotions different from what I’ve done in the past. So what is something about the Christmas season that can immediately put a person in the seasonal spirit? For me, before we put up the tree or bake the cookies, before we wrap the presents or decorate the house, we all do one thing: turn on Christmas music. To me, Christmas carols can instantly get me into the Christmas spirit, bring all my childhood memories to the forefront of my mind, and help me remember that our Savior, Jesus, came to be with us in the flesh.

Reverence. It’s a big word, and one not to be used lightly. It is a deep respect and awe for something or someone. Lately, I’ve been asking myself: do I have reverence for the Lord in my every day life? I think between social media blurbs, quick and snappy sermon titles, and TikTok devotions, the American church has lost what was once its highest priority: to revere and regard the Lord with deep love and trembling.

My daughter got four vaccines at her last doctor's visit. If you’ve ever had a baby, you’ll know that even one vaccine can make a baby fussy, clingy, uncomfortable, and unhappy. Now multiply that by four. After getting pricked at her appointment, she fell asleep long enough for us to pick up infant Tylenol and make it home, then the crying commenced. We did everything: nursed her until she refused any more, hopped in the shower for skin-to-skin and let the water run over her, bounced her, walked around with her, turned on music, the whole nine. Finally, the thing that helped her relax and sleep again was laying on her daddy’s chest for a good snuggle. And now, as I watch her relaxed and comforted, her little hands wrapped around Sam as far as they’ll make it, I am reminded of how that’s exactly the way God sees me: small, innocent, and in need of a Father God to be saved and comforted.

Have you ever had someone who seemed intent on hurting you or your family? I’m talking about and over and over type situation; like one where they hurt you, you work to forgive them, turn the other cheek, and they end up offending you on a completely new level. The Christianese answer is that you should continue to turn the other cheek to this person, but if you’re anything like me in this kind of situation, your prayers start to sound somewhere along the lines of, “Lord, there just isn’t another cheek left to give!”

I am learning that with every major milestone in life, there is one common denominator: thank you cards. And after the birth of my daughter, Piper, we’ve gotten so many gifts from so many people that it’s hard to keep track anymore. So much so, that I decided to finally buckle down and take care of sending out thank you cards off of a very inconsistent list Sam and I started putting together once the packages started coming in from everywhere. As I was going through a list of people at least an arms length long, something extremely obvious occurred to me. Thank you notes are considered a nice touch, if not a common courtesy. If you get a gift big or small, you thank that person for it and a thank you note sends a specific message of deep gratitude.

Ever been on a long road trip with a baby? I have now, and if you take a look at this past weekend, you might say I took several. We had to take a trip to Connecticut this weekend as a family– yes, including our six week old, Piper, and Archie, our dog. In order to try and make the journey easier, we planned to make several stops along the way that would let us stop and rest on our way to where we had to be and then traveling back home.

Everyone knows and loves the story of Moses and Israel’s exodus from Egypt. There are movies about it, songs, coloring pages, teaching curriculums, you name it. The story is full of miracles and unbelievable moments from plagues to the parting of the Red Sea. When you’re talking about the awesome power of God, there is no story like this one. And the grand finale of it all is just as Israel is making their last push out of Egypt. They go out and camp just along the shores of the Red Sea, waiting for God to show them the next steps of their journey. Meanwhile, Pharaoh has changed his mind and gathered his army to go and re-capture the Israelites. You would think, after losing so much in ten plagues– including his firstborn son– Pharaoh wouldn’t want to go toe to toe with God again.

When I was a little girl, my parents instated a bedtime routine for me. It was some iteration of bath, snack time, brush teeth, story time, and then saying prayers. Like most prayers for little kids, there was a rhythm to it so that eventually I’d be able to say them on my own and know what to pray for. One thing we always prayed has always stuck out to me. Each night, we’d thank God for His many blessings, seen and unseen. As a kid, I didn’t understand the full breadth of what that meant, but as I got older it meant more. It’s simple, but hard to wrap our minds around: the fact that God blesses us in ways that are readily apparent and obvious, but He also blesses us in ways we aren’t even aware of, simply because He can see things going on around us that we could never possibly see from our limited perspective.

On September 2nd, 2022, Piper was born at 11:33 pm at 7 lbs 5 oz, 21 inches long. After all that time waiting, and at 41 weeks, 5 days, every plan Sam and I made about how we wanted our daughter to be born went out the window. We wanted a home birth with the midwife we'd been meeting with over the course of my pregnancy.

o sleep. This happens a lot lately. At around 6, Sam woke up and we spent a couple hours talking and laughing as the sun came up behind the shades in our bedroom. As we were laying there, enjoying each other’s company I said something along the lines of, “This is one of the last moments we get to be just us two. Our lives are going to change forever any minute now.”

Before you ask, no, I have not had the baby. Last week’s lack of devotion wasn’t a silent announcement, it was just pregnancy brain. And in the past week, Sam and I have been learning a whole new lesson in patience and waiting for the Lord’s time. It’s not something we’re unfamiliar with. We waited on God to date. We waited on God to get married. We certainly waited on God to conceive this child. And now, we’re waiting on His appointed time for her to come.

Where is your treasure? Think about it. Take a pause and think about your life. Where is your time most spent? What are the things you absolutely cannot live without? What are your non-negotiables? Family? Friends? Career? Your home? Your lifestyle? Your politics? Jesus? Your list is completely valid, whatever it is you put on it. Your treasure is exactly that: yours. You may put value on something that I don’t, and that’s just the beauty of different perspectives.

I don’t think I’ve ever walked through a season of life where so much change was happening all at once. Not even when I was married, although there was a lot of change in that season as well. And I know, I have a decent amount of readers that don’t have kids and are probably tired of hearing me talk about being pregnant, but I can’t help it. It’s just where I am right now. Having your first child is a life-change like no other. Simultaneously, you’re growing a baby in an area that only you have occupied all your life. Every day, it seems like there are new changes, new aches, pains, growth, symptoms, and all the while, this child is reminding you that they are growing out of what once was next to nothing.