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The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) and The Voice of the Heart Center (vothcenter.com). You can connect with Dr. Chip Dodd at [email protected]. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at [email protected]. 

It is amost Thanksgiving, and Christmas is just around the corner. How are you going to keep Christ in Christmas this year? I recommend spending a few minutes each day in December reading The Jesse Tree: A Christmas Devotional.  This devotional will take you through the Bible, from Genesis to the birth of Jesus. Each day focuses on God’s protection of the royal line of Jesus and God’s plan of redemption for His people.

We are made for more

October to April opens up the most magical time of the year and potentially the most painful.

As the fall approaches and the “harvest” season settles into our consciousness, we begin to long for what the holidays are created to offer, family, friends, and fellowship. 

The windows of the “soul” open to our heavenly longings as the holiday season of anticipation begins. The window remains open until the new year begins, our resolutions have turned back into daily life, and we lift the “heavy burden” of getting back to work—we prepare to pay our taxes in April!

If we allow ourselves to long for what we dream the holidays can offer, we will also need to allow ourselves to grieve what they cannot give us—heavenly completion on earth: 

It is okay to grieve

The family gatherings will not live up to what we dream at the worst, and they will end with departures at their best.

The friends we love to be with will need to return to their places of other purposes.

The fellowship that blesses us will also come to an end.

We can experience heavenly hints of completion, but not get to remain in the place of completion. 

The holidays awaken us to holy moments of seeing how life could be, or is created to be, but this is still not heaven. 

In the movie “Field of Dreams” a character asks, “Is this heaven?” The answer to the beautiful question of hope is, “No, this is Iowa.” We can taste heaven here during the holiday season, but not keep it or possess it; we can only take time to live it by bringing family and friends together in fellowship.

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