it's christmas!

Merry Christmas everybody!

My room is so warm I had to turn off the heating altogether. Because the rays of warm warm sunshine are streaming in like it's summer! Yes, so no white christmas, but I'm not complaining.
Blesssings everywhere this Christmas, like wonderful dinner, laughs round the restaurant table on the other end of a phonecall, friend's mum coming to know Christ (!!), and love.

This Christmas actually felt quite festive. When I went to Sainsbury's yesterday, you could almost feel the excitement in the air amongst all the last minute grocery shoppers preparing for dinner, and trolleys all piled so high too. Maybe also because I'm now staying in an estate, and could smell wafts of other home's Christmas dinners, could hear the talking, laughter, music, could see the lights. :)

Anyway, I would like to share a Christmas carol we don't sing very much back home, (possibly because the idea of midwinter is foreign), but it's hardly winterish here now, and it's still beautiful. (And all the carol services I've been to or watched on TV had their choirs/congregations sing it!)

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, Whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, Whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.