We just had Thanksgiving and are now getting closer and closer to Christmas. Tonight is also the first night of Hanukkah, one of my favorite holidays! It can be pretty hard to spend the holidays away from my family, but I have been blessed to have good friends around me. The beauty of living in the community of the body of Christ is that we are all family - these are my brothers and sisters and I love spending time with them, so my holidays are not spent alone.
Hanukkah is the festival of lights, the week when we celebrate God's miracle for the people of Jerusalem. The Maccabees had reclaimed the Temple and cleansed it, but they did not have enough oil to keep the lamp of the presence lit. That's when God intervened and kept the lamp lit for them for an entire week while they made more holy oil. It was an amazing sign in the midst of 400 years of silence and the people being horrifically oppressed by the Hellenists that God was still with them. It's a beautiful holiday and one of my favorite family traditions. This is the first year I will be spending it away from my family, but that doesn't mean I can't spend this week in joy and thankfulness for everything God has done. For Hanukkah, we are thankful that God was still with us even in our darkest hour when we thought He had abandoned us. Thankfully now we know that He is always with us and will never abandon us. Even though it's something we as Christians all know, it is good to remember and definitely worth celebrating! I won't be home to fry up latkes and donuts, light candles, or play dreidel with my siblings, but I can celebrate and remember in the little things. Mostly, I'm just thankful to be in DBS with these amazing people and I want to be able to share this time with them before we all go home for Christmas. It's an interestingly bittersweet feeling as we come towards the last two weeks of class... We are all anxious to spend Christmas at home with our families, but we are also so sad to be leaving one another. These people have really become some of my closest friends and the idea of parting ways (possibly forever) is really heartbreaking. But while leaving them is so sad, I am so grateful and overjoyed to have them in my life and to know that these are my dear brothers and sisters no matter where God ends up taking us. <3
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March 2023
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