"God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him." --John Piper

POST 50!! WOOT! :)

Wow, so many posts... what have I been talking about all this time?! :D Whatever it is I hope it gets more exciting as life goes on, & I hope I learn to type better too... ;)

Today was kind of fun & eventful & full of good stuff to write about, so I shall write about it--novel idea, I know, but I thought I'd give it a whirl!

The church I attend has a yearly Christmas tradition--actually, we have lots of them, but specifically the choir has a really beautiful tradition of singing something called a "Christmas Cantata" every year one or two Sundays before Christmas.

According to the Oxford Dictionary (as found online anyway) a cantata is "a medium-length narrative piece of music for voices with instrumental accompaniment, typically with solos, chorus, and orchestra". The word's origins are 18th century Italian. (I felt obligated to look this up when I went to write about the cantata & suddenly realized that I didn't even know what that word meant...)

Apt description for what happened this morning... mostly. There were no solos--not sure why we abstained this year, but they've been there in the past--and our "orchestra" consisted of one extremely talented pianist (seriously, this lady has some awesome skills with a piano!), but other than that it fits.

I mention all of this because I'm in the choir that performed this morning, and we've been rehearsing since September... and it was so beautiful! I don't really sing solo in front of people much--it took three years of voice lessons and a wonderful singing partner for me to muster the courage to sing a duet in college--but if I'm harmonizing in a group it's another story. My range is such that either alto or soprano is easy for me, but when I joined the choir it was lacking altos, so alto I am. We had so many fun parts to sing, it really is a fantastic experience to be a part of such an event as a choir cantata...

That was the main event of the day. Then my sisters & their broods came over to Mum & Dad's place for Sunday lunch (another tradition). I played "SlapJack" with the kids--well, we played some twisted version of that game, I think when I was teaching them my brain combined "SlapJack" and some other game that I can't remember the name of... but in any case, the hybrid that resulted is really fun, and we played all afternoon until their mums came out of the living room to drag the kiddos away.

Then we got snowed in! Well, probably not really, but this evening's church got canceled, and no one really wanted to go anywhere anyway. Instead we stayed home & watched "The Santa Clause 2" (we already watched the first one last week, number 3 will be following up sometime before Christmas, I'm sure!).

So yeah, that's what's been happening... Did I mention we sang in robes? Not my preference, but I'm the young pup of the choir & apparently robes are "in" for choirs that sing cantatas... they're kind of a hunter green, and we had a bright red... actually, I'm not sure what they're called. Sashes? They hung around our necks, were red, and had a gold "Star of Bethlehem"esque embroidered on one side.

But the robes, they zipped up in the front, yeah? Only this morning, while we're getting them on RIGHT BEFORE we go up front, mine decides it's not going to. I'm seriously struggling with it for a solid two minutes, then a guyfriend walks over, sees I'm having trouble, and decides to help me out. Sure enough, first try, he can zip it up all the way--no problem.

I felt like a five year old that couldn't get my coat zipped. Not that I wasn't grateful--but I'm pretty sure my face was as red as that neck-sash-thing... (plague on the day I started blushing!)

But oh well. Such humour is the stuff of life. Where would I get my stories if things like that didn't happen? :)