Christmas Week: The Green Sentinels [2]

This is not the picture on my Christmas card, but it carry's the same basic ingredients .... green pine sentinels and a stable. Note the little pine on the left, wonder what that might be saying?

There are two rows of pine trees just a couple of yards along the west side of our house, and my wife's office has a window right in front of them. I'm being allowed to use my wife's study because the monitor on her computer decided enough is enough and the light ceased to shine [I doubt that 'focusing' on it like I did the barn yesterday morning will bring any light]; so now every night I bring my laptop home and she can work from it. I'm trying to persuade her to junk that big old computer and just get a laptop for her desk, we have wireless in the house. Back to my story, this morning I chose to focus out the window facing the pines, I just don't have the time or space to write everything I was thinking about those green sentinels. Their presence reminded me that they are one of the rare things of nature in this area of the world that keeps its color all year long, even in the snow. The pines closest to the branch root turn brown and die off about every three years, and while they are dying the younger, light green needles at the middle and on the ends of the branchs keep watch over them, and pick up their mantle and continue to add color and all kinds of benefits the tree wishes to bless nature with. As I was looking at them, it suddenly occured to me that in a Christmas-past postcard there was a manger scene with pines sheltering the stable .. so I searched, and searched and searched ... and sure enough my memory was correct, there was the card with green sentinels watching over the stable. Perhaps those green sentinels are reminders that no matter how bare, or colorless life may seem to become, Christ is ever present. If you're anything like me, you love cards and do your best to save them all, go back and review them, you just might be surprised when a card from Christmas-past has a blessing for you today.
And should I not, for some unseen reason, be able to wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year - my prayer is that you have one.