I’ve been more absorbed than usual, not in digiscrapping (though that continues to be pretty much an obsession), but in my Christmas present. Christmas present, you ask? But it’s not Christmas! I can hear the harumphs. I think my sweet husband may still be harumphing as well. See, he ordered my Christmas present on Friday, and within a couple hours the credit card fraud guys (not guys, actually, it was a machine) called to verify the charge. Innocently, I took the call, since I am usually the big spender in the household...only to hear about a charge from MacMall. Where they sell iMacs, one of which was on the top of my wish list this year...

Now, I know lots of people who would be disappointed to have the surprise spoiled--and I know Dave was disappointed--but I was and am thrilled. I don’t like surprises. And I do like Macs. What’s not to be thrilled about?

So my new machine with the giant (to me) screen and giant (to me) hard drive arrived Tuesday, and I have been busy getting it all set up and learning the upgraded OS. I graduated from a Mac laptop, which I expect to still use at times, so the Mac thing is not new, but the new machine came with Leopard, the new version of Mac OS X. So I’ve been busy learning and transferring files and, finally, the last couple days, scrapping on a fast, big computer. Yay!

Yesterday we had a lovely snowstorm, as the picture above and on my Project 365 blog attest. The kids had fun sledding, and I was glad for the photo ops as well as the snow. I really like snow and have not outgrown the excitement of it all like some people I know. I realize it’s a pain in the neck to get around in, and I am blessed not to have to go anywhere much if the weather’s bad. But I liked it even when I was working outside the house. The beauty, the cold, the fun of it all.

I have also been listening to Christmas music. I have a pretty large collection--CDs purchased over the years as well as more recent digital purchases. I bought two albums this year from iTunes, and I’m very happy with both. One is by Jars of Clay. I didn’t own any Jars of Clay before this, and I really like this one. There’s a mix of traditional and new music, but none of it is boring, and I really like the sound. The other is by Mindy Smith; as soon as I saw she had a Christmas album out, I knew I would be likely to bite the bullet and buy it. She just has the most lovely, pure voice. I have not been disappointed (though I’ve only had it 5 days).

In my Bible reading I have been pondering, not so much the seasonally appropriate incarnation, but the atonement. When I read about the crucifixion in Luke last week, for the first time I thought about Barabbas. He’s the insurrectionist and murderer whom Herod pardoned for the Passover tradition, while Jesus was sent to the cross. I wondered: What did Barabbas do with his new life? I wondered if he appreciated what had happened to him, if he had any notion that an innocent could have been pardoned but wasn’t. And I realized that we are all Barabbas--insurrectionists (rebels against the rightful authority over us) and murderers (haters of our fellows)--and an Innocent died in our place. Like Barabbas, we deserve death; like Barabbas, we go scot-free, and Jesus hangs on the cross in our place. What am I doing with this life? I wonder if Barabbas turned his life around or if he went back to his old murderous ways. I wonder to what degree I have truly chosen to live in new ways and to what degree I hang on to my own insurrectionist tendencies.

I really will try to update more than once a week, but, hey, you get what you pay for!