Blessings Abound at Christmas
BY DONNA HARRISON
The portrait you see here was a presentation to a caring individual who is a model for us all. We can choose to help. There is no limit to the kindness we each can do. We are meant to be blessings.
Ami McLaurin of rural Jasper County took in a horse that had been abused, and gave him a home. Ms. McLaurin said the horse saved her…rather than the other way around. The horse needed love, and Ms. McLaurin had a new outlet for her love. Now both the horse, “Peanut” and Ms. McLaurin are thriving as another wonderful holiday has come into our lives.
Some may have losses to grieve, some blessings to announce, and others may be standing with arms outstretched in happy hope of the unknown.
Wherever you find yourself this season, we each have the chance to look back on a year of strength and courage, perhaps of plans for renewal and growth. It’s said that the fall of a year can be seen through the natural eyes of trees. The leaves turn, revealing the brilliant colors that were under the bright green during the growth months. Then the glorious leaves fall, covering the ground and enriching the soil. The trees seem bare and lean.
We can choose to look at that cold landscape with dim eyes or we can choose to know that under the chilled ground, roots are storing goodness and hope and power for the spring that will come.
Here’s a message for us all: let’s look for every opportunity in the coming days, weeks and months to be ‘the roots’ of our own trees. Let’s find ways to help prepare someone or something to better withstand the winter of the world. This news edition offers a photo of one of our own neighbors, a young woman, who chose the be the hope and the courage for an animal that had been hurt, abused, and was helpless to defend itself. She stepped up. She took him in at great cost to herself. Now he thrives.
He has learned everyone is not cruel. He knows there are those who look beyond the gifts under the Christmas tree. In his wonderful, forgiving animal heart he understands there are those who embrace the holiday spirit. Animals feel what lives inside our souls.
