Leah and Last

Leah

The figure for the Jesse Tree today is Leah. Note, not Rachel, though she was loved and favored by Jacob, the husband of both sisters. God has mercy where man does not. God did bountifully bless Leah with six sons and a daughter. Today, some might say that seven children sounds more like too much work than a blessing, but what God calls a blessing is so. "Children are a blessing of the Lord," unqualified by the number "two" or "three" or "whatever number I decide I want."

Verses for today:
Genesis 29 16 - 35
Genesis 30: 17 - 21

 Advent Calendars

Behind the window today was this pot, presumably for soup. It's a good time of year for hot savory soup.

The storybook for today:

This story had some interesting expressions, like "make a face like three day's rainy weather," and the donkey addressing the old cat as, "old beard cleaner"

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Here is a picture of one of the kinds of Chlaus Parades mentioned earlier; then a picture of a Swiss Nikolaus with a reindeer actually raised here.

Huge lit hats. We went to see this one year, with small children. Very impressive - and very crowded.

A mountain Chlaus

Some ideas for paper decorations

Candlelight Concert in the Fraumünster

Last night in Zürich was the annual performance of the Christmas story in word and music. It was presented by two adult choirs, an excellent children's choir, bell ringers, strings, flute and woodwinds, the great organ and a small organ, a soprano soloist and a bass soloist, a drummer, and a Lektor/narrator, with a conductor (who also composed the work) from our neighboring town of Kilchberg. The various choirs and instruments were positioned in different parts of the church for a wonderful surrounding of sound. It was in German, but easy enough to follow, because the texts, both read and sung, were directly from the Bible.

The festive Fraumünsterplatz

Some of the two thousand candles that lit the church

This is where we sat, a very good place.

Post pictures

It happened that my blog- helper was not able to do the scans and post for the next set of Jesse Tree pictures last night. He is frantically try to meet an editing deadline, but said he can work on the pictures this evening.