In an effort to ward off The Season’s secular temptations — i.e. consumerism, cookies and predictable Hallmark movies — I’ve been reading Paul David Tripp’s “Everyday Gospel Christmas Devotional” all month.

Actually, our church made them available for free, and I can’t pass up anything for free — except maybe a mint toothpaste-filled donut, but that’s honestly a story for another time.

Anyway, the daily readings have genuinely focused my morning quiet time. Advent is a great time for Christians to learn (or rediscover) meaningful tidbits and truths surrounding the Incarnation. My reading for Dec. 5 (which included the Dec. 4 entry because, well, I’d already missed a day four days in…. so suit me….) did just that.

From Ruth 4:13-22, Tripp weaves in this principle:

Reading this before heading out to cover the Birds of Prey World Cup for work made me pause and reflect on the story of my year … or rather, since this is a ski website, my entire ‘ski story’ — and what God has done during the various chapters.

My parents introduced me to skiing when I was young. I bushwhacked through the forests of northern Minnesota once a year at Thanksgiving, building forts with my cousins and melting our boots’ bindings warming our feet by the fire inside our fort. Sometimes, I’d take my mom’s old Peltonens into our Moorhead backyard and break trail in the fields and woods, or try skating on snowmobile tracks down the Red River. When my feet grew large enough to fit into her old silver boots, I really felt like a skier. But basketball and trumpet took over by middle school and it wouldn’t be until I was 24 that I actually started really cross-country skiing.

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