Author Archives: Nannette

About Nannette

Wife to The Sweetheart, Mom to the Fantastic Six, Nana to six of the cutest littles on the planet, Author, The Daniel Fast, A Devotional. UPCI ministers.

Mamaw Tava’s Christmas Sock

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Back as far as I can remember, at the Miller Christmas, my grandmother would pass around her Bible to one of the men in the family to read The Christmas Story from the book of Luke. All of the children were terribly impatient for him to finish because they knew that meant they could begin tearing into the presents. It was the longest 20 minutes of our lives.

Fast forward some 50 years plus and we still read The Christmas Story. My father now allows the grands to read. It seems a lifetime has passed while we wait on them to finish as they struggle with certain words such as Quirnius, lineage and Cyrenius. Even though the message has always been the same: Jesus came into the world to save sinners; it has greater meaning to me every year.

You can see one of the last times my dad read the story here. (I hadn’t noticed he was reading from a tablet!)

As years passed, my parents added to the anticipation of opening presents by going around the room and having each one of us tell what we were thankful for that particular year. Many families do that on Thanksgiving but we didn’t get that memo, so Christmas it is.

Tears flow as we recall the wonderful things God has either spared us from or brought us through and we rejoice with each family member as they share. It can be as simple as “I’m thankful for my parents and the ham in the oven” or “I’m thankful that God spared my life this year.” Whatever the sentiment or whoever the recipient, we all reflect and give thanks.

When I married The Sweetheart, I discovered every family had different traditions. My mother-in-law began a new one on my very first Elkins Christmas. This was after we had opened gifts and she was always trying to find a way to tame the chaos. She had a giant Christmas sock, biggest I had ever seen, and she had filled it with little gifts. It could have been a tube of Chapstick (an Elkins sibling WILL NOT be caught dead without one in their pocket) a pen and pencil set, fingernail clippers (another must-have jingle in the pocket of an Elkins) and of course candy or anything under $5. Then we would all gather around as she made a production of dumping the sock full of gifts on the floor. It was a literal free-for-all.

And you are wondering: why, in the name of all that is sacred, would grown adults scamper for fingernail clippers and Chapstick? Because Mamaw Tava had hidden money in one of the gifts, that’s why! And that first Christmas, the newbie, me, grabbed a blue change purse that said “Something good is going to happen” on the outside of it and on the inside? A five dollar bill! This was 1979 people, $5 bought a lot of gas!

Fast forward through the years and The Sock evolved. So did the monetary gifts. Mamaw Tava became more generous with this extra curricular activity on Christmas Eve. Now we gathered in the Dining Room around the table. Mamaw would draw names to see who would go first and then call those numbers only to draw again for your actual number to pick a present. I kid you not. All of the gifts were spread out on the table, wrapped of course, and you were not allowed to touch them. You chose a gift when your name was called and then waited until everyone had one and then she drew names or numbers again to see who opened their gift and when. There would be a variety of cd’s, books, alarm clocks, flashlights or new gadgets that had just made it to infomercials and As-Seen-on-TV. But inside one gift would be $20, another had $10 and one had $5. Some years she was even more generous and it was quite exciting.

Several years ago she was really feeling the Christmas spirit and she sang Jingle Bells as the family walked around the table and when she yelled stop, well, take a look for yourself at the mayhem that followed:


Times have changed, grandchildren or maybe the great grands will read the Christmas Story this year. New faces will be around the dinner table. The DIL’s are in charge of The Sock game; Mamaw Tava passed away almost five years ago. But, the bottom line is that we are family. We are children of the Most High God, gathered to celebrate His entrance into the world, His coming to save sinners, of whom I am chief.

And the older I get, the more I realize it was for me, it was for you. He loved me and He loved you, and would have died had we been the only ones that needed Him to. He loves us all that much.

You all have your own stories but for some, this Christmas is not a happy one. There is sorrow and sadness with empty chairs around the table. Jesus knows, Jesus is near. Love on those that need strength and comfort. Christmas is family with all their quirks and craziness and Christmas is Jesus.

While this might not have been your typical devotion, there are two key points I encourage you to focus on during this season. One of course is the true reason for the season. Second is that aside from reason number one, the most important thing is time we spend with family and friends. Making memories, and sharing experiences that will, like Mamaw Tava’s sock, last long after we are gone.

Is there any hope?

Is there any hope?

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On December 17, 1927, USS S-4 (SS-109), an eight year old S-class submarine, was submerged just off the coast of Provincetown, Massachusetts. Right nearby, on the surface, the USCGC Paulding, a Coast Guard destroyer, was headed southeast. At 3:37 in the afternoon, the officer of the deck on the Coast Guard ship didn’t see the periscope of the submarine until it was too late. The Paulding unintentionally rammed the sub with a section of her bow, crushing into the hull of S-4 and punching a hole in the ballast tank and one in the pressure hull. 

Freezing water flooded into the boat and she immediately began to sink. The saltwater flooding the battery compartment mixed with battery acid and formed toxic chlorine gas, quickly filling any space not yet occupied by water. Soon the deadly gas was forced by the water into where the survivors were huddling. By morning, when the first rescue diver knocked on the torpedo loading hatch, he was met with six slow taps in response to his question about how many had survived. Six men were still alive.

But try as they may, help was not coming fast enough. The next to last communication heard from the remaining crew in Morse code was “Is there any hope?” But unfortunately, the toxic gas took the lives of all 40 men.

Hope comes in many different forms and we use the word, as we do the word Love, interchangeably for the big and the small all throughout our lives. We hope we get an A on our test. We hope the cute boy in the third row looks our way. We hope we receive a Christmas bonus. We hope for a boy or a girl…or both! 

We may also hope for enough money to pay the rent, buy milk for the baby that we hoped for and hope that our hope is enough to sustain us until, hopefully, something better comes along. 

We even hope for hope!

But Jesus said we didn’t have to live that way any longer. He came as the Hope of the World! Romans 15:13, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” 

In a world full of darkness and seemingly constant despair, Jesus is our hope, our peace, our confidence and no matter what comes into our lives, even the unthinkable, He has promised to NEVER leave us or forsake us! NEVER! 

We like to think we live in a picture perfect world especially after we give our hearts and lives to God. Filled with His spirit, we can conquer anything according to the Word of God. But we are still living in a sin-filled world until Jesus returns for His church and we will face things here just as the disciples did many, many years ago. 

And just as the men on the submarine faced…..they wanted to know if there was hope and yet they perished. Why? Because we aren’t promised a life without trouble or pain but we are promised that Jesus will be WITH us, IN us and right beside us no matter what we go through. And news flash, we don’t live forever down here! Our hope is in eternity and no doubt there were men on that submarine tapping into their Hope, finding that perfect peace in their last moments; Jesus didn’t forsake them, He walked them into eternity!

The HOPE we have today is that He is WITH us, He is IN us, and the more we pray and read and depend on His Word, the more confident we become in that glorious Hope.

Hope has a name and it’s JESUS!

We don’t have to be afraid, we don’t have to live in a constant state of worry and anxiety. We can still live joyfully and accomplish what God has put us here to do: tell others what He has done for us; share the Gospel, the Good News, that Jesus gave HIS life for us that we could live FOREVER with Him someday. And until that day comes, we can live victoriously and full of hope here on this earth, abounding in the work of God, encouraging our neighbor and bringing that Hope, sharing that Hope, with those we come in contact with.

Spend this week studying about hope in the Bible. Look up scriptures pertaining to hope and see how Jesus has always been, and still is, that Hope that saved the world!

Then, remember that there are others watching you and desiring to have what you have, don’t keep Him to yourself, Jesus Christ, the Living Hope!

For the kingdom
work for answered prayer

Fasting and Working for Answered Prayers

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Have you ever been so desperate that you had to fast? You had to go to prayer? Your need was so critical that just saying you were praying about it wasn’t enough. A bedtime lay-me-down-to-sleep prayer wasn’t going to get it. You had to get down to business.

The question for the day is,

work for answered prayer

“Do we have to work for answered prayers? Do we have to fast continually, check off our Daily Bread chart and say so many “Our Father who art in heaven…” prayers?”

The answer is, “No.” We are the ones who need the changing, not God.

Fasting and prayer changes US, strengthens US, molds our character, changes our heart, mind and soul, gives US direction, wisdom, and clears up things that were muddy before!

The Bible tells us that the prophet Daniel fasted on a regular basis. It has even recorded three of those fasts for us to look at and observe. In one of them he goes completely without any food at all. “And I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes…” Daniel 9:3 KJV.

In the other two fasts that are recorded in the book of Daniel, he participated in partial fasts where he ate some foods, but refrained from others.

Each time Daniel fasted, we can find one thing he was very consistent with; he never failed to pray!

Look at the verse above again in Daniel 9:3, “…to seek by prayer and supplications.”  Even when it doesn’t specifically mention prayer, we know Daniel prayed because he was a Hebrew prophet and a man of God. He would not have fasted without prayer! The Jewish people understood that the two went together.

God can speak to us because we have allowed Him to cleanse things from our minds when we fast. We have taken time to be with Him and pushed some things aside; things that we liked, maybe even loved, that were important to us. We laid them down in order to be with Him.

Our motives must be pure when we pray. “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” James 4:3 ESV. We are praying for our needs, not necessarily our wants. Max Lucado said it so well, “You have to wonder if God’s most merciful act is His refusal to answer some of our prayers!”

Our heart must be right! “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me…” Psalm 66:18 KJV.

We must pray in faith, believing and we pray His will in all things.  “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.” 1 John 5:14 ESV.  

Then we must pray with perseverance! “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.” Luke 18:1 NIV.

And we must be thankful. “Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!” 1 Chronicles 16:34 ESV.

When we fast, we show the Lord that we want to draw closer to Him and lay aside things that might hinder us in our walk. We aren’t bargaining with God and we are not begging God. We aren’t jumping through hoops or just checking off boxes. We just realize that if our flesh is submitted to Him, His wants and desires for us become OUR wants and desires. We begin to reflect His glory and not our own!

And even if the situation doesn’t change, WE have been changed, WE have been strengthened for whatever lies ahead.

The Daniel Fast Devotional

In The Daniel Fast Devotional, we talk about a different person in the Bible who sought God by fasting every day of the 21 day fast. Some of them were desperate like Hannah, she just HAD to fast too! Others did it out of selfishness as with Ahab and Jezebel. Each story is true, intriguing, and will teach us the good and the bad motives behind fasting. Also, at the end of each chapter, there are wonderful recipes that are Daniel Fast approved. Get your copy today!