SALT Challenge - God with us

Today it was Pauline's turn to set the challenge on the SALT blog and she chose "God with us." Because I'll be posting twice today (Tim's tag coming later today), I'm going to copy and paste Pauline's excellent comments from the challenge here on my blog. "In Isaiah we read the prophecy “a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14), then in Matthew’s gospel, we read of the fulfilment of this prophecy with the birth of Jesus. Immanuel means 'God with us' and it’s this meaning that I wanted to focus on this week. Life in our house (and no doubt everyone else's house too!) is always busy in the run up to Christmas and for this reason I’ve been reading the Christmas story and taking time to reflect on it. There’s a lot of conflict happening around the world in big and small ways. I’m thinking not just of conflict in terms of war but also in terms of the number of redundancies, financial difficulties etc that people are experiencing. People are hurting for many different reasons and many are fearful of what may happen next. The inspiring message of Christmas is that we are told, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.” (Luke 2) God understands our fears but doesn’t want us to be controlled by them. The prophecy of Isaiah meant that Jesus' birth was not unexpected. God became human just as He had promised. God became completely accessible to all of us. I feel so privileged to know that Jesus’ birth was promised many years before it happened and that when he was born the prophecy was fulfilled. God is faithful and will keep His promises." Thank you Pauline for sharing your thoughts!! Of course I think I was the only one of the team to not make a Christmas themed card! However, I loved the verse that came with a lighthouse stamp set from Sweet 'n Sassy stamps, it fit perfectly with today's theme. Since the verse is stamped on acetate it's a little difficult to read in my photo, it's from John 12:46, "I have come as a light into the world, that whoever believes in Me should not abide in darkness." Such words of comfort...Christ didn't come into the world as a literal light to brighten up a dark sky but as a light to brighten are dark hearts. Only Christ can fully transform a heart that is filled with fear, anger, insecurity...you name it, He came to overcome those sins! And that is the best reason of all to praise Him, not only during the holidays, but every single day of the year! Some details on my card...First, the lighthouse image that comes with this set is much larger than shown, I only used a small portion of the image. To add the sentiment over the lighthouse, I created a frame to hold a piece of acetate. I created the oval frame with my Nestibilities (just like the square frames I created on yesterday's tag). I then embossed the frame with a embossing folder and rubbed distress ink over the frame to further highlight the embossed section. Once the verse was stamped on acetate, it is suspended over the image so that both are clearly seen. (If I stamped the verse directly over the lighthouse, it wouldn't have been visible). The frame has been attached with dimensional tape.

The card background is a combo of swirl images (from Papertrey) and a sanded background from SU!. I also stitched around the card is a wavy, nautical pattern...get it, lighthouse, nautical, waves....oh dear...(I'm just happy to finally have my sewing machine unpacked! Which reminds me...I need to share pictures of my new craft room!) Final addition were six antique brads surrounding the frame. Check back later tonight for tag ten! Holy cow, wait until you see what Tim has in store for us today!! Also, please stop by the SALT blog to see the rest of the team's beautiful work!!