Advent: A season set apart for HOPE

The rhythm of the Christian year is building to a climactic point.... can you feel it?  After several months of "Ordinary Time," we now get ready, this Sunday, to enter a most meaningful season:  Advent.

As we've remarked on this blog before, observing special seasons give us the opportunity to interrupt our normal lives, which can have a tendency to blur days and years together in the midst of our busyness, and change our patterns to help us focus on a bigger Truth.  I love doing things for just a season.   Implementing long-term change is hard; implementing short-term change is much easier.  Monotony does not even have a chance to set in!

The mantra of Advent is "Come, Lord Jesus."  As Richard Rohr says in his little devotional book, Preparing for Christmas, this means that all of Christian history has chosen to live out of a deliberate emptiness -- for now.  We know that someday we will have perfect fulfillment, but the present will not be enough to fully satisfy. 

"'Come, Lord Jesus,' is a leap into the kind of freedom and surrender that is rightly called the virtue of hope.'"  -- Richard Rohr

This season is a perfect time to add a new tradition or ritual to the daily life of your family to help us focus on this HOPE.  Although it can be a busy season, with all the preparations for Christmas, it is a good time to find a way to say "no" to some things so that you can say "yes" to others.

Some of our family Advent traditions:

On the first Sunday of Advent we always make our family's Advent wreath, sometimes with friends, sometimes on our own.  The easiest way we've found to make a wreath is to go to the local Christmas tree lot, ask the guy for some free branches (which he always gives us), and then attach them to a foam wreath form with wire or pins.

Each evening during dinner we light the candle(s), adding one candle each week.

 We also make a paper chain countdown, and on each link we write some people to pray for, and a Bible passage to read.  During our dinnertime Advent wreath lighting, we take the link down for that day (everyone argues about who gets to do that job!), and then we read and pray together.

Then we try to remember to blow out the candles before the house burns down.  (One close call with that one year!)


Some years we've implemented an idea from my friend Heather:  Mary and Joseph "hide" each night as they travel throughout the house on their way to Bethlehem.  The kids run around and look for them each morning.

They're hiding!

 By Christmas Eve they have arrived at the stable, and they await baby Jesus, who arrives in the morning.

Arrived at the stable, after the long journey

 And, one of our favorite things to do as a family, is read an Advent story by Arnold Treeide.  We started with Jotham's Journey, and the following year read Bartholomew's Passage,   This year, we're reading Tabitha's Travels.

 There is a good amount of adventure (i.e., kidnapping, danger, even killing) in these books, so they would not be recommended for younger children.  But we are always amazed at how the author ties in the truths, and even people, from the Bible so well, so we have enjoyed the family reading time tradition.

There are plenty of other great resources out there to help you and your family focus on Jesus' coming.  A Jesse Tree is always a good way to remind children about the Old Testament, and how the promise of Jesus was there all throughout.  (See here for Ann Voskamp's free printable ornaments.)  

Whatever books, routines, or traditions you choose to implement, let them lead you closer to Christ as you turn eagerly to Him, saying "Come, Lord Jesus!"  May this season interrupt your normal lives in ways that have eternal significance.

Thanksgiving

I’ve been thinking lately about the different ways people pronounce the word “Thanksgiving.”  Largely, I’d put people into 2 groups:  those who say “Thanks-GIV-ing” and those who say “THANKS-giv-ing.”  (I’ve also heard a few Southerners draw “thanks” out into 2 syllables, but I’ll still put them in the second category.)

Today I was pondering this, and wondered which way was more appropriate.  Should we be emphasizing the “thanks” or the “giving?”

Turning to the original word for it in the Bible is no help at all.  Thanks to Ann VosKamp, many of us now know that the Greek word for thanksgiving in the Bible is “eucharisteo.”  Coincidentally, this word is also pronounced several different ways with the emphasis sometimes on the “eu” and sometimes on the “char” – and sometimes on the “is” or the “te.” ( Perhaps the Ohio State fans in my life would like to emphasize even the last syallable?)

But really, I guess my exercise in determining the most correct way to say the word is futile at best and stupid at worst.  Of course both aspects are important;  being grateful without offering up thanks is just being “happy” in today’s language, and giving without the thanks is probably legalism.  (because doesn’t every fault of Christian behavior eventually lead back to legalism on one side?)

Regardless of how you say it, we Americans will be glad that a special day is set apart each year to do the thing we should be doing every day:  overflowing with thanksgiving to the One from whom all blessings flow.  And we get to have special food besides.

The internet runneth over with recipes for that special food, as well as turkey crafts for the kids, creative nature-based centerpieces for the tables, and then recipes for the leftovers.  So we will not use our little internet space to add to the bounty.

Even though Thanksgiving is not a traditional “church calendar” holiday, it is one through which many people develop strong family traditions, and through which God is praised, so we say go forth and celebrate!

“Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.” – Psalm 100:4