Advent Resources

As a child, my family gathered around the Advent candles weekly. Weekly, we would recognize the season of hope, joy, love, peace, and ultimately Christ. We would embrace the Christ child in the manger, knowing that it was His birth that brings about the death on a cross and resurrection to bring us a gift far beyond anything we deserve or can even earn.

This is our hope in sharing Christmas with our children daily through this month: every tradition is rooted in Christ and for them to recognize that He is the center of our Christmas! In the Grinch’s words, “It came without ribbons! It came without tags! It came without packages, boxes or bags!” Christmas has nothing to do with these things at all! Christ gave us Christmas!

Maybe you’re like me, knowing what you want for your family, but unsure of how to get there! How do you make the time slow down for a few moments, so you can daily run to marvel at the cross that was possible through the manger.

I hope these resources are helpful as you consider WORSHIPing with your family this December:

“3 Simple Practices for a Peaceful Advent”

http://www.aholyexperience.com/2009/12/3-simple-practices-for-peaceful-advent/

The Jesse Tree: a Family-oriented way to focus on the true meaning of Christmas

http://simplemom.net/jesse-tree/

The following website has a free devotional of the Jesse Tree. Before today, I didn’t even know a “Jesse Tree” existed! It is taken from the Isaiah 11:1, 10. Consider this…

“A tree with roots deep into the past, that finger right out through the stories of the Old Testament, back to the very beginning, and with branches that stretch so high and wide you can see the whole grand panorama of God’s story from the very first blink of the first star over Eden to the blinding light over Bethlehem.

Now this Jesse Tree that our hearts climb high in this season of waiting, it’s named after the Jesse who was the father of David, the first royal branch in the tree of the Messiah to come, David to whom God promised that his line and his sons and his family would be King forever . And when his sons and grandsons and great grandsons turned from God and loved sin more than their Father and their kingdoms fell, and it seemed as though the whole royal family tree of Jesse had been chopped right off a the roots, our covenant, promise-keeping God, He vowed, “Out of the stump of David’s family will grow a shoot – yes, a new Branch bearing fruit from the old root…In that day the heir to David’s thrown will be a banner of salvation to all the world. The nations will rally to him, and the land where he lives will be a glorious place.”

http://www.aholyexperience.com/2010/11/free-jesse-tree-advent-devotional-book/

“For the God in the manger, who makes Himself bread, The Savior in swaddlings who makes Himself our robe of righteousness, the Christ who makes precisely what we can’t – Christmas.”

Enjoy Him this Christmas!