Advent

I love Christmas. Despite hating winter (and I do hate it) I love everything else about the season (well, almost everything else--I could do without gross commercialism and all things Santa-related. . .) But I love the lights and the trees and the stockings and the smells and the music and the hot drinks and mint M&M's and peppermint ice cream and candles and presents and building memories and traditions with my family. I love the family get togethers and sharing time and good food.

I love the Nativity scenes. My dad has been a collector of Nativity scenes for as long as I can remember. Every year my mom used to get him a new one. People in his congregation often give him one as gifts and so he has collected hundreds over the years. . . I miss being there to help decorate my parents house--it is a total transformation as almost every nick-knack, picture and decoration is replaced with a nativity scene. I don't have near as many as him, but I wouldn't mind collecting a few more over the years!

I want to establish meaningful advent traditions with our kids. I want to encourage their excitement and enthusiasm for the season, but I want to help it not be rooted in presents, but in the anticipation of Christ's birth. We have created our own little advent "wreath" with candles representing the prophets, angels, shepherds, wise men, and Jesus. The kids love to take turns helping light and blow out the candles.

This year I began reading The Jesus Storybook Bible with them. One of their teachers from our church's academic coaching program gave it to them as a "graduation" gift last year. I hadn't spent much time with it until I thought it would be a great Advent devotional -- it takes significant stories from the Bible and shows how they point towards Jesus. It has quickly become on of my favorite children's books, because it has touched me as well!

The theme of God coming to rescue us runs throughout the stories and it uses such emotional imagery to paint the picture of a relentless, faithful God who gave up everything to rescue the ones He loves. After the fall God had to send His children, His beloved creation, out of the Garden He had created for them. But He promised He would come back for them, God Himself coming down to crush the serpent and rescue His people from the world of sin and darkness and death they had let in.
When I read the story of Noah and the ark I cry. It uses the imagery of the rainbow as God's warrior bow hung in the sky, as a warrior at the end of battle--never pointing to earth to destroy it again, but this time pointed up, to the very heart of Heaven. . . I will never look at a rainbow the same way again. . .
The story of the tower of Babel. . . "People could never reach up to Heaven, so Heaven would have to come down to them. . . . And, one day, it would."
The imagery of Jesus taking Isaac's place as the only beloved Son, walking up a hill with a wooden cross strapped to His back, trusting His Daddy as He became the sacrificial Lamb.
The story of Leah, the girl no one wanted. . . my heart has always ached for Leah, the unloved. (To be honest Rachel has always sort of annoyed me. . .) But God loved Leah and saw her as a beautiful princess. He chose her to be the honored fore mother of His son. . . .
And time and time again we see throughout His Story that God always had a plan to rescue us. Sometimes He had to let us see that we couldn't do it on our own. Sometimes He had to let us see there was no other way. . . No other way but to send His only beloved Son to take on sin and death on our behalf, so that God could rescue us and draw us to Himself, adopting us as His beloved Sons and Daughters.
This is why the baby came, to a young, virgin mother, with a manger for a cradle and "lowly" shepherds to welcome Him. The Son of God gave up everything so that we might have everything. God came down to Rescue us.