advent: intro

It seems like, every December, I find myself wishing I was more impacted by the Christmas story. Every year I swear that THIS Christmas is going to be more meaningful, more life-changing. But then I get lost in the craziness of it, and soon it’s gone. With the exception of some amazing Christmas gatherings at our church, encouraging times with immediate and extended family, holiday drinks at Starbucks, and jealousy of the smoothness of Andy Williams’ voice, the month goes by like any other, but just a little faster because of all that has to be done.

Last year, in Costa Rica, we attempted to do a weekly family Advent celebration, to help bring a sense of intentionality and purpose to the 4 weeks leading up to Christmas. We only ended up being able to do that for 2 weeks, because we overestimated our ability, time, and energy available to plan an Advent celebration. We had big dreams for this year. We were going to do the full 4 weeks of Advent, but, here it is, almost a week-and-a-half into it, and we haven’t started. But we are starting tonight.

I have written a 3-segment Advent guide, to help us enter into the story of God becoming a baby and living with us. It will hopefully make us more aware of God’s presence with us, and will encourage us to actually invite Jesus into our often-misguided or distracted celebrations. We wish to have this awareness of God-with-us play out in our lives in such a way that blesses those around us.

I am posting the Advent guide below, in hopes that some of you might use it to help you focus on Christ this season. Each segment has a section to read, based on the themes of “Celebration,” “Silence,” and “Surprise.” Then I included some ideas of how we can practically and creatively respond, to remember these themes in the following days.

I wrote this with our family in mind, so some of the response ideas are family-oriented, but I am hoping many people–singles, couples, whoever—can use it and adapt it to their situation. Please do whatever you need to do to make it work for you. If you are a Dad of really small children, for example, you may want to read it with your wife (or put it in your own words, with your own examples) and then include the kids when you “respond,” explaining to them in a way they can understand, why you are doing what you are doing.

The response ideas are just that–ideas. You can choose some that I included, or think about your specific personality, resources, and situation, and come up with something different.

If you use this Advent guide, we would love to hear stories of what you did in response, and how that affected your celebration of Jesus this year. Please feel free to leave comments so that we can learn from you and be encouraged by your desire to celebrate differently this year!

Merry Christmas!