Advent

Each year Advent has become more and more my favorite time of the year, ever since I started praying the daily offices three years ago, and even more so once we started attending services with The Light of Christ Anglican Church in Denver two years ago.

Here are some thoughts that Pastor Jay Holsted put in the church newsletter that I thought would be good to share:

Advent is the perfect antidote to 21st century America, and I would like  to invite you to try a few things.

• First and foremost, separate Advent from Christmas.  Christmas begins on December 25.  Save Christmas
  for Christmas.
• Pick a way to celebrate Advent in your home and make it a part of your weekly family life.
• Use Advent to look forward to Christmas.  Begin decorating with just greens, and add a little each week. 
• Don't turn on the lights until just before Christmas (or for a special party).  If you use a nativity set, don't add the baby Jesus until Christmas eve.  Then leave it up for 12 days.  Whatever you do, save something for Christmas.
• Make birthdays (or some other day) a time to splurge on gifts for others.  Let Christmas gifts be more modest, things that say, "The real giver in this season is God."
• Make a special effort to do something for someone else or include someone else in your celebration. 

We're surrounded by counterfeit Christmas.  Fighting against it just makes us sound grumpy.  Do it different this year.  Be for something!  Be for sanity and sobriety and frugality.  Live this season as if Christ were the center of the story, the center of our lives, the center of our celebration. Put him at the head of the table.  Not only will everything else will fall into place, but Christmas day will be the celebration you've always wanted.

We are doing our best to take Jay’s counsel. My daughter has an Advent chain that she made at her preschool, and every night at dinner we also open a window on an Advent calendar, then read Scripture and talk a little about God’s story and Christ’s coming.

I love that this is just as much a time to feel the expectation of Christ’s return as it is to anticipate the celebration of his birth. I think this week’s collect from The Divine Hours does a great job of tying these two events together in a beautiful expression of trust, worship and hope.

The Prayer Appointed for the Week

Almighty God, give all of us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen