Advent

I love Advent.  I like the idea of setting aside a period of time to prepare for remembering and re-welcoming Jesus' coming into our lives.  And I love the symbolism: light gathering, week by week, dispelling the darkness; the rhythm of waiting, reminding ourselves with each night's reflection what is to come.  We have taken Christmas traditions from both our families, but our Advent wreath is one that is mostly our own (although my family did celebrate it some years).  I can't remember if we started having an advent wreath at the very beginning of our marriage or not, but certainly we have been doing it for a number of years, and it is different every year.  A few years ago I spent hours putting together an elaborate series of readings, one for each day of Advent.  I hope to return to them someday, but now that we have kids who are old enough to understand something of what we are doing, but who would disconnect from words upon words upon words, we are putting away those pages for a while.  This year, because of Daniel's language barrier, we decided to go simple and repetitive.  Each week we all learned one memory verse (in English and/or Chinese) corresponding to the theme of the week (we do Hope, Peace, Joy and Love), and sang one song.  So every night we lit the appropriate number of candles, practiced our verse(s) and song for the week, and prayed.  If we had enough time I read a Bible story that went along with the week's theme, and summarized it in Chinese for Daniel.  I was pleased that he could very nearly tell me some of the stories if those events had been included in the Jesus film.  I was also pleased that Esther was familiar with some of them.  Both kids did really well with learning their Bible verses (and Esther can do some of them in both languages!).  I hope that they absorbed the meaning of the verses as well as the words.  Last night, on Christmas Eve, in addition to our regular Advent routine, we watched the first part of the Jesus film, up through Jesus' birth, in Mandarin.  Then we lit the Christ candle in the center of the wreath.

This has been an especially fun Christmas for us, as we share everything with Daniel for the first time.  We have loved hunting down just the right gifts for both kids, and imagining their faces lighting up on Christmas morning.  We have loved watching them examine presents that had newly appeared under the tree, and teasing them (especially Daniel!) about what might or might not be inside.  We have gotten full mileage out of Christmas lights and decorations, and the excitement of putting up stockings.  But we don't want to teach either of our kids that Christmas is about how much you can get.  Going out of routine, lighting candles, and especially blowing out candles, are exciting in and of themselves.  But we pray that something we did these past four weeks...watching light push away darkness...repeating daily that our hope is in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of all believers...that we may have peace in Jesus, and we can take heart in the midst of the trouble of this world because He has overcome the world...that He has made known to us the path of life and will fill us with joy in His presence...that the greatest love of all is to lay down one's life for one's friends...even just the act of setting aside time each night, no matter what else is going on, and making this important...we pray that something will sink heart-deep into our children, that the excitement of the Christmas activities will not be all that Christmas is about for them, but merely an outward expression of our celebration that God is in our world and in our lives.