The First Advent

We're excited to start traditions in our family to observe Advent. Though we are not Catholic, we admire the Catholic tradition of Advent, which focuses on our preparations and our attentions to Christ during this season instead of presents, shopping, decorating, Santa, carols, concerts, cantatas, and all the other stuff that seems to define what this season is all about.

The Catholic tradition observes the 4 Sundays before Christmas, beginning the first Sunday before November 30, in addition to Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, as a special time to gather together and prepare our hearts for celebrating the birth of our Savior. Patrick and I have decided to participate in some aspects of the Catholic traditions that we think would focus our attention on Christ this season and teach our children to do the same. We've also labeled a theme for each Advent gathering (6 in all). As the years pass, we'll add some crafts, activities, scripture memorization, and other things during the week that will help support the themes and help our children understand the significance of our Savior's birth. At each gathering, we'll light our "Advent Wreath" as well.

Patrick and I have thought a lot about this and have spent several hours in discussions and preparations for our first service. I'm so blessed with a husband who desires to teach our children about Jesus and he's spent a lot of time organizing the scriptures and hymns to best focus our minds on Christ for each theme of the Advent gatherings. I will try to do my best in documenting what we're doing on each Advent Gathering.

Yesterday was the first Advent. Our theme for this week is that we are all sinners in need of a Savior and that Savior has been promised. During this service, we read about how all men are sinners (Romans 3:10 - 11, 23) and that God has promised a Savior to take away our sin (Isaiah 7:14; Isaiah 9:2, 6-7; Micah 5:2-5a; Jeremiah 23:5-6). The hymns that we sang were "O Come, O Come Emmanuel", "For Unto us a Child is Born", "O Little Town of Bethlehem", and "Lo, how a Rose 'er Blooming". (We actually have to continue some of our service from last night, since we're still fine-tuning our service content)

During this week, we'll decorate for Christmas and prepare our home for the Christmas celebration. I'll also review the theme with Mallory as well as meditate on these scriptures which should help focus our attention on the promise of the blessed Messiah! I'm really excited about this tradition. Though we're still planning on doing other things that are fun this season (like watching movies, shopping, singing secular carols, attending cantatas), our main focus will be on Christ.

Patrick and Mallory hanging out watching the Panthers game. I started pulling out decorations during the game.











Our first Advent service