what we're doing for Advent

Keith and I didn't really do any Advent celebrations with our families while growing up, but since having children, we have been trying to be more purposeful about preparing our hearts together as a family for the celebration of Christ's birth.

We started last year with the Jesse Tree devotional written by Ann Voskamp. That seemed to work pretty well, and Keith and I really enjoyed reading it during our candle-lit dinner hour. This year, though, it doesn't seem to be working at all. I find that I have to be sufficiently stilled and quieted to appreciate Ann's writings, and the mystical poeticness of it doesn't really seem to be clicking at our current family dinner situation. It's hard to intersperse sentences like "Did the earth flood with the tears of His broken heart, a torrent of grief to wipe away the sin-filth of this world?" with sentences like "Abraham, that soup is not for pouring on the table" and really feel like any of us are getting much out of the reading. Of course, we're only four days into it, but I suspect we might drop this one. That should work just fine, because we have two other new traditions that we've been looking forward to beginning all year, and those seem to be working much better.

One of the new traditions that we have instituted this year is the daily (or twice-daily or thrice-daily) reading of The Advent Book by Jack and Kathy Stockman. It's like an Advent calendar in a book, with one new door to open each day. Each door is gorgeously illustrated, takes up a page, and has a beautiful illustration with Scripture (sometimes rearranged, and not necessarily all from the same book of the Bible) which tells another segment of the Christmas story. It's fantastic! Our little ones are already asking to read it as soon as we sit down at the breakfast table, if not before. Each day we open the doors to read the verses from the preceding days, and then we open the new day's door and read one more beautiful part of the story. Though I am not usually one to appreciate when Scripture is paraphrased or rearranged, in this case, I am loving it. I have resisted the urge to look ahead in the book, so each day I am just as surprised and excited as the children to discover another beautiful illustration. Perhaps moreso, because it is a story which I already know and love, and so I am totally thrilled to have found a story that every day builds into the joy and wonder of the coming of Christ. The children ask to read it again at lunch and dinner (yes, our devotions are usually connected with mealtimes... it's not quite my ideal, but it works, and we have to go with what works) and they are both captivated by the story each time.

The other daily tradition we have begun, which I think will end up usurping Ann Voskamp's place in our Advent preparations, is that of reading a Bible passage together with a small devotional explanation and then hanging a darling corresponding handmade ornament on our Christmas tree. It's kind of the same thing as the Jesse tree concept, but without quite so much wordiness. (Not that I don't like wordiness, but at these ages it seems much more appropriate for us to talk about the Bible verses with our children ourselves, rather than borrowing someone else's words and trying to paraphrase them. It just gets too complicated.) I won the ornaments with corresponding verses and brief readings on my friend Kristin's blog last year and today was the first day that we added one of these to our breakfast-time tradition. It was perfect! Having set up and decorated our Christmas tree yesterday, Rilla and Abraham are thrilled about having more ornaments to add to the tree now, and I am pretty sure that Rilla will soon be telling me about the significance of each one as we go.

I know that my description of the readings and ornaments is a bit vague... sorry. Today's Bible reading was about God making the world, and then the ornament looks like the world. The other ornaments seem to be quite complimentary like that, signifying verses leading up to the coming of the Savior, and I think it's going to work very well for us.

I guess the other aspect of our Advent journey this year, although it wasn't quite planned like this, is that we have begun reading The Rhyme Bible Storybook with Rilla at bedtime most nights, per her request. We're skipping the Old Testament for now... though accurate, the stories are more than I think she's ready for... so we've mostly been reading repeatedly about Mary and Joseph, baby Jesus, the shepherds, and the wise men. Rilla and Abraham are also playing with their nativity scene throughout the daytime and overall it is just working beautifully, I think, in that the coming of Christmas is being incorporated naturally and enjoyably into our daily life. I mean, they know it is something special, but it doesn't feel forced, just sweet and natural and good. I'm really happy about how it is all unfolding so far this Advent season.

Note about The Advent Book, if you are interested in buying it: it's one of the most beautiful books I've ever owned, and probably worth the high price at which it's currently being sold, but I bought ours in the summertime from a seller on half.com for a third of the price of what it is now. If it's one that interests you at all, I definitely recommend it, but you may want to wait until a different season to buy it.