Making Room for the Christ Child: A Third Sunday Advent Devotional

Advent is a time of fasting. Advent is a season to reflect on receiving God's gift of reconciliation through Jesus and preparing to give Him a gift from us as well. This week, we will look at ways we can make (and keep) room for Jesus in our Advent schedules. Every year, despite our best intentions, our calendars fill up in the Advent season until we are rushing around too much to be full participants in Advent. Yet, many of our activities are secular instead of sacred, as we chase after the nostalgia of past Christmases. 

Advent is a season that starts 4 Sundays before Christmas. What would our Advent be like if we refrained from rushing from celebration to celebration? What if we kept the celebrations for the 12 days of Christmas and we more intentional about our season of waiting and watching? This year (2021), Advent starts November 28th and runs through December 24th. 

Many of us are tempted to fill empty spaces on our calendars, so why don't we pencil in the Advent activities that center around the Christ Child? Before we overcrowd our schedules with things unrelated to Jesus' birth, we can instead reserve space for Him in our calendars and our lives. So let us schedule time for the Advent devotional and the Christmas Eve service. Let us set aside time for contemplating what we can learn about Christ in Advent and reserve time for listening to Advent songs. Let us challenge ourselves to differentiate between Advent and Christmas songs, and choose to listen to them in their proper season. 

One of my new favorite Advent traditions is the burning of a Danish Christmas Candle. It has 24 marks on it, meant to be burned an hour each day leading up to Christmas. It is a daily time of stillness and pausing as the candle needs to be lit for a continuous hour to properly burn down. It encourages me to minimize my travel and trips, because it shouldn't be burned in hotel rooms or borrowed spaces. While the candle is burning, it's a good time to wrap up in a blanket, drinking a hot cup of tea, and listen to Advent songs. By burning this candle throughout Advent, I find myself making room and preparing to celebrate the birth of Jesus. 

How can we make room for the Christ Child this Advent season?

Approaching Gifts Differently: A Second Sunday Advent Devotional

Last week, we considered how Advent has been a time of fasting. This week, we take a drastically different approach to the concept of gifts: Christmas isn't about the gifts we give to other people or the gifts we receive from them. Christmas should be a time to reflect on the gift God has given us and that we are giving Jesus for His birthday. 

Let us reflect on the greatest gift ever given: Jesus becoming flesh to reconcile us with God. But we have turned Advent into a frenzy of list-making, shopping, and wrapping. Why? Tradition? Vanity? We mouth the words that Christmas is about the gift God gave us in Jesus, but we spend the bulk of our time, energy, and money on gifts for each other. We rush through reading the Christmas story (if we read it at all) so we can get to the gift opening. Instead of drifting along on the cultural current of consumerism, we can shift our focus to God's gift to us, and consider what gift Jesus would like from us this year. 

How can we represent the gift that God gave us in the person of Jesus? Let us brainstorm ways that we can make this into a tangible and meaningful gift on Christmas Day.

• Wrap up your "baby Jesus in the manger" from your nativity set to open on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. Open that gift first and take time to reflect on what this gift means for us. Write a thank you note to God for His gift. Pause before getting to the other presents and consider how this gift has impacted our lives. 
• Design a gift voucher about God's gift. Take time to look up Scripture verses and add them to the certificate. When God gave us Jesus, what impact does it have on our lives? What is He carting off from us? What does He add into our lives? What changes can we expect? 
• Take a spiritual gift survey to learn about the spiritual gift(s) God has given you. Consider ways to use this gift in the coming year. 
• We could reserve Christmas Day for opening God's gift and giving Him our own gift in return. We have 11 other days of Christmas where we can open the gifts from humans and give our own gifts to them. 

Now that we have taken steps to ensure that we will give proper time and attention to God's gift, let us consider what we should give to the birthday boy Himself: Jesus. There are poems and songs aplenty, referencing that Christmas is Jesus' birthday and we shouldn't leave Him off our lists, but this begs the question: What have we given to Jesus for His birthday? I view Matthew 25 as Jesus' wish list. When we are in doubt about what to get for the Creator who made everything, we can feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, donate clothes to those lacking, visit the sick and the imprisoned, and so on. 

• We can give to a charity in Jesus' honor. 
• We can give of our time to volunteer serving those marginalized by society. 
• We can look for things in our house to pass on to those who are in need.
• We can decrease our splurges and overindulgences this season to have more to give to others. 
• We can make Jesus a coupon book of things we will give up or take on for Him. Schedule times over the next year to use up the coupon book. 

How can we prepare to receive God's gift this Advent season? What are we giving Jesus for His birthday?