Advent 2017: 4 December

Yesterday was the first Sunday in Advent. I have been brought up as a baptist and evengelical which means that I have never really experienced Advent with candles and liturgy. After being part of a forum for Christian Mums I have grown more interested in the liturgy and am spending some time this advent taking part in a Bible study which is being run by an anglican friend. Here is my candle for yesterday and here is a special prayer from the Anglican Church liturgy which can be used every day during Advent:

Almighty God,

give us grace to cast away the works of darkness

and to put on the armour of light,

now in the time of this mortal life,

in which your Son Jesus Christ came to us in great humility;

that on the last day,

when he shall come again in his glorious majesty

to judge the living and the dead,

we may rise to the life immortal;

through him who is alive and reigns with you,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever. Amen

Our Wrapped Book today has been one I have been very excited about. It is one of our new ones and comes from an American company via a friend at school. It is called The Miracle of the First Poinsettia: A Mexican Christmas Story. (This was going to be particularly poignant as Steve was meant to be travelling to Mexico today but the trip has now been postponed to January.) It's a lovely story looking at how 'a gift from the heart is the best gift of all'.

We didn't get to look in our Advent Adventure Tin today until dinner-time so it was too late to 'go on a wintery walk and collect pine cones' but we will definitely keep that one for the weekend, especially as we have a Forest School morning planned on Saturday!

This evening we were thinking about waiting and waiting... Generally children find waiting very hard and mine are no different! Our From Creation to Christmas story told us how God had promised Abraham and Sarah a baby son, and that they would go on and have as many children as the stars in the sky and grains of sand along the seashore. That is a lot of children! But they had to wait until Sarah was in her 90s... not sure I'd want to be starting to have children that late in life. But we were reminded that from Abraham and Sarah would come Jesus (many many years later) - again another link to the Christmas story.

After planning my Advent Readings yesterday I have found another possibility today. Recently I have been part of a community called Mummy Meditations which has been looking at women in the Bible. Last month it was Sarah (mentioned above) and this month we are looking at Mary, the mother of Jesus. This will be a fascinating study as it is very easy to assume I know all about Mary, but I suspect a lot of my 'knowledge' is based on popular culture stories and traditions, rather than on the Bible text.