"A green shoot will sprout from Jesse's stump, from his roots a budding Branch. "
Today is the first Sunday of Advent. I love this season in the church! We always try to celebrate Advent creatively in our community, and I wanted to share our celebration with you. The first candle in the Advent wreath symbolizes prophecy or hope (there are many different traditions and themes, but these are the most common). We took the concept from the above-mentioned scripture in Isaiah, along with others, and made a Jesse tree in church today. For those of you who celbrate Advent already, this is a familiar idea, but for the sake of those who don't, I'll fill you in a little bit. I found a stump (on the side of the road!!!) that we used to represent the family of Jesse, the lineage of Jesus, and we used a twig to be the "green shoot," representing Jesus. We lit the candles and spent some time meditating over the prophetic names of Jesus mentioned in Isaiah 9:6 and in other scriptures, and each of us selected a name that held personal meaning , wrote it down on a leaf and attached it to our twig.
In some households, this even takes the place of a Christmas tree, and the children create ornaments each night to add decoration to it based on the scripture reading for that night. Generally, the study goes through the lineage of Christ and ends with the Nativity story as you near Christmas Day.
Anyway, I don't suppose I have anything too poetic to say about it. I'm much too exhausted for that! We are taking a painting break tonight, though, to wrap Christmas presents. Yay! It really is the most wonderful time of the year!
DAILY BLISS: Watching my dad, brother, husband and son put up our Christmas lights. I'll post some photos tomorrow, maybe.....
- Christy
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