Advent Readings and Activities for Christmas

Riddle:  What causes a great amount of excitement and anticipation each year, makes us very busy, wears us to a frazzle; and, when it passes, it has caused us to feel depleted…and our credit cards are depleted, too?
Answer?   It could be the annual IRS deadline; or a number of annual holidays.  But I’m thinking mainly of Christmas.

Like us, maybe one of your biggest challenges each Christmas season is to set reasonable goals for Christmas and plan well to achieve these goals.  In this way, you can maintain your spiritual and emotional focus while having time to enjoy the “true meaning of Christmas.”  My hope each year is to enjoy Christmas not just on December 25 but in the days leading up to Christmas Day.  When the Day itself is all too quickly past, often the best memories I retain are in my anticipation of the celebration of Christmas with family and friends.  After all, “anticipation” is at the heart of the tradition of Christmas dating back to the Book of Genesis where God revealed that He would send a Deliverer to be born of the “seed of the woman” (Genesis 3: 17).  During the several millennia that followed, the descendants of Adam and Eve remained in anticipation of God’s fulfillment of His promise.  The promise was fulfilled by God’s Gift of a Savior, born in a manger in Bethlehem, and named “Jesus” because He would save His people from their sins (Matthew 1: 21).

The approach that Abby and I have used to enhance our time of remembrance of the Advent (arrival) of the promised Savior, Jesus Christ, is to follow an Advent calendar.  These calendars are of different types and are easily found by searching for “Advent Calendar” online.   Most Advent calendars provide daily or weekly Bible readings which are often accompanied by a fun activity suitable for individuals or family.

Let me suggest three Advent resources for you to consider.  The first one invites you to focus on a Bible theme related to Christmas for each week of the four-week Advent season.  It has been prepared by our church, West HillBaptist Church, here in Wooster, Ohio.  The weekly themes, starting with “The Need” of a Savior,” are each meant to prompt us to reflect on why we celebrate Christmas and to consider how God would have us respond to His “greatest Gift.”  Please click on the thumbnail on the left.

The second Advent resource is from Focus on the Family and it provides a daily Scripture reading, a short readable commentary, and a fun activity related to Christmas.  If you would like to try out this excellent calendar, you can DOWNLOAD HERE.  And, if you would like a sample of the calendar, I have included the reading for today, December 6, as a sample (see thumbnail, below-right). 

The third Advent resource is one that I prepared last December.  It contains a daily Scripture reading and a short commentary along with discussion to help you personally apply the truth for each day.  This Advent calendar goes by the title, Daily Meditations to Enrich Your Christmas.  I hope these suggestions will enrich your celebration of Advent and the Christmas season this year. 

We hope you have a Merry and Meaningful Christmas!

Creation Conscious Christmas Cleanup

Once again, our celebration of Christmas has become part of family history recorded in our memories and photos.  This year I’ve been trying to glean some lessons by reflecting upon our preparation and celebration of Christmas.  It all started when I was preparing our so-called garbage for weekly pick-up at the curb.
Thanks to our attempts at recycling, our weekly output of “waste” is less than one average-size garbage bag per week.  As a result, the company who serves us discounts our quarterly rate—a nice economic incentive over and above our calling to do what is right as stewards of creation.   So, I became quite reflective as I sorted the “Christmas waste” from our collective unwrapping and “un-packaging” of gifts.

Christmas wrappings, packaging, and reusable boxes

While I was gleaning and separating the metal, plastic, cardboard, and recyclable paper, I began to reflect on how we handle the material side of Christmas.  I’ve recorded my thoughts here in hopes that they will give additional life and usefulness beyond our regular ritual of handling the “stuff” of Christmas celebration.

While pawing through the pile of crumpled, colorful wrappings, I had to consider the relative importance of my gleaning and sorting in the first place.  After all, considering the mountains of garbage generated at Christmas, what difference can my separation and recycling make?  Besides, isn’t it likely that my ‘garbage company’ can do an even better job of sorting and recycling than I can?  Aren’t there more constructive ways for me to use my?   But then, my pawing and pondering began to yield some unexpected treasures.

First, I realized that the “what difference can I make” argument extends far beyond whether or not we choose to exercise stewardship of our material blessings.  It is also at the heart of God’s call to evangelism and discipleship.  After all, if we are to be faithful as witnesses of the “Good News” toward a spiritually needy world, we must believe that our individual and often seemingly unnoticed efforts can make a big difference in God’s harvest.  That includes a “word fitly spoken” (Proverbs 25:11) as well as proper acts of stewardship of the material gifts of God.

Second, my sorting gave new meaning to the torn and shredded wrapping paper and packaging.  This pile of colorful, cast-off, coverings of the treasures we had only recently purchased and wrapped as Christmas gifts now served as a reminder of our love for our family.  A torn-open, cardboard package that had held a doll (“Made in China”), anchored securely with some flexible wire that is great for “twist-tying,” was also a reminder of the smiles and joy of our granddaughter when she first opened the package.  Other torn wrappings and packaging had been removed with anticipation by me, and I was reminded of the joy I saw on the faces of givers who were delighted at my excitement. Wonderfully, my stewardship of the cast-off wrapping paper and packaging seemed to provide a fitting closure to our time of giving and celebration.  Our love and kindness toward each other was being revived and extended by my responsible care in disposing of the materials that had once enclosed the treasures inside.

Third, and somewhat related to the previous point, I began to realize that my investment of time to properly sort and recycle our wrappings and packaging provided additional time to reflect thankfully on what we had just done in giving and receiving gifts.  So often, we hurry through activities that are only possible because of the gracious hand of our Creator God.  For example, the discipline of offering a prayer of thanks at mealtime allows us the blessing of pausing and considering God’s gracious provision of nutritious food and the ecological, agricultural, and economic system that makes it so readily available.  As I handled the wrappings and packaging, I realized that the “cost” of these materials went far beyond our monetary expenses in purchasing them.  There is also the “ecological cost” or “impact” on God’s creation through the refining, manufacturing, packaging, marketing, and shipping of the products and wrappings.  In light of these costs, it is only proper that we take time to recognize the ecological and stewardship mandates that define our responsibility and that of our children toward material resources.  

In summary, I was encouraged not to omit even small efforts to “make a difference” through words or actions of good will toward God, my neighbor, and creation.  Also, my attention to the stewardship of Christmas wrappings and packaging enhanced the benefit of these material resources by providing a few moments of reflection and closure on our time of giving and receiving.  Although their color and beauty is temporal, the eternal value of these wrappings was assured by acknowledging their role as vehicles of love and good will in our Christmas celebration.

I close with a few practical suggestions for applying stewardship of material resources to the Christmas (or any birthday) celebration:

1.    How am I doing in providing an example of good stewardship both of material resources, including what may be called ‘waste,’ and the Good News of Christ’s coming and soon return.   After all, shouldn’t my actions toward material creation, the Creator’s footstool (Isaiah 66:1), be a pleasing part of my worship and service to God?

2.    How can I be more conscious of the environmental impact of packaging?   What distinctions can I make in choosing products that are packaged with environmental stewardship in mind?

3.    I’m challenged to research my ‘garbage company’s’ role in the waste stream – what happens to our garbage?   Is it sorted and reclaimed?  What is my part in stewarding these resources?

4.    Are there lessons for both the givers and the receivers of gifts with respect to how we handle the treasured contents of a package AND the packaging and wrappings?   Have we lost the distinction between the means and the ends of gift giving?  Means as well as ends?

5.    I’m challenged to expand our use of reusable gift boxes.  Although young children enjoy tearing open packages with reckless abandon and joy, at least some gifts can be given in reusable boxes.  Indeed, we’ve begun to circulate some sturdy boxes covered with colorful paper among our homes, and which reappear the following year with a new gift inside (see examples in photo, upper right).  We also use other packages such as used cereal boxes.

Please “Comment” to add your thoughts, questions, or practical suggestions.

Prayer:   Father in Heaven, thank you for sending your Beloved Son to be the Savior of the world; especially, to be the Savior of all who accept His sacrifice to provide atonement for their sin.  Thank you that this Son of love Who entered this world and humbly took on flesh, wrapped in cloths in a manger; all within the busy, distracted, commercial world of His time.  Help us (help me) not to be so distracted by all the wrappings and trappings that I miss Your purposes for me.  After all, my own works—even my efforts to be more “green” environmentally-- are only filthy rags if I forget my desperate need for daily spiritual renewal through confession and regeneration.  Amen.