Would you believe that this is already the second week of Advent! By the time you read this it will probably be the third week! Already! My how time flies.
When my children were small – I had 5 – we had an Advent Wreath in our home with 4 candles around the perimeter and one in the center representing Jesus. Each Sunday after church, we would light one of the candles. Usually there are 3 purple candles and one pink candle with the center one which represents Jesus being white for purity. The first week, one of the children lit one candle – a purple one. The second week, another child lit the pre-lit one and another purple one. It was a real joy to watch them as they did the Advent countdown to Christmas. The last child, on Christmas morning, got to light all 5 of the candles in our wreath.
Now that the children are no longer at home but quite grown, I no longer have a physical Advent wreath, but the memories linger on. It was a challenge for me to choose the order in which the children were to light the candles. One year we began with the oldest and ended with the youngest, the next year we reversed the process and began with the youngest and ended with the oldest. Then we mixed the ages so that everyone had a chance to be either first or last. And you could feel the anticipation grow as each candle was lit – week by week. Each knowing that Christmas grew ever closer.
What a wonderful gift God gave us when He gave us His Only Son. How appropriate that we remember that Gift and the Hope and Promise that goes with it. We just spent a time of thanksgiving when we thanked God for the marvelous world He has created and given to us, for the families He chose to put us into, for the beauty of our country, for our very lives. Now, it is a time to remember the very special Gift God gave when He sent His Son to come into this world – not as a rich man, not as a king, not in a palace, not in a mansion; but as a poor, regular person, a baby, born in a manger among the animals and all that surrounds a manger.
God wanted a family. That’s why He created Adam and Eve and told them to be fruitful and multiply. God is love – personified – and He has so much love to give out that He needs all of us to be recipients of that love. However, God could not love us in the fullness that He wanted to after Adam and Eve did just the one thing – imagine, God only had ONE rule to follow. Their part was to obey or disobey. And they just couldn’t do it. So, humanity being sinful now, God was limited in His contact with His family.
But God is never without a plan, so He sent His Son to be the perfect sacrifice to pay for all of each one of us’ sins. Before Jesus came, lambs, goats, bulls, birds were given as a sacrifice for human sins. Each offering only lasting one year and just covering up the sin, not removing it. How blessed we are that Jesus removed our sin so we can enter into the very presence of God and find grace to help in time of need. Thank Him. Thank Jesus. Honor the Gift of the Father – for you. Just receive it.
Rev. Joyce Kaplan, M.Div. Retired Church of Christ Pastor.
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