Do-It-Yourself Advent for young families
This is a combined effort by three families for our kids who are ages 1-5. We wanted to teach them expectation around the coming of Jesus, and to join Christians around the world who are reading these same scriptures on these days of Advent.
What is Advent?
Advent has traditionally been considered the new year of the Christian calendar. Maybe you remember an advent calendar as a kid, counting down the days to Christmas. Well, Advent is all about expectation, but mostly about expecting the messianic age, the promised king who will restore God’s world. Advent ties our here-and-now to God’s coming promised finished creation. It helps us re-capture what Jesus’ birth must have meant to the people of Israel, to his families and disciples. Advent helps us to look again with compassion and hope on those in need of rescue. For the families in Capitol View, Atlanta, it gives us eyes of compassion and hope toward our neighborhood’s prostitutes, drug addicts, and trashed foreclosed homes––not to mention our own addictions and despair. Some times we think of heaven as a place in the clouds and “the end times” as an airlift out of a world “going to hell in a hand basket.” But the kingdom promises of Jewish prophets, and of the king who came in a humble stable, reminds us of the importance of the here-and-now. Jesus would teach over and over, look around, heaven is breaking through. So, Advent moves our eyes out of our own problems or the impossibility of every day life up to the hills, to the horizon, ahead of us “from which our help comes.”
Nuts and Bolts
Each family has a invented a type of Advent calendar–envelops, pockets, boxes, whatever– with the day of the month on it leading up to Christmas morning. Each day has a verse of scripture taken from the lectionary for 2007 (year A in the three year reading cycle of the church scheduled for these four weeks anticipating Christmas). At the beginning of each day are the things you will need to place in each pocket or box or envelope for the day of expectation. Oh, you will need one nativity set to use specifically for this month starting on Sunday December 9th. Then pieces of it will be put out from then on. Place the baby Jesus of this nativity set in the December 25 pocket or put it out on Christmas Eve when your kids are sleeping. You also may want to read ahead and plan (such as on Dec 20 you’ll make or buy a Gift for Jesus that you’ll then consider giving to a thirsty or hungry person –it will be helpful to know ahead of time so you might buy the gift as a family on the weekend before).
Story Telling
Parents, read these stories and scriptures ahead of time so you can paraphrase them when it’s helpful. Also let the kids get into the story by luring them in, “do you want to know what happened next?” or, “we’ll tell the rest of the story tomorrow.” The point of the Christian Lectionary is to string together Bible stories in a way that tell the Big Story (which we celebrate in Advent as The Anticipated Coming King.)