Advent: HOPE

Advent season is here.  It's hard to believe that Christmas is only a month away.  

This year for the first time, our family will be celebrating Advent together in our home.  In preparation for that, I've written out this brief guide that we will use tomorrow, when we light the first (Hope) candle on our Advent Wreath.

Youngest Child lights the first (Purple) candle.

Oldest Child Reads Luke 1:26-38

Third Child reads Psalm 62:5

"For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him."

Question:  What is "Hope"?

After a few answers are shared, ask someone to look up "Hope" in the dictionary.

Question:  What are some things you are hoping for?  What if they don't happen?  What if they do happen?

Questions:  In Psalm 62:5, who does the Psalmist say we are to hope for?  And how are we to do this?

The verse says that our hope is from God.  How is this hope different from the hopes we shared tonight?

What do you think it means to "wait in silence"?

Activity:  Before the ending prayer, explain to the children that we are going to practice silence, and that after the prayer everyone is to get ready for bed silently.  If it is too early for bedtime, then institute the "game" of being silent for one hour by choosing quiet activities such as reading or drawing.

Third Child Reads Prayer

God, we are thankful that you give us hope through the birth of Jesus.

While there are many things that we hope for, please help us know that our real hope is both in and from you God.

Teach us what "waiting in silence" for God means.

Amen

No Words

How I wanted to be able to post something amazing, something magnificent and uplifting and inspiring, here a week after my husband has been sentenced to prison.  I know that the right thing to do is to pour out my gratitude that My God has given me peace and a hope, that He has settled my mind and I am now eagerly facing the future, breathlessly awaiting to see what miraculous things He is going to do in my life and the life of my family.

And yet.....

Those are not the words I wish to write.  They are not the words that are just behind the ability to speak or write at all.  They are not the words that are crowding behind the irrational pull to scream, to throw and break stemware in the woods.  Yet no such actions would do a thing.  They would not produce a sense of God's presence in my soul.  They would not change anything.  They would not make the scripture work that I attempt to do every morning and most nights any more or less real.

Until this week, I've felt strong, even healthy, proud, arrogant.  But right now I am sad.  I am tired.  I am paralyzed.  I am terrified.  I am alone and I don't sense God, nor direction for my family.  Not saying He is not truth or that He is not real.  Just saying that I wish for His peace, that he would still this mind somehow, and that he would grant sleep, that He would say "Shhhh" to me, in Psalms, in Jonah, in 1 Thess 3:8-10, Exodus 33, Mark 5, John 20, "Shhh" through any of those passages that mean so much to me.