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| An African Nativity Scene, with a frame borrowed from Facebook. |
I spent the first 30 years of my life with an absent Advent. In the hymnal I'm most familiar with, I noticed a handful of Advent hymns and designated separately from the Christmas songs, but I still didn't really get it. I was more familiar with Lent (by reputation, not by practice) than I was with Advent.
Recently, some of the churches I've attended have the advent candles. Also, at Arlington Avenue Baptist Church, I've seen two different breakdowns of the four weeks of Advent: Prophets/Angels/Shepherds/Wise Men and Hope/Peace/Joy/Love. The last couple of years, I've been going through the latter (last year, combining the Advent theme with my Sunday Psalms series).
This year, I've decided to take a more creative approach, and pick out four themes on my own for this Advent series. I'm picking four topics - okay, each theme has two related topics - that both we have through the First Coming of Christ and desperately need to live out.
Today, I'll start with an Advent of Gratitude (Thanksgiving) and Encouragement. I consider them related: Gratitude is being appreciative of what others do, and encouragement is motivating others to keep it up.
Do we have thankful hearts? Do we have minds trained to encourage?
And do I need to elaborate more than just asking the two questions? I don't think so, but let me know if you disagree.
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