Advent

Most of the time, as the Christmas season approaches, our schedules fill up rapidly with parties, shopping outings and other festivities to celebrate the holidays. Unfortunately, most of us lose focus as to the real meaning of the season. We do not do this maliciously, we just get busy, and other things become our priority.

Each year as Christmas draws near, we hear the word Advent used. However, if you’re like me, you’ve never quite understood what the word fully meant, or how to observe the Advent season. So this year I created a Daily Advent Devotional. The link is below:

Advent Daily Devotional

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Advent has been celebrated since the year 400, and marks the beginning of the Christmas season. The word “Advent” means arrival or coming in Latin, and represents the approach of Christ’s birth (and fulfillment of the prophecies about that event); and the awaiting of Christ’s second coming. It is composed of the four Sundays before Christmas Day, starting on November 30th.

The theme of readings and teachings during Advent is often to prepare for the second coming while commemorating the first coming of Christ at Christmas. These readings direct our thoughts to the first coming of Jesus Christ as Savior, and to his second coming as Judge.

In Max Lucado’s book God Came Near, there is a short story titled “The Arrival”. It takes us through the environment of what it might have been like at the time of Christ’s birth, and shows how people weren’t intentionally neglecting the coming of the Messiah, they just weren’t preparing themselves for the arrival, and they missed it. Lucado then brings the story to the 21st century and closes the story with this powerful line, “Those who missed His majesty’s arrival that night missed it not because of evil acts or malice; no, they missed it because they simply weren’t looking. Little has changed in the last two thousand years has it?”

Lucado’s words sting because we too have missed the real meaning of Christmas, and turned to secular materialism instead. I believe the remedy to recapturing the meaning of Christmas is by preparing ourselves daily and returning to the rich tradition of the church and observing Advent for the four weeks before Christmas in our churches.

I pray this will help enrich your Christmas season this year, and help prepare your heart for the arrival of our Messiah, Jesus Christ.