Detecting Christmas December 17 Devotional

Fourth Sunday of Advent

Candle Lighting

Lighting a candle each week of Advent is part of our VPC worship tradition. It marks time during this season of anticipation and helps us prepare our spirits for the celebration of Jesus’ birth at Christmas. If you choose to participate in this tradition at home, we hope you find this guide useful.  Enjoy the readings, discussion, and prayer as a family as you prepare your hearts and homes to receive the Christ child.

Read:

The fourth week of Advent, we re-light the candles of HOPE, PEACE and JOY, remembering the hope we have in Jesus, and the
everlasting peace and joy he promises us. This week we also light the candle of LOVE. God loves us so much that he sent his son Jesus to earth as a baby to save us.  Those who had been paying attention to the prophecies might have known what town, but perhaps not exactly WHERE. Even people that might have been looking to
Bethlehem would have been surprised by the unlikely place of Jesus’ birth, a manger, and also the unlikely first group with which God shared the good news— the shepherds!

Discuss:

Have you ever been surprised about where you have found something?

Do you think the shepherds were surprised by where they found Jesus? Why or why not?

What is surprising about God announcing the good news to the shepherds first?

Pray:

Heavenly father,

As we light the Advent candle of Love, we thank you for loving us enough to send your son, Jesus, to earth to save us. Help us to remember that good news is sometimes found in surprising places, and heard by surprising people. Amen.

MATTHEW 2:1a | ^1a  In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea….

Most key events take place in real places at particular times. Movie events, of course, can take place anywhere or nowhere, as long as they seem to be real on screen. Jesus’ birth occurred in the very real town of Bethlehem in Judea, a place both special and obscure. It was obscure, indeed “the back of beyond,” from the standpoint of anyone in the ancient world who was not Jewish. A regular Roman citizen would have seen all of Judea as a distant, culturally odd, and unimportant part of a vast empire. To a Jew it was the city of David, and associated with the expected Messiah by prophetic expectations.

Jesus’ birth was at the center of the story of Jewish life and hope, and at the same time took place in “nowheresville.” Not in Rome, not in Athens — God arrives in Bethlehem, in a stable.

Often the key moments of history happen almost offstage. Do you agree?

Gracious God,

Help me to see beneath the headlines and the hype, so I can understand the way you are shaping history. Amen.