Detecting Christmas November 26 Devotional

First 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:

Advent is a time of hopeful expectation. The first candle we light is the candle of Hope. Each Sunday in advent, we light candles and count down until the celebration of the Christ’s birth. Christ is WHO Christmas is all about. In the past, God’s people hoped for the coming Messiah. The Messiah was described in part by WHO his relatives were. Today God’s people celebrate his coming on Christmas so long ago and look forward hopefully to his return.

Discuss:

Do you know many of your relatives?

What do you know about your grandparents? Or great grandparents?

How does being related to your family make you unique?

Pray:

Heavenly father,

As we light this first Advent candle, the candle of Hope, please help us remember that you had a perfect plan for us and to save us from the beginning of time. We can trust that you sent exactly who we needed to save us, in your son Jesus Christ. Help us remember that as we celebrate this Advent season. Amen.

MATTHEW 1:1 | ¹ An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Jesus has a genealogy! The bible seems inordinately obsessive about ancestry. It is full of genealogies, and they are easily skipped as if they were simply boring lists of unpronounceable names. But let us pause for a moment and consider why genealogies are revelatory: they show God at work in the messy contours of human life. God is at work apart from you and me. No one helped him call the universe into being, or design its intricate laws and constants. No one helps him sustain its existence or superintend its development. Yet God is also at work in our family trees. He is present in the fragile and beautiful reality of human covenants and promises. Each of us has our unique existence because of dozens and hundreds of ancestors who formed bonds of love and families of nurture. Our genetic individuality, that in each life is on a scale of 1 in 70 trillion, emerges from a long history of human love and tragedy and survival, in which God is working to unite couples and create generations.

How complete is your family tree?

Gracious God,

Thank you for working through families and marriage covenants to make unique individuals with the potential to love and serve you. Amen.