We are now in the throws of the Advent season. The Latin word adventus is actually the translation of the Greek word Parousia, commonly referring to the Second Coming of Christ. For us Westerners...The first Sunday of Advent marks the new year in the liturgical year, in the Christian calendar. There are 4 Sundays in Advent, the 4 Sundays before Christmas. These Sundays are marked by lighting the Advent Wreath. There are 4 smaller candles that sit on the ring of the wreath with 3 purple candles and one pink candle with a larger white candle in the middle. The purple candles generally represent Hope, Peace and Love while the pink candle represents Joy. The middle large white candle is known as the Christ Candle and is lit on Christmas Eve or Christmas day. You will also see many churches using the color purple on the pulpit, lectern and communion table which represents the Royalty of Jesus. This color will come back again during Lent which then represents the Passion of Christ, his willingness to die on our behalf.
It is my hope that you will spend some time this season creating some of your own Advent traditions as we move closer to Christmas. At the church we will be spending the next 4 weeks focusing on the Advent Conspiracy. This is the time of year we are bombarded with enticing sales to spend, spend, spend...great deals….we feel pressured to show our love to family and friends by the size of our gifts. Yet did you know that the amount of money we Americans spend on Christmas gifts is close to 45x the amount of money it would take to supply the entire world with clean water? What if some of the money we spend at Christmas was used to dig wells for poor or remote communities where people die regularly from the lack of clean water? This season we will be looking at ways we can really give the gift of love, not so much from buying expensive gifts, but by putting our gifts to help to serve others in the name of Christ Emmanuel, Christ with us!
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