Advent.

It's Advent season and we're ready to snuggle in, slow down, and prepare our hearts for what's ahead. I love hearing what others are up to during this season - some are turning off the TV, some already have their Christmas shopping done and wrapped up, some are finding ways to journey through the season together, as a family or community.

We're trying Truth in the Tinsel this year, an ebook/devotional I spotted in the blogosphere somewhere, somehow. We'll be reading a passage each day, talking about it a bit, and then crafting a little ornament. I retrieved my craft supplies from the basement storage room (no small feat at this phase in the game), took a trip to the Dollar Tree and Hobby Lobby, and I believe we're in business. I'm excited to try it, and I really hope this will help shift the focus to Him, rather than retail America.

I'm also reading 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess right now with a community of people organized by my friend Lisa, and that's been an interesting contrast to this season of stuff. I've wanted to read the book for a while and I kept waiting for the "right" time. This book club opportunity popped up and it's turned out to be exactly the right sort of time to think about and challenge the way we relate to excess (so far we've read the chapters on food, clothes, possessions, and media).

An Advent Prayer
by bleedingoutloud

Holy Christ, we acknowledge all that is broken in our world and in ourselves and we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus.” Come into the cracks and crevices and rifts in our community. Into the violence and the homelessness. Into the anger and divisiveness. Into our losses and lack. Into marriages and relationships that have grown cold. 

Bring peace. Bring wholeness. Bring healing. Bring hope. 

We wait. We watch. We live with anticipation because in you, Christ, we believe God has come among us and has begun putting the world back together. And we trust that You will come again and finish the work You began. 

Holy Christ, hear our Advent prayer: Come, Lord Jesus! Come.