Preparing Your Home and Hearts for Advent
As moms, we plot and we plan long before December arrives to create a magical Christmas season for our families. We have visions of snuggling up on the couch reading The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, piecing together puzzles of Kittens in Stockings, and watching Elf clad in matching plaid pajamas. We plan themed parties, plop red and green M&M’s in pancakes shaped like reigndeer with bacon antlers and whipped cream noses; painstakingly coordinate clothes for family pictures, and spend a ridiculous amount of money to meet a live reigndeer and ride the Polar Express.
I love to make the season come alive for my kids, it’s such a sweet and sacred time as a family to come together. It is truly my favorite time of year.
But I think as my kids have gotten older, my thoughts on the Advent season have begun to shift.
I’ve realized in past Christmases that Christmas has been centered all around my favorite little people. Some years, I believe that we’ve arrived at Christmas Day realizing that Jesus was not quite, but almost an oversight.
More than receiving all the right toys and memberships and clothes and electronics, I long for my kids to have humble hearts. To be servant minded. To love like Christ. What I want most for my kids is to give them eyes to see the world through Jesus’ eyes and not to pursue comfort over service.
How do we grow in them a heart that serves?
That looks for the broken hearted;
That loves the impaired or misshapen;
That stands up for those who don’t fit in…
The longer my kids are in this world, I realize that the best gift we can give them at Christmas is not all the stuff or the magic or even the memories, but rather a living congruency with what we read in scripture.
So my mind has been dreaming up a different kind of Christmas this year…a Service-focused Christmas. I plan this Advent to do things a little differently. Sure, we will still decorate gingerbread houses, drive around to look at the lights with marshmallow topped cocoa in hand. We will still plan sledding adventures with friends and pick out the perfect Christmas ornaments together…I will always try to make this season a magical time for my family full of tradition and beauty. But even more importantly, my hope is that at the core of our Christmas, at the very root is Advent…and that it’s not the Lego kind.
A preparation time in our hearts and in our home for the nativity–the birth of our king.
When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
Matthew 2:10-11
So I’ve been pondering this week…
What gifts can we give the King this Christmas?
Read this post for ways to teach your kids to be servant-hearted this Christmas.