FIRST SUNDAY IN ADVENT - HOPE

I love Advent - it’s always good to look forward to Christmas and each year, I get out my Meditations for Advent and Christmas book entitled, “A Child is Born” written back in 1988 by J. Barrie Shepherd.  I bought this many years ago and use the morning and evening meditations during Advent as my daily readings.  

The word “Advent” comes from the Latin word “Adventus” which means “Coming”  - and in all the busyness of this season - in the next few weeks, as Christians, we will remember how Jesus came into the world.  I realise that not everyone believes this, but it is an important time in the Christian calendar.  

Many Churches have an Advent wreath and each candle has a special significance.  The candle that was lit today spoke to us of HOPE, and before it was lit, one of our young people read some Bible verses telling us of that hope.  We were then reminded by Rev. Nigel Coles, the Regional Team Leader of the West of England Baptist Association, that we are all, or should be carriers of God’s hope, joy, peace and love and we will, no doubt, be hearing more about these as each candle is lit Sunday by Sunday.

We enjoyed some great worship songs and looking around the Church, we saw some wonderful arrangements of the Nativity on many of the window sills, beautiful banners and there were lots of Christmas jumpers to be seen too.  I spotted the two at the bottom right of my collage, worn by two brothers - and they posed so that I could take a shot of them.  No doubt there will be more worn over the next few weeks!

A challenge was thrown out to all of us to come to the Nativity, which will be presented by the various groups of children and young people, dressed in costume!  I love a challenge and when “dressing gowns” were mentioned, Mr. HCB looked at me and mouthed “NO”!!  How could he possibly think I would turn up in my pink robe?  Watch this space!! ;-) 

I must apologise for not commenting yesterday - it was a full-on day and I was extremely tired - in fact, I came home early from the evening Christmas Crafts event because I was so tired.  The bottom left shot shows one of the angels from the morning event and I have to say that the boys were better at sewing than the girls - someone suggested they had more patience but I’m not getting involved in that discussion!

Hope you’ve had a good day and that this season of Advent will enable you to think about what is important to you during this season.

HOPE came to this world
     in the form of a baby -
          Jesus is His name.

P.S.  Our Christmas tree, which goes upstairs complete with lights on Twelfth Night, was brought down by Mr. HCB this afternoon and the lights work - Hooray!  However, the many baubles have a year's worth of dust on them, despite the tree being covered since early January, so I need to clean them off - although I doubt anyone would notice!