Fourth Week of Advent

I thought last week’s post was late… this week’s was so late that we’ve inadvertently skipped a week! Welcome to the fourth and final week of Advent!

Maybe it’s appropriate for this week to be delayed a bit because of life being full. I was hoping this week to share some resources connected to the Advent Conspiracy – a church movement all about taking the focus away from consumption during Advent and instead focusing on worship, reducing spending, giving and spending time with people. There is a neat video about it: click though!

Our Advent album recommendation this week is also an Advent Conspiracy one. Mike Crawford and his Secret Siblings, from Jacob’s Well church in Kansas City, have put together a fantastic album of original advent music in honour of the Advent Conspiracy. Proceeds from the album go to supporting water access programs.

Our kids resource this week comes from Ali Beeston, who uses a couple of advent calendars to mark time during Advent with her toddler. She has some really helpful thoughts on explaining Advent and Christmas to a small child.

Other resources this week? We have a poem by Glen Scrivener – a video version as well – where you can see him delivering it performance poetry style! Also, with just a week to go until Christmas, this is the week for using the Antiphons to count down until Christmas day. You might like to use them in your personal devotions. Click through to find all the antiphons, and one of our favourite versions of O Come O Come Emmanuel – which is a musical version of all the antiphonal prayers.

 

Second Week of Advent

This post is late – two weeks into Advent, and life is already full to the brim with all the things that Christmas demands. Ugh. Matthew found this helpful blog post about ‘Advent Killers‘, written by Pete Scezzero. It was exactly the right thing to read as my to-do list of Christmas jobs and ministry tasks grows and grows. You might like it too!

Our kids resource this week has been put together by Amber from St Alban’s Five Dock, who has established an amazing Advent tradition with her primary school aged boys – they build their own nativity out of Lego! Click through for more.

Our other resources this week are tied together around the theme of waiting for Jesus’ coming. Actually… what am I talking about? That’s pretty much all the resources we have! This week we have some especially pointed ‘waiting’ resources. First up, an album by Rain for Roots titled ‘Waiting Songs‘. It’s country, so I can only listen to it in small doses, but it’s a very beautiful album none the less.

We’ve also got an excerpt from a sermon by Oliver O’Donovan from Revelation about waiting for the second coming of Jesus. We’ve got a poem by C.S. Lewis about a bird waiting for a time of endless summer. And we have a collection of paintings depicting the moment when Mary and Elizabeth joyfully reunite, knowing that God is going to work marvels through the babies in their wombs.

Jesus is worth waiting for!

First Week of Advent

Advent is underway!

This year we are celebrating the season with once-or-twice weekly posts sharing some of our favourite Advent resources. We’ll be revisiting poems, songs, art, sermons and stories from previous years, but we also have some new resources this year.

One area we are developing at the moment is a collection of resources to use with children. There are no children in the Moffitt household, but some generous friends with children have volunteered to write up stories of how they celebrate Advent with their kids, and we can’t wait to share these with you as Advent unfolds. Our first reflection on celebrating Advent with kids comes courtesy of the Meoli family, who use The Truth in the Tinsel  to celebrate Advent with their toddlers. Check it out.

This year we’re also going to share some of our favourite Advent music. Not just Christmas carols mind you – we’ve collected some true to form Advent music created especially to help Christians remember the coming of Christ. There are some traditional carols mixed in, but much of it is original contemporary music, written to help God’s people hold fast to the promise of his return and to faithfully wait for him. To kick us off this week we’ve included a link here to Advent by New York outfit Young Oceans. We love this album so much. Please have a listen if you are looking for something new for your Advent playlist this year.

Our other resources this week are treasures from the archives. Given that many of us are putting up our Christmas decorations now, it seems like a good time to read Jane Williams’ reflections on Christmas decorations. We’ve also included John Milton’s poem ‘The Lord Will Come and Not be Slow‘ and a collection of some of our favourite Annunciation art. Click through for works by Leonardo da Vinci, Fra Angelico, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Kim Ki Chang and John Collier.