Advent & Christmas All Year Round
Dear Momma,
It’s 10:30 PM and I’m sitting in my dining room, a place where I love to meet with the Lord, in awe of Him. The Hope of our Lord and the Love of our Lord has been more deeply woven into me during this Advent and Christmas season, and although I’m sitting on the other side of the Christmas season in this moment, Christmas isn’t over. As a believer, we truly are Christmas people all year long. You see, this year, through His Grace, through studying His Word and spending time with Him, I’ve experienced the depth of His love more deeply.
WHY Jesus was sent here (defeating sin, overcoming death, and taking back the nations) leaves me breathless.
HOW Jesus even came to earth, through the stories of those who came before Him in His human bloodline, and continuing to see the redemptive and powerful ways God moved and stayed faithful makes me fall to my knees.
WHEN Jesus came, after hundreds of years of silence from God, and humans continuing to be humans, shows me the depth of God’s love for you and me and reminds me that His time is always better than ours.
This year, the Lord gave me the gift of experiencing Christmas with more of a child-like faith than I can say I’ve had in I don’t know how long. I’ve been blessed to wake up to endless presents under the tree and stockings filled to the top. I remember as a child leaving the cookies out and really thinking I was helping Santa out. Truthfully, I couldn’t wait to see if he actually ate some. I recall like it was yesterday, watching the starry sky looking for those reindeer and that sled on the night before Christmas. I’m thankful for every gift and every memory that was poured into my childhood. There’s something beautiful about the idea of a child during Christmas, isn’t there? The expectant hope. The anticipated joy. The excitement! Oh, the excitement!
Oh, but if that story were only true and lasting.
I wanted to experience the expectant hope, the anticipated joy and the EXCITEMENT of the true story.
His Story. (History.)
Through His grace and time spent with Him, I’ve learned more about HIS Story, the Truth, and experienced Him and His love for us more deeply this Christmas season.
And this Story, truthfully, has left me astonished and speechless as the depth of His unwavering love for you and me continues to be revealed with each turning page of Scripture. I can’t tell you the number of times I had to sit back and just say WOAH, because as soon as one thing was revealed to me about the lengths He’s taken for you and me, it’s just followed up with another.
Over and over and over again.
It amazes me that the end was already written before the beginning started. Before Jesus was born in a manger, He knew about Calvary. It amazes me that the birth of Jesus was prophesied hundreds of years prior and that where He would be born was prophesied, too. The human bloodline Jesus was born into, I just can’t even. Y’all, do you even KNOW the family Jesus came from? Oh my word, I just can’t get enough of this!
The stories of His family members aren’t too different than you and me. Their families are our families! These stories are of loss yet gain, sorrow yet joy, being forgotten yet redeemed, lost then found, and it is the most wildly orchestrated storyline that absolutely no human could have ever mustered up. His story is worldwide, yet at the same time so deeply personally written to you and me.
How does He do it?
As I’ve been spending time in His Word and studying, the heaviness of His glory and love continues to fall and the beauty of this love story is greater and deeper than any person can truly understand. I’m not even close to understanding it, but He’s answering my prayer in allowing me to experience it, experience more of Him.
My heart is overflowing with gratefulness that He continues to be faithful to me.
And…
As a mom, I want my girls to experience Him so deeply, too.
Over the past couple of months, we devoted time to reading, praying and learning together. We have two teenagers and one pre-teen, so the materials we dove into made sense for my family because reading, studying and praying together are regular rhythms in our home. We were constantly flipping from the Old Testament to the New Testament and the girls and my husband and I were having very different conversations than we’ve had in the past as we were preparing for Christmas this year. While traveling this journey with our girls and thankful their understanding is growing in Him, my prayer is they experience His love and warmth in ways that can only be Him.
Although Christmas is over, we’re continuing our studying around His birth, because this Story is too good, y’all. There’s too much to just stop. Truthfully, everything just typically leads us back to His birth, His life, His death and His Resurrection anyhow. I’m not sure the Christmas story ever really stops.
In the Manger: Max Lucado
I’ve experienced Christmas differently this year, and I believe it’s not only because of His Grace, but it was me making time to hear from Him. Prior to this year, my girls really didn’t know what Advent was and I truly can’t express the depths of what we’ve learned together this year with our time together.
We just made time together, with Him.
He did everything else.
If you’re wanting to start understanding more of His Story and connecting more dots, these are a few resources/experiences below that have impacted my understanding of His life, and my relationship with Him, forever. These are also resources our family used to guide conversations that kept us flipping back and forth from the Old Testament to the New Testament and back to the birth, life, death and Resurrection of Jesus.
Holy Bible: Our family uses a couple of different versions. We like to compare the language and also use a study a Bible too. For us, this helps build context and understanding for what’s happening during the time the Story was being written.
the truth about Angels (Terry Law): Several months ago, our family began studying the truth about angels from a biblical lens. We know our children will hear things from the world that are simply not aligned with the Truth. So, we began studying. (This was a really cool book, y’all!) This wasn’t intentionally planned to study this prior to the Advent season, but it actually blended beautifully with our study of the Lord’s birth! After 400+ years of silence from God between the Old and New Testament, there were angelic encounters with the parents of Jesus and John the Baptist! The Lord definitely used his messengers to break His silence! We were able to have different conversations about the angels in this story. (So cool!)
The Marvel and Miracle of Advent study guide and streaming videos (Christine Cain & Lisa Harper): This series was AMAZING!! There were four weeks worth of videos and coming together to study. I can’t say enough about this study! If this is something you’re interested in checking out for you and your daughters, I’d suggest you going through the study first. Reading, studying and praying together is a regular rhythm in our home, so we were equipped to talk about the stories of the women in Jesus’ family bloodline: Bathsheba, Tamar, Rahab, and more. If this is a newer rhythm for you and your girls, pray about it and do the study first before diving in! If you’re not familiar with the stories of these women, it might not be what you’re expecting when talking about the birth and life of Jesus.
In the Manger (Max Lucado): This was another book my amazing Mom sent me. This book was written so personally it felt as if I was in the storyline alongside Mary and Joseph, Jesus Himself even, while reading. This was a beautiful balance of reading from a study while reading this text as if Jesus and I were right next to each other doing this all together, personally. Simply beautiful.
Journey to Judea: This experience was unforgettable. Some friends shared this experience with us and I’ve been wanting our family to go for a couple of years now. This brought the story of Jesus to life. Words from a page were living, breathing and on full display for the honor and glory of Him. This is also an experience my girls will be able to pull from for a lifetime.
While Advent is over and Christmas has passed, the Story still continues to get better and better. We don’t need to wait until next November to dive in, y’all. We can dive in now. We don’t need a thousand resources and exhibits to experience Him, but there’s something special that continues to happen when we dive into time with Him and come with open hearts to allow Him to reveal anything He wants. There’s something even more beautiful when we do so as a family.
I want to experience Him more and I pray we, and our daughters, get to experience Him more this year, too.
It’s worth making the time for.
Let’s turn our Eyes to Jesus because it’s all for His Glory.
In love,
Kassie Leigh