Living Beyond Your Circumstances Through The Resurrection

A little boy named Philip with Down Syndrome attended a third-grade Sunday school class with several eight-year-old boys and girls. Typical of that age, the children did not readily accept Philip with his differences.

The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay.” — Matthew 28:5-6

On Easter Sunday, the teacher brought egg-shaped pantyhose containers for the students and told the children to go outside, find some symbol for new life, and put it in the egg-like container. Back in the classroom, they would share their new life symbols, opening the containers one by one. After running about the church property in wild confusion, the students returned to the classroom and placed the containers on the table.

Surrounded by the children, the teacher began to open them one by one. When one was opened, revealing nothing inside, the children exclaimed, “That’s not fair! Somebody didn’t do their assignment.”

Make Advent More than "The Christmas Season"

Many of us make the four
weeks leading up to Christmas
into something it's not.

For the longest time, I thought "Advent" was just a fancy word for "the Christmas season," a holier, maybe more spiritual-sounding word for an otherwise hectic and overly-commercialized holiday stretch between Thanksgiving and Dec. 25. What I've discovered in the past few years of observing Advent is it's not just a different word; it's an entirely different approach.

Let me explain. Advent as a season is meant to make the journey toward Christmas full of meaning; it's meant to put us in touch with our deepest longings and greatest hopes; it's meant to teach us to bring all our desires together on one object: Christ. While "Christmas" as a season (properly) begins on Dec. 25 and goes 12 days (yes, there's a song about that!) until Jan. 6, Advent is all about the build-up to it. It begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas and takes us right up to the glorious celebration of the incarnation.