Advent has begun!

The first Sunday of Advent was Sunday, November 27.

Advent is a season of Sundays of waiting, preparing, hoping, and visioning.

Waiting -- waiting for Christmas!  Christmas break and Christmas day!  It's also waiting for the new heaven and new earth and the reign of peace promised in scripture.  It's a season of leaning into the hope promised in Christ's ministry.

Preparing -- we prepare for Christmas by buying gifts and packing and cleaning to head away from school for the holidays.  It's also a season of preparing spiritually, by attending to practices of faith -- prayer, scripture reading, worship, and giving.  As much time as we spend preparing for Christmas and break, similar time should be spent preparing in our lives of faith.

Hoping and Visioning -- we hope for lots of things at the end of the semester: passing a class, getting the expected grade, or getting home safely.   We vision (aka look forward) to something better than the current stress of college life.  It's also a season where we hope and envision a world that is different that what we see now and hear in the news.  We read scriptures, pray, serve, and worship with the hope that God's gracious love will one day prevail in the world.  We read and tell stories of faith that envision a world where peace prevail.  Much like we look forward to break, in our worship life we look forward to the future reign of God.

We try to do this in our family life at our house.  It is not perfect.  We set out an advent wreath and light a new candle each week each time we gather at the dinner table for dinner.  We seek to read scriptures, prayers, or stories of faith, and seek to give more to our community.  This does not happen every day during Advent.  But we do our best to focus on the season and not get swept up in the commercialism of the season around us.  Sometimes our reflections are quick and in the midst of a messy table, some days they don't happen, and some evenings we have a great reflection.  We do our best to not only prepare our 'secular' lives for Christmas but our spiritual lives through our family devotions.  We invite you to join this imperfect journey with us!

We will have a time of Advent reflection each week at the PSF on Nov. 30, Dec. 7 & 14

Below are some options for learning more about Advent and for daily devotions;

Learn more at:
http://www.presbyterianmission.org/ministries/worship/christianyear/advent/
http://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/three-ways-to-celebrate-advent-and-christmas-season-fully

Daily Devotions:
http://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/2016-advent-home-worship
http://d365.org/
https://upsemdevotions.wordpress.com/