Brothers and Sisters,
I do hope your Thanksgiving holiday was full of joy and rest! We started our season of Advent last Sunday (listen here). It was an encouraging time of reminding ourselves through the Gospel of Matthew that God had been orchestrating all of human history towards the first Christmas morning. In doing so, He generates an unshakeable hope rooted in the God-man. Glorious indeed!
Alongside our Sunday Gathering, we are encouraging everyone to read a little devotional thought each day of December (click here to see and download the resource for free). The readings are extremely helpful in leveraging this time of the year to consider the good news of Christmas. So read, reflect, pray, and rejoice! But if you have kiddos, you might find that the readings are hard to understand for them. As we read the focus for December 1, my son said, “Dad, I am only seven, so I don’t understand what you are saying.” I so appreciated the honesty! We talked through the devotion and broke it down into tangible pieces that he and his sister could digest. It took a little extra time, but it was worth it! Be encouraged parents, as the old saying goes, “more is caught than taught.” So keep at it, and in doing so, you are instilling in your child a love for the Word of God. As the reading pointed out, “If you are excited about Christ, they will be too.”[1]
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Bryan
[1] John Piper, Good News of Great Joy: Daily Readings for Advent, (Minneapolis, MN: Desiring God, 2013), p 10