At Home In Advent

The following words for reflection are taken and adapted from “At Home In Advent - A domestic journey from Advent to Epiphany” from Gordon Giles (BRF - Bible Reading Fellowship). The entire book is available from Eden.co.uk and would be recommended to get a fuller experience of this time of devotion and meditation.

The purpose of these devotional is to give you something of an everyday object or motion which can focus our thinking through Advent. There are 3 sections:

Travelling in Advent
At Home in Advent
The run up to Christmas

We have travelled home, we have made some preparations, and now we settle in for the last run up to Christmas.

Dog (Pets) - God is for Life

Read: Matthew 25:34 - 40

Anyone getting a pet for Christmas? Maybe you already have! I don’t know how many Christmas films and shows have a child waking up a puppy or kitten for Christmas Day…yet I’ve never known of one personally!

And of course there are the schemes of public announcement that a “Dog is for life, not just for Christmas” I do know of a number of people who are genuinely saddened with the knowledge that some months after Christmas the animal homes are inundated with ‘unwanted Christmas presents’. Even within that statement we see how humanity can be both ‘cruel’ and ‘kind’. We are selfish, tribal, violent, greedy and destructive… but we are also generous, loving, accepting and altruistic.

As Christians we believe that that thing within us that makes us capable of these worthy acts comes from God, and as people of Jesus we are encouraged to pursue these acts on a daily basis.

Why do we make that ‘extra effort’ at Christmas to help others? Surely these are things we can be doing all year long? God’s generosity to us is lifelong and eternal, but maybe our response to him is only seasonal. Let’s make this day the first day of an everlasting concern for others.

Pray for those in need; locally and globally.