celebration

I lead a half hour prayer meeting before our evening church service. It's mostly pretty standard: read the Bible passage that will be preached on, and pray for the usual. Every once in a while I organise something a bit more elaborate, the pinnacle of which was a few months ago when I used prayer stations (borrowed from the Micah Challenge) about the millenium development goals. While doing the search that eventually led me to those prayer stations, I noticed lots of ideas for Advent prayer stations, and advent starts in two weeks so I've been doing some fun searching this afternoon to start to get some concrete ideas. It's amazing how much stuff is out there to help people in celebrating the season of Christmas! Our church doesn't do much for Advent, so I'm excited that as the prayer meeting leader I get to organise things that help me to celebrate Christmas in a way that connects with my family's (and past church's) traditions. If I don't do any Advent preparation/reflection, December 25th feels a bit odd to me. Hugh has hardly any traditions associated with Christmas, so it's been great to rope him into Advent readings and singings (last year he always made us move to the rooms in the house where we would be least likely to be heard by passersby while singing). And it will be even greater this year to have Hugh in the midst of my traditions :)