Advent for a Meaningful Christmas

This year I was invited to be a part of an advent project called "A Meaningful Christmas."  A friend decided that she wanted to make Christmas more meaningful for her very young daughter and found something on Pinterest that caught her eye.  It involved creating 25 ornaments having to do with the Christmas story, exchanging them with 24 other people and it also included 25 short devotionals and verses to go along with each ornament/day.  The countdown was to begin on December 1.

I was given day #21 which was about God being our compass or GPS which went along with the following verse: Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through Me."  (John 14:6)  I used a nifty-shaped piece of card stock and with a large rubber stamp and red ink, I stamped a big hand with the pointer finger out, and wrote "This Way..." on the front.  On the back, I put the bible verse assigned to me, numbered it and dated it.  It was fairly simple, but to the point.  (You know how hard that is for me- I only had so much room?!)

We gathered near the end of November and exchanged the ornaments.  It was fun to see what each person had come up with to signify their given verse or story.  There are some very creative people out there!  My friend put together a booklet for us each to take that gave us the devo and verse that went along with each ornament, and she provided a plastic tote for everything to go in.  She did an excellent job with all of it, and I was pretty pumped about beginning the advent.

For some reason, I just don't get into decorating for Christmas like I used to, which is sad really.  But I must say we got our tree up in better time than last year, and that was due in part to the fact we used the one that stands in our storage room in the basement - as opposed to one growing at the tree farm.  I was starting to panic about how far behind we were falling with the advent.  The tree was decorated and ready for the advent ornaments this past Sunday.  We had eight ornaments to catch up on and we did them all at once that night. 

I have to admit I was surprised that a) my family didn't gripe about doing it; b) my children actually did put down their gadgets and focus their eyes on the readings and the ornaments; c) on Monday, my son asked when we would do the next one; and d) last night, my daughter reminded me to do two because we didn't do one on Wednesday after youth.  I am thrilled that they remembered and wanted to hear about/see the next ornament.

When decorating the tree, I left a few open spaces because I knew I would be adding 25 ornaments to it, and I look forward to filling those holes with meaningful ornaments.  Thank you, my friend, for sharing a more meaningful Christmas with my family.