My absolute favorite time of year — Advent!!
What exactly is Advent? The very word “advent” literally means “the coming” or “arrival.” So, as Christians, during the Christmas season, we are awaiting the birth or the coming, arrival, of our Savior into this world.
This time of waiting has so many deeper meanings, however. Ultimately, we are waiting on Him to return again and take us to our eternal home. Waiting. Longing. You may be waiting on something right now…waiting on the answer to a prayer that has been long prayed. This beautiful season teaches us to wait. To be expectant. To have faith and fully believe that what we are waiting for WILL BE at the appointed time. Waiting on Jesus. We do it day in and day out…during Advent we learn to appreciate the expectant beauty of waiting on Him.
The season of Advent officially starts next Sunday, Nov. 29th. We have lots of traditions, wonderful ways for our family to focus on Jesus through the season, but we also introduce new things from time to time.
For the past few years, one of our Advent traditions has been the Jesse Tree. The past few years we have used a book of Jesse Tree devotions that my mother-in-law used with my husband and his siblings called The Advent Jesse Tree by Dean Meador Lambert.
We have enjoyed this book, but this year will be using a different resource. I’d like to find a few that we love and rotate them possibly. This year we will be reading daily Advent Jesse Tree devotions from one of my favorite blogging authors, Ann Voskamp. Her Jesse Tree devotional book is called The Glorious Coming – A Jesse Tree Advent Celebration. I purchased the book as a download, printed it off, as well as the Jesse Tree ornaments to hang each day. I am excited to use this as our guide this year and am anxious to spend this “waiting” time focusing on our Savior and why He came to earth.
We have done the Jesse Tree ornaments different ways in the past…last year we did the felt ornaments that I cut out from a kit. You can also see individual pictures of these ornaments on Elizabeth Foss’s blog, Serendipity, if you wish to try and make these yourself.
We also had some ornaments I had printed from the internet at one point years ago that we hung on a small Christmas tree in our school room.
This year, we will use the ornaments that came with Ann Voskamp’s book, I printed them off onto cardstock. We may add a little glitter, tie some ribbon to them and hang those this year.
No matter how you do it, the Jesse Tree is a wonderful way to add JESUS and His story and family line into your season. I love that it goes back to the very.beginning.of.time and tells about the need for a Savior. Hallelujah, what a Savior!!
Happy Advent!
Great idea!! I have to admit, I’ve never heard of the Jesse tree. Advent was taught to me in a very methodical way that allowed for little “wiggle” room for creativity, so thank you for the resources given.