Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Our Advent Celebration Begins

This year, I felt the Lord leading us to commemorate his birth in a more meaningful way than in year's past.  We are celebrating Advent and it has already been a blessing. It is very helpful for our whole family, parents and children, to be reminded of the "Big Picture" of the story of redemption revealed in the Bible.  Now that Christmas is coming, we are mindful of the place of the birth of Christ in this glorious  tale of our salvation.

I have created a multimedia, musically-themed Advent celebration for our family.  From a unique study presented on the site, Stand Firm, I got the idea of tying some of our daily studies to Handel's Messiah.  Handel's signature work is a story of God's redemption of mankind and includes the singing of Scripture passages.

Each night, we lift the flap on an Advent calendar that I very simply created using foam-core board, construction paper, ribbon and stickers, to find that night's Scripture verse. I could not find a calendar that would allow me to incorporate Scripture. My son reads the verse from his NIV and then I read from the KJV (the language of Handel's Messiah ).

Next, we watched the video together which everyone enjoyed.

Our Scripture for last night was Isaiah 40: 1-5.

Although some of the videos of the Messiah referenced on the Stand Firm site are no longer available, I found others that conveyed the beauty and majesty of this grand story of redemption that I was looking for online.

Here is our first video from last night's devotion:



Look for our future "Advent Celebration" posts. Jump ahead to Day 3, Messiah video.

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