Category: love life live advent

Love Life Live Advent – 3rd December – A year of blessings

love life live advent

Today’s action: think back over the last year and say thank you to God for the things that made you most happy.

If I remember correctly (and I’m sure the lovely Paula Gooder will correct me if I’m wrong) the New Testament uses the word ‘Makarioi’ to mean ‘Blessed’ or ‘Happy’ in Matthew chapter 5 (The Beatitudes): Happy are the meek… Blessed are the peacemakers… etc. So at its simplest today’s action is a way of counting (and cherishing) blessings.

There’s a ton of ways you can do this, here are some:

1. Put your happy things in a jar
You remember that pot from yesterday? The one you may or may not have decorated, in order to put money in it for charity?  You may be needing another one, if you decide to go with the suggestion on the Love Life Live Advent Action Support page for today. The bonus with this idea is that it’s ongoing – you can use it to store up happy things as they happen, so you can enjoy them again and again, especially when you most need them.

2. Put a tangible reminder of your happy things in your ‘special place’ (See December 1st)
Often our blessings aren’t things, but people, or events (or even moments that might have looked ordinary to the outside world, but were actually minor miracles or shafts of grace breaking through dark clouds).  If there are happy things that you want to keep for ever, how about writing them with sharpie pens on small stones?  If they are people, why not make yourself some concertina-people out of folded paper, and write the name on each person? If they are events, print out a photograph taken at the time, or use something else tangible from the day (wedding invitation, christening order of service, ticket, baby sock etc)

3. Give thanks online
If you use facebook, set up a photo album of the happy memories you particularly want to treasure, and call it “2014 blessings” or something similar – post a comment on why you’re doing it, and invite others to do the same (this is along the same lines as the ‘three good things today’ idea that was circulating recently).  As always, be safe when you’re online, and only share what you are happy for others to see. Don’t forget you can make particular albums private or visible only to close friends. God can see what you’re thankful for even if you choose to keep it private!)

Ask other members of your family what their happy things are for the last year – celebrate together those blessings that you have in common, and enjoy those that are different – you may find that others remind you of blessings you’d forgotten about.

Love Life Live Advent – 2nd December – Collection pot

love life live advent

A pot is just a pot, right?  It doesn’t matter what you use, as long as you put your spare change in something, and then give it away to a good cause. So why does today’s challenge invite us to decorate the pot into which our small change will go during the season of Advent? Here are some possible reasons:

1. We decorate everything else…
…so if we decorate the pot, too, then it becomes more fully integrated with our preparations for Christmas, and helps us to reflect in our own lives the generosity of God.

  • You could co-ordinate it to go with your Christmas tree, so that every time you see your tree, you think about your money pot.
  • You could colour it purple – the church colour of the season, and keep it in your ‘special place’ (see 1st December’s action), making the act of donating money part of your prayerful reflection on Advent.

2. Decorating takes time…
…and it might make you sit down for a few minutes and do something creative.

  • There aren’t many stopping days left till Christmas, and it’s worth grabbing every chance you can to spend a few minutes doing something that you don’t have to do.
  • A creative project doesn’t necessarily mean an individual project –  rope in other members of your family, or invite a neighbour round for tea (and provide a pot for them too) and have a nice cup of tea while you decorate together

3. Decorating your pot takes effort…
…and means you’ve invested more in it than just small change.

  • you probably won’t get a chance to see what becomes of your money once it’s donated – decorating your jar is a way of making your donation feel real  and significant.
  • You’re more likely to remember that the pot exists(!) and that you need to fill it(!) if you’ve made some effort decorating it – it will stay nearer the front of your mind.

4. Decorating your pot will draw attention to it…
…and you won’t be the only person who notices.

  • The more beautiful (or wacky, or bizarre, or lovely, or funny) your decorated pot is, the more it will attract attention.  It makes generosity an attractive focal point.
  • It can be a great conversation starter with people who visit your home (or see it on your desk at work), and you can use the opportunity to talk about why you’re doing it.

But in the end, whether you decorate your pot or not, you’ve introduced into your household a really great habit: taking the spare that you might not even miss and making sure it goes somewhere where it will make all the difference in the world.  The decorating may well be good for you spiritually and socially – and may also be fun! – but the money is above all not for us, it’s for others.

Love Life Live Advent – 1st December – special places

love life live advent

Our first challenge in this year’s Love Life Live Advent is to make a special place in the house – somewhere where we can focus our thinking and praying on the themes of the Advent season. It’s a wonderful idea – a sacred space, right in the heart of the home.

My son had a different take on this. His plan was to have a portable ‘pray station’, as he called it.  He busied himself in his room for a while, and then asked if he could come and set his pray station up in my room. Of course he could.

What he brought was this:
A teatowel
Two bath towels
The glass candle holders we had made at children’s chapel on All Saints’ Sunday
A handful of tea lights
A box of matches (for which he had asked permission!)

And he sent me out of the room while he set everything up.  When I was allowed back in, the lights were off, and the matches were ready for me to light the candles. He’d put the tea lights in the glass candle holders, and the candle holders on the tea towel in the middle of the floor.  The bath towels were folded and laid  on the floor in front of the tea towel ‘so we can kneel down without hurting our knees’.

And we did. We knelt down, and lit the candles, and he said we were going to have some silence, then some prayers. And we did. And it was lovely.  At the end we blew out the candles, and he packed everything up again, and put it in a bag ‘for next time’.

Why tell this story?  Because much as we will be setting up a ‘special place’ at home, where we can think about Advent as a family, it also seemed like a lovely idea to have a portable ‘pray station’ too.  Something we can take with us wherever we go – perhaps not as bulky as the one my son made with the bath towels, but something  that can come with us, perhaps if we’re commuting, at work, away on business, rushing about doing housework, or shopping, or doing the school run, whatever it is that we find ourselves doing.

It might even be something you can carry around on your phone – why not download the ‘Pocket Common Prayer’ app so that you can join with thousands of others in daily prayer?  Or set up a photo album on your phone, and take a picture every day to put in it of something that’s reminded you to stop and be still  – a spider’s web with dew on it, a pine cone, leaves on the ground, a crisp winter sky….

autumn leaves

I am working from home at the moment, so I’ll be encouraging my children to think about a portable ‘special place’ that they can take to school.  Even if it’s something as simple as a battery powered candle in the side pocket of their school bag, or the paper ‘door’ from that morning’s advent calendar….

So, where will you put your ‘at home’ special place? And what will go in it?
And what can you take with you to help make everywhere you go feel special?