An Unexpected Hour: Year A, Advent to Epiphany 2010/11

2010, 20 pp
Advent means “coming” or “arrival.” It is in this spirit of expectancy that we seek to connect families in our congregations with God’s offer of “an unexpected hour” this year. In our society, we often think of time as money; we feel pressure to be busy and productive. This also affects our lives at home, and many children and their parents suffer stress as they juggle schedules that are full of too many good activities.

This Advent, we invite you to do less. If that means Christmas shopping, decorating, and baking become streamlined and sparse, let it be so. Instead of experiencing the stress created by trying to do too many good things, focus on what is really needed to prepare hearts and lives to live faithfully in this season, the start of the church’s worship year.

In these resources, you will experience how each week’s theme contrasts our time with the imaginative ways God, and God’s sense of time, are remaking the world. If we slow down enough to notice what God is doing among us, God’s generosity and creativity may just surprise us and invite us to respond in kind, much as Mary did during that very first Advent. You may want to mark your willingness to enter God’s time by ringing a bell or chime as part of your family devotions this year.

The prayers and activities in this booklet are adapted from the worship resources developed by the Advent 2010 writing team from Indiana- Michigan Mennonite Conference and Central District Conference, Mennonite Church USA, for Leader: Equipping the Missional Congregation

Also see Christ was Born in Bethlehem.

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