Company's Coming!!!

There is a lot of excitement in our house right now...I am starting to wrote my day's blog post because I know we will busy throughout the day and I wanted to share a thought I had related to this moment.

 You see our cousin is coming to visit for the next couple of days.  We do not get to see her very often so we are all very excited!  We have cleaned the house...prepared the guest room...prepared a special meal...and are finishing up all our chores...Why?  So we can enjoy our cousin Karen when she gets here...of course!!!!

Maybe you have figured it out already...but this is what the season of Advent is all about!!!!  We are preparing our home...but hopefully we are more fervently preparing our souls for the coming of Jesus.

Now...here is where it gets interesting...and we need to make a shift.  Most people get the idea of preparing for the coming of Jesus.  Unfortunately, what we might not realize is that it is NOT the baby Jesus we should be preparing ourselves to meet!  It is the risen glorified Christ who sits upon his throne (his judgment seat) that we need to anticipate.

Once we realize this is the reason we need to clean our souls of sin, it becomes more obvious why we should anticipate the coming of Jesus.  Going back to the Bible readings of Sunday we can see that there might even be reason to be frightened by this thought.  Have we done all we can to prepare for Jesus' second coming?  Have we not done something that we should have done?

This morning we read our Bible devotional from Luke 10:21-24.  Jesus is filled with joy at the thought of being revealed to his disciples as the Son of God.  He wants us to see Him and follow Him.  Jesus says, "Blessed are the eyes that see what you see, for I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see, and never saw it; to hear what you hear, and never heard it."

Notice that Jesus calls the disciples little children.  Can you imagine these grown men being called little children?  Yet no one complains because Jesus is referring to the state of their souls!  They are like little children...innocent and open to the message Jesus has for them.

We are those disciples today...we have had the Messiah revealed to us!  It gets me excited just thinking about this reality!!!  That anticipation to actually know that Christ reveals Himself to us and wants us to follow Him!!!  I hope that we can all see that Christ opens His arms to us with welcoming joy!  Then we too can be filled with the "joy of the Holy Spirit" as the little children Jesus speaks of in this passage.

Once again our little nativity scene is building on this idea as well.  Henry used the little broom from our nativity set to sweep away any cobwebs (all the desires to be praised for your good deeds) from the stable.  We prayed, "Jesus, may we please YOU in all we do today. Amen."

We did (FINALLY!) find our Jesse Tree ornaments...and we were able to talk about the start of our salvation history.  However, we are further behind than I thought.  I want this to be meaningful if we are going to actually continue this activity.  SO... I think we will try to just add the ornaments slowly (my original thought was to try to double up and have two ornaments each day) even if it carries over into the Christmas season.  We will see as the season unfolds.

Today the ornaments placed on the Jesse Tree were related to the prophecy from Isaiah 11:-10...it was really an introduction to the idea of the Jesse Tree.  The second ornament was an apple which represented the firs sin of Adam and Eve.  Now we see why there was a need for the Messiah.  We will continue adding to the story each day.

With our cousin with us we were able to enjoy a fun day...setting school aside and giving her our full attention.  The boys were so excited and the house was loud but it was with joyful noises..and...sewing machine.  Karen loves to sew and she asked if we would like her to bring her sewing machine.  I asked if she would like to help me make bow ties for the boys and she graciously agreed.  Why bow ties?  Believe it or not...they asked for them!  It all started when I bought the cutest little dress for Zaira.  I asked the boys if they would be willing to wear purple ties to match the dress...they said only if they were bow ties!  I am not sure how this idea came about but they all agreed to wear the bow tie, so I figured the best plan was to make them.  I was so thankful Karen was willing to help me figure out how to make that happen.  They turned out so cute.  I originally thought I would post a picture , but decided that it would be more fun to share when they are all dressed up....so wait for the picture later this month.

We never got to the Jesus of Nazareth tonight...the boys were just too wound up from the excitement of the day.  That's OK...we still have many more days to enjoy the lessons.  A great day!