PASSPORT TO CHRISTMAS

PREPARE FOR FLIGHT

Advent is a time to prepare our hearts and minds for the coming of Christmas. You are invited to take time alone or with family or friends to engage each week with the lighting of Advent candles and the reading of a devotional.


FIND YOUR LIGHT

Set up a place where you can put 4 candles for the four Sundays of Advent and a Christ candle for Christmas. (If that isn’t possible, use the same candle each week). It may help to set aside the same time each Sunday to light your candle(s) and read the devotional.



A devotional for each week will be available near the end of the week and at church on Sunday morning.

WEEK ONE

Preflight Checklist

Read Matthew 24:36-44

You may also want to read Romans 13:11-14


Our Matthew reading reminds us to stay alert and be prepared. When you get ready to go on a journey, you prepare. You gather the things you will need for the journey – clothes to wear, the right shoes for the kind of trip you are taking, a passport or other identification, plane tickets or a full tank of gas… All the things that help to make the journey successful. A pilot prepares for takeoff by going through a very specific preflight checklist – all the things that need to be ready in order to take that plane down the runway and lift off.


As we enter into this season of Advent

  1. What do you need to do to prepare for Christmas? Not just the shopping and baking and attending events. 
  2. How do you need to prepare your heart to enter into Christmas?

One of the ways in which we prepare our hearts is to take time to light Advent candles each week, beginning with today. Today we light one candle, reminding us of the hope that Christ brings into our lives and into the world.


LIGHT 1 CANDLE

If you are lighting a candle with family or friends, you may want to take some time now to share with one another the hopes you have for this season of Advent. When you are ready, share the words of this prayer with one another – or read them silently or aloud by yourself.


PRAYER

Holy and gracious God, we come before you on this first day of Advent, aware that the ways in which we plan to prepare may not be the ways in which you need us to prepare. Open our hearts and minds to your ways, to the ways that will lead us to the manger. We give thanks for your presence with us and ask that we might recognize how you walk beside us through each day of Advent. Help us to stay alert and to recognize your presence with us.

In Christ’s holy name we pray,

AMEN


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