As today marks the first day of Advent for this holiday season, I wanted to come on and just share with you a little bit about Advent and talk about the focus of Advent and how can we set our hearts on the anticipation and preparation of Christmas and Christ and just let us get in the posture of what this time is really meant to do in our hearts.

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Hi, I'm your host, Kristen.

I'm an encourager, a faith led entrepreneur, a mom and a wife.

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Right, so for this mini episode today, we want to talk about Advent and what Advent really means in Latin was.

Well, one of the things it says, it's a Tavernier, which is to come or arrive.

Right.

So we're waiting in anticipation of the birth of Jesus and also we're waiting in anticipation of Christ coming again.

Right.

Of course, we don't know when that will be, but it's basically getting our hearts right and getting in presence of God, slowing down and taking the time to reflect together on God's faithfulness.

It's how can we humble our hearts and how can we invite the Lord into our lives during this season?

So Advent's four weeks long and there is a focus or a theme each week of Advent.

And the first week is the week of hope, which is also called the Prophet's Candle.

And I guess I should back up.

So I think it was sometime in the 1800s that they started doing Advent.

Cat.

I'm sorry, Advent candles or the Advent wreath.

And so each week, each Sunday at the start of the week, they would, they'll, I should say they, they started.

But now many people do this.

Now light one candle and then each week is representing that week.

And so the first week is hope.

The second week's theme is faith, and that can also be called Bethlehem's candle.

The third week is joy and called sometimes a Shepherd's candle.

And the fourth week is peace, which is called the angels candle.

Now, some people also might light A fifth candle for light and purity, and that's called Christ's Candle.

Not all Christians light Advent candles or have an Advent wreath.

But, you know, it is information for us to know about.

And so you can choose to do that or not.

But really what we want to do is how can we focus ourselves to bring Christ into Christmas and into this time of year?

Because actually, Advent is the beginning of the liturgical year.

And so this is really the beginning of our, you know, our calendar, if you will, from a biblical standpoint, not January.

And so what I want to talk about today is just asking ourselves a couple questions and then giving you a couple ideas for ways that we can spend a little more time with down our spiritual reflection or in time in prayer or just, you know, being in connection to God.

And so first thing is, is it's a great time of year for spiritual reflection.

And there are some questions that we could linger on or ask ourselves.

One of those is, is there something preventing you from receiving Christ or blocking you from deepening your faith?

And so just ponder that question for yourself.

And that could just be your busyness in your life.

That could be something you're holding on to that you don't want to let go of.

It could be a hurt, it could be something you don't want to forgive someone for a grudge.

It could be anything.

Another question we can ask ourselves is, am I spiritually growing?

And you can add to that, am I spiritually growing in my faith community?

Am I spiritually growing in my prayer life?

Am I spiritually growing in my heart?

Am I spiritually growing by releasing the hurt that I'm holding on to?

But this is a great time to try to grow in our faith.

And we can do it in really small ways, which is what I'm going to talk about in a few minutes.

And then we can also just ask ourselves, am I allowing in God into my life?

Am I welcoming in the Holy Spirit into my day?

And then am I slowing down enough at least for minutes throughout the day to pray or to get quiet?

Are we finding time for silence so that we can listen to God?

And so for me, what I've found is there's small ways that we can add Christ into the season.

And I'm going to share a couple of those with you.

And then I'm going to share what I've started doing now in preparation of Advent so that I'm ready and I'm in a posture that I'm going to spend more time on my faith this year than I ever have before.

Okay.

So just between now and Christmas, some of the things that we've done in the past is we make sure we all, we watch some movie or series that's about Christ, right?

Christ's life, Christ's birth, something so that we make sure we're not only watching the commercialized secular Christmas shows, which I.

We love those and we watch those.

Too, but we don't want to make it only about that, of course.

Next is we will do.

I'll create scripture cards and I will put them on Christmas morning on some of the gifts.

So as we go around the room and open a gift, each person will have to read a scripture card or several throughout the morning.

And I try to make them ones that are around Christ's birth or this time of year.

But it just lets us slow down and then remember before we're opening our gift why we're gathering, why we're celebrating today.

So I always love that I have some friends and family that do a birthday cake for baby Jesus on Christmas morning, you know, so it might be like a cinnamon roll cake or something like that.

We have also been to birthday parties for baby Jesus where people bring gifts for people in need, you know, during this season.

So that's always a lovely and fun thing, especially if you have kids.

Okay.

So really what it comes down to is how can we add in time for reflection, time for prayer and reflection when it's such or can be such a busy time, busy time of gathering and a busy time of playing and a busy time of doing all these things to our houses that make it look beautiful and rich and sparkly.

How do we make sure that we don't get caught up in the consumerism?

Well, one way is that we can start doing an Advent prayer plan.

And so you can do those from.

There's so many Bible apps that have those that will start next week.

So Proverbs 31.

I'm.

I'm most likely going to do that one.

He reads Truth is another one.

It has an Abbott plan, the Bible.

I think there's a Bible.

Many Bible apps that will have Advent plans.

But also I'm actually testing out the some of the Bible and meditation apps.

And so I can't say which one that I'm going to go with yet.

But some of those are called Glorify.

Another one's called Prayer or Prayer dot Com.

Another one's called Abide.

Those are all general Christian Bible apps or prayer apps and meditation apps.

Then there's another one called Hollow, and that one's geared towards Catholic Christians.

But I'm also testing that one out because I had just listened to an interview with the founder of that and I was just curious about it.

So I'm kind of testing them out and seeing which ones really help in my prayer life, putting God first throughout my day.

Because all of them have sermons and messages, prayers, but then they also have all different length, you know, messages and things like that that are some are one minute or two minutes long just to get you sort of, you know, speaking to God, asking God to come into your day.

And then they have ones that are five minutes long to 15 minutes and then longer from there.

But in other words, it these apps help you put prayer more into your life, right?

It's small bite sized pieces, but then also in bigger ways they have reminders.

They can pop it up at every.

At the same time every day.

So I'm really enjoying testing these out.

And when I go on my walks besides listening to a podcast, I'll pop on a couple of those and listen to them to finish my walk off.

So I really enjoyed that.

Another thing that we can do that's pretty easy, it only takes a couple minutes is we can download an Advent playlist or in other words, Advent songs on our phone.

So you can do that through any streaming music service, Apple Music, or Pandora or all the many other ones.

So I downloaded one off of Pandora just the other day, which was just beautiful.

It had about nine or 12 songs that someone else already curated for Advent, but they were just very focused on this season Birth of Jesus, about darkness coming into light.

And then I also just recently saw this is from several years ago, but Matt Mayer has the Advent of Christmas album and so I've just saved that to my playlist.

And his name is Matt M A H E R but he's a Christian singer.

And so you might enjoy that.

Just in other words, what are the small things we can do that will let us just pause in our day?

Or if we were going to listen to music anyways, or we were going to listen to something anyways, why not add a little bit of prayer or worship music into our lives, especially during this time.

And I would also say some people take this opportunity or Advent as an opportunity to fast.

You know, some.

And that could be anything from fasting from food or listening how much food you have in a day.

It could be fasting from social media, you know, whatever it might be.

But it's whatever is going to let you set your sights on Christ, on God.

That is what you would fast on.

And so that's another thing we can do right now.

And then it's just getting quiet.

You know, can you take five minutes out of your day or 30 minutes out of your day and sit outside, you know, get in nature or take a walk, you know, and just sometimes pause the podcast, pause the music, and just allow yourself to hear from God.

And so I think that that's really important, especially during this time.

The next thing is it can be a busy time of year.

So my question to each of us is, how do we make this time time of reflection and slowing down in some ways and not of hustle and busy and trying to do more, right?

More gifts, more parties.

And look, I love parties and I love gifts, doing those things.

But I also don't want it to take over or consumer overwhelm me.

And so how do we combat that?

Well, it's.

We tell ourselves, you know, what can we fit in realistically in a day where it won't exhaust us?

Could we push something further out?

Can we do a little less or can we plan ahead?

So, for instance, I always cook goodies for my neighbors and some other friends.

But what I've learned is that I can do batch cookie making, right?

So I might make three batches or more of cookie dough, and then I will freeze to the types of cookie dough.

And then when I'm ready to make cookies for the neighbors, I'll start pulling out the different types of frozen dough and then I'm ready to go.

I don't have the big mess.

I don't have to make five doughs.

I just have to cut the cookies at that point and bake them and then put them in some sort of container.

So find ways to make things simpler on yourself.

If you make make a batch of soup or chili right now, maybe make a little extra and freeze the extra so that one night when you're busy, you can just go and grab that frozen soup or chili or whatever the meal might be plan on.

If you have a super busy night, you and if you're married, your spouse, maybe one night a week, you're going to order pizza or get takeout or get a pickup meal because you know that you're booked up the whole day and night.

So just give yourself a little break so that it's a little easier.

But if you think ahead and you know, hey, you know what night's going to be kind of crazy.

So let's figure something else out for dinner, you know, so I'm not fitting that into.

And then at the end of the day, I think it's just about giving glory to God and lingering in his presence.

And so that's really the goal.

It's.

It's not to put more pressure on us to try to do Advent in a perfect, certain way.

It's really just to set our sights on Christ, to look up to the sky and to make sure that we know that this season, the beginning of the liturgical year is let's start it off right.

Let's start it off by deepening our faith and taking a little more time for ourselves to deepen that relationship.

And so that's all I wanted to come on and share with you today.

I hope you have a beautiful, joyful and peaceful Advent full of hope and that you step into Christmas with an open heart and just knowing that at the end of the day, it's about setting our sights on Christ and just coming together to love on each other and just to share the hope of the birth of baby Jesus.

And as I wrap up today's episode, I have something that I wanted to share with you.

It's just a beautiful Celtic concept that I think this time of year really lends itself to being opened to this idea and to being aware of the presence of God in our lives.

And I want to share a little bit from the book Bittersweet by Shannon Nyquist.

She talks about a beautiful concept that I think during Advent and Christmas is so relevant and so real.

And it's this.

This is what she says.

One of my favorite Celtic ideas is the concept of thin places.

A thin place, according to the Celtic mystics, is a place where the boundary between the natural world and the supernatural one is more permeable, thinner, if you will.

Sometimes they're physical places.

There are places all over Ireland where people have said, if you stand here, if you face this direction, if you hike to the top of that ridge at just the right time of day, that's a thin place.

A place where the passage between heaven and earth is a short one.

A place where God's presence is almost palpable.

He later goes on to say, but I digress.

Thin places.

Places where the boundary between the divine world and the human world becomes almost non existent.

And the two, divine and human can for a moment dance together uninterrupted.

Some are physical places and some aren't places at all, but states of being or circumstances or seasons.

Christmas is a thin place.

A season during which even the hardest, hardest hearted of people think about what matters.

When even the most locked up, individuals loosen their grasp for just a moment in the face of the deep beauty and hope of Christmas.

The shimmer of God's presence, not always plainly visible in our world, is more visible at Christmas.

When you find a thin place, anytime, anywhere, we should live differently in the face of it, because if we don't, we miss something.

Some of the best moments that life with God has to offer us.

These thin places are gifts, pleasures, and they're worth changing our lives for.

Reach through from human to Sacred Every time the goodness of this season moves you, a thin place is an opportunity to be more aware of the divine fingerprints all over the world.

And Christmas is one invitation after another to do that.

When you hear music that pierces your spirit, thank God for the gift of music.

When you witness generosity that reminds you of the deep goodness of humanity, thank.

God for the way he created us.

When you feel the profound sense of beauty, thank God for it.

When the traditions and smells and sounds of Christmas that you love and wait for all year long overwhelm you and you think, I love this world we live in, thank God for those things.

When the faces of your children or your parents shock you with the love you feel for them, thank God.

And I'll just share this last sentence.

She says there's another kind of thin place and we find ourselves in these places when our lives and our hearts are broken, opened.

Brokenness has a way of allowing the supernatural into our lives in the same way that deep joy and great beauty do.

And maybe I'm finding even more so friends, during this Advent season and Christmas season, I invite you to be aware, be present and you might just experience more of those thin places, those experiences where God is present and it's closer than ever during the rest of the year.

So that is what I wish for you this Advent and this Christmas season.

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