These advent sessions are designed to go alongside the Advent ‘Share the Light’ campaign from CPO – https://www.sharethelight.co.uk/ – this website explains it fully. The past 18 months have been difficult and at times isolating. Share the Light encourages people to gather together this Christmas, and celebrate the good news that darkness has not overcome the light, and never will.
The campaign centre’s around a short, imaginative Share the Light film. Through it we’d encourage you to have fresh confidence in the amazing message of hope that is wrapped up in the birth of Jesus. We believe it will touch hearts and bring a smile to faces across the nation
Start the session with a social time, perhaps with some festive food and drink. Who doesn’t love a warming hot chocolate and a mince pie! This ice breaker question may help warm people up.
What food can you do without at Christmas and what food must be present to make it feel like Christmas?
Matthew 2: 1-12
2 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi[a] from the east came to Jerusalem 2 and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”
3 When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. 5 “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:
6 “‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
who will shepherd my people Israel.’[b]”7 Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. 8 He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”
9 After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. 11 On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route
How does God guide us? The Nativity story is for everyone. It is a leveller in so much that it is for us, about us and for everyone. We see that in the story when God choose astrologers to follow the star. God chooses unexpected people to lead. The Magi were astrologers reading the future in the stars! This gives us a great example of how to live in this season. We should lift our eyes, look to God and live out our worship to Him.
Lift: Lift our eyes up
Look: Clear away everything and spend time with God.
Live: Worshipping God as our living reality.