A Gift for You this Christmas Season…

So we did it! We put up our Christmas tree on Saturday. Some might think it’s early, but in our family Christmas can never come too early- especially as the days here grow short and the dark evenings grow long, a whisper of glowing life and cheering anticipation- it’s just the thing! 

There is a warmth in these traditions, the tree, the lights, the carols, these moments that both create and evoke memories all at once and prick anticipation for the coming weeks ahead- ‘Christmas is coming! Christmas is coming!’, they whisper, breathless and gleeful, ‘Can you feel it yet?’. Can you feel it?

As winter closes in here in the northern hemisphere Christmas anticipation races neck and neck with the darkening days, a warming balm against the biting cold. The chilled air is pregnant with promise- the promise of something. Something we long for. Something I long for. 

All around us advertisements are jingling at us, pamphlets cluttering our letter boxes telling us this season is here, this season of ‘giving’- by which they really mean this season of ‘spending’! Spend spend spend!  Buy buy buy! Because what we really need this Christmas is more stuff right?! More, more more? Hmmm. 

And their message wears thin as we sit here in the middle of a cost of living crisis with wars raging all over our headlines and darkness scraping the edges of our anxieties. 

But there is something though, if I’m honest with myself, that I do long for more of at Christmas; Something more. But not more stuff. Something I think most of us are reaching for, yearning for in the midst of all the rushing stress. Something that stuff stuffed into stockings doesn’t actually supply. 

Something real. 

The real thing we were born longing for, searching for, yearning for.  The more we were formed for: More of Him. He who Christmas is truly actually about (despite the story the jingling adverts’ spin). Not Santa. Not reindeer. Not stuff.

Just Him. 

This wild reckless God who loved us so madly that He took the extreme measure of taking on human skin two thousand and something years ago. And came. 

For us. 

God came into our broken human story to rewrite it with His love; Writing into time His long story of grace, this grace given to us from before the beginning of time. 

So what if Christmas, instead of being a time when we amp up the spending and wind up our stress levels, could instead be a season when we slow. When we breathe. When we reconnect ourselves with the reality of God’s love and the story of all He has done. 

What if this Advent season could be a time we turn our hearts back to the heart of the real Christmas story and let it reshape us from the inside out, and in so doing become more real ourselves? In all the Christmas rush lets forge an island of quiet and sit in God’s long story of grace and let it become the story that breathes us back to life, lighting the dark, warming the cold.

This Christmas season let’s slow the Christmas story down, live in it awhile and let it come alive in us.

This is why I write to you now. I have something for you. And this little gift I am so thrilled to be sending you this Christmas season is really a way to receive the gift God gave us all long ago: The gift of Himself. The gift of His story with us. The story describing the moment that God touched down on this spinning blue planet, enfolded Himself in human flesh, and took on all the brokenness and pain that had become our human experience. 

He came (just as he had promised He would) that first Christmas long ago. And He comes again into this season to be with us anew.

If we let Him. 

If we want Him. 

That’s my free gift to you this Christmas. A way to invite Him in. An invitation to slow the Christmas story down and rest in it a while, allowing it to revive, restore and reconnect you to the story of His grace, the wonder of His love– as the carol reminds us.   

This gift will arrive in your email inbox each day, a carol to play and a letter to read: A daily Advent story-letter exploring the story of a promise, an aching, waiting world and a baby born to be King. The real story of when God Himself became flesh and made his dwelling, His home among us. This Scripture Journey through the 24 days of Advent explores the Christmas story from Genesis, through the prophets to the New Testament.

The second part of your gift is one that you can hold in your hand. And you can unwrap it right now! A collection of 25 Advent (and 12 Christmas) printable Scripture Journey Cards that accompany the daily Advent story-letter. You can pin them on your dashboard, sit them on your mantelpiece or window sill, carry them in your pocket, fold them into your advent calendar or even hang them on your Christmas tree!

This gift is waiting for you to discover and download right here in our post box. 

So take a look. It’s yours. 

And, for those who like to work with their hands and be creative, in the coming days I will also post you the instructions for a simple ‘waiting manger’ Advent craft, a ‘lamp-stand’ to hold the scripture journey cards this Advent and Christmas season.

There are other fun gifts that I intend to send you along with these but those will remain a surprise for now.

Sign up to receive your Advent letters HERE – no cost, no catch, just the Christmas story slowed down, and a chance to breathe in the quiet.

I’ll be in touch again soon.

Grace and Blessings,

Liz

PS- I leave you with one of my favourite Christmas Carols as we together wait for the season of waiting for the coming King to begin. O Come Emmanuel!