{{coming}} - DPP '10

We never celebrated Advent when I was growing up.  I'm not sure why, but it was never a part of our traditions.  When our kids were still small I found this advent "wreath" at Ikea and began researching what advent really was.  We still didn't do it quite as reverently or adamantly as some, nor did we fully grasp the worship part of it.  Then we moved to Bozeman. The church we served in was more liturgical than I had ever been a part of in the past and Advent was a solemn & adoring element of December services .  Families were invited to come up and read the meaning of the candles and light a new one each week as we 'came closer' to the day of 'the arrival' of the Christ, the Messiah, the Savior...  Jesus.
Celebrating Advent has a profound place in me now.  Lighting each candle of Hope, Peace, Joy, & Love has become a tradition of the heart.

 ⁷Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.⁸The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.⁹By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.¹⁰In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.¹¹Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.¹²No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.¹³By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.¹⁴We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.¹⁵Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.¹⁶We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.