“Simple Christmas,” our new Advent devotional series, begins tomorrow, December 1. If you haven’t already downloaded the free ebook, you can do it right now by clicking on this link. The free offer ends on December 3.
I’m planning on doing a Facebook Live broadcast each morning during this series. I’m hoping you’ll join me as we start each day together on our journey to Christmas.
Here’s the introduction to the whole series:
"Simple Christmas.
Somehow those two words don’t seem to go together. For most people, there’s nothing simple about Christmas. It’s often the busiest season of the year. Sometimes Christmas can seem downright frantic as we count down the days until December 25.
Because we want Christmas to be the happiest season of the year, we overstuff it with parties and concerts and dinners. Even going to church during December can seem like one more thing to check off our to-do list.
There are gifts to buy, people to see, cards to mail, projects to finish, parties to attend, a tree to decorate, music to play, cookies to bake, meals to plan, movies to watch, special Christmas services to attend, and someone must plan and prepare and pull off the big family get-together.
When Phillips Brooks wrote “How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given,” he wasn’t thinking about Christmas in the 21st-century. Christmas may be many things to us, but it is certainly not silent.
Simple Christmas.
It seems impossible.
Perhaps on one level it is. There’s not much to be done about the frenetic pace of modern life. But we all have choices we can make:
Give in to the frenzy and end up frazzled.
Or find a better way and end up in a better place.
That’s what this Advent devotional is all about. We can’t change the world, but we can change how we approach Christmas.
This year we’ll prepare for Christmas by focusing on 25 key words, one for each day starting December 1 and ending on December 25. You might call these key words the “verbs of Christmas.” In the first week we focus on preparing for the coming of the Lord. In the second week we’ll think about our personal response. In the third week we’ll look at the ways Christmas should change us. In the final few days, we’ll get ready to celebrate the greatest gift ever given.
Each devotional ends with a prayer and a link to a YouTube video of a Christmas song. I hope you’ll take time to recite the prayer out loud and then watch the video. Those two things will help point your heart in the right direction.
This year I’m going to be doing a Facebook Live daily broadcast that goes along with each day’s reading. You can watch it on my Facebook page each morning. We’ll archive the broadcasts so you can watch them later if you can’t watch live.
If you are ready, let’s get started.
Who knows?
It may turn out to be the best Christmas ever.”
Don’t forget to download Simple Christmas. See you tomorrow morning on Facebook Live!
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