The Angel

Mom and my Aunt Linda made Advent calenders for each of their families a couple of years ago. We arrange the felt "Christmasy" pictures in a way we like and then tuck them away to be pulled out. Since Kate, Jenny and I are a little to old for it, Joelle is doing it by herself this year (We used to 'fight' over who got to pull one out!). It has 24 little rectangles and she'll pull one out every night until Christmas! Joelle 'put them away' yesterday and we left them where she put them. The calender should have a checker board appearance (Red, green, red, green...) once she pulls them all out. The way she had them it went like this: Red, red, red, green, green, red, green, green, red... something like that. While her and Dad were playing Memory, I fixed it up a little. Now it goes in its normal pattern :) What I'm going to do, is every night (I'll try to) I'll show you a picture of which advent piece we pulled out. Maybe I'll add a little snip pit about it, or maybe I'll just show you the picture. Whatever I do, I'll still try to do a regular post as well. We'll see how well this works!

The Angel

Tonight, Joelle pulled out the first Advent piece of many. It was an Angel.

There are 24 different Christmas items in our Advent calender. There's a girl, boy, church, house, snowflake, Christmas tree, car, pig, angel... All of them represent something that has to do with Christmas. I think that the Angel (I wouldn't know for sure since Mom was the one who made it :) represents Gabriel. Gabriel told Mary that she would have a baby and that she would name Him Jesus. Luke 1:26 says:

"In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David."

When God sends the angels to tell the shepherds of Jesus' birth, it says that "an angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified". I believe that "an angel of the Lord" might have been Gabriel. In Jude 1: 9 it says that "But even the archangel Michael..." so Michael was the archangel. That was surprising to me, because I always heard more about Gabriel than about Michael, especially during the Christmas season. The "angel of the Lord" could have been Gabriel, it could have been Michael, or it could very well have been an angel that we have never heard of before! After the Bible talks about the angel of the Lord, it follows it by saying:

"Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.'".

So, that's it for tonight's Advent piece. Hope you enjoyed! Come back again!