12 days of Christ

We're kinda making this up as we go along, but this year I decided to do the 12 days of Christ to countdown to Christmas. I caught the vision of this idea from Sarah Reber's 12 days of Christ shared on Sugar Doodle. It was one of those things that instantly inspired my heart and got my wee little brain thinking of so many ideas.

I altered the original a little and we'll see how it goes this year. I know this will be a meaningful new tradition in our family, especially as we have the kids help prepare the devotional or share a scripture story. I want to keep it simple and easy and not froofy (my spell check is telling me this is NOT a word.)

Basically I picked 12 Gifts from Jesus that we have been given. Each night we'll take 5 minutes to share a scripture or scripture story and picture to go along with each gift. I decided I wanted to end on Christmas Eve so that we could end the night of our spiritual program and do our Gift to Jesus for the upcoming year. (Did you know the real 12 days of Christmas begins on Christmas day and goes until January 5. Interesting fact.)

The beautiful thing about this tradition is that every year it can be different. You could pick 12 different Gifts... or just share a different story, quote, song, or scripture to go with each one. I have a million different ideas for this so we'll see what comes to pass. For now, we are using pictures from the Gospel Picture Art Kit and the story on the back. We'll hang each up on the wall so by the end we'll have 12 photos of Christ to remind us of the REAL reason for Christmas. So excited.

I wanted to note the stories we are focusing on each day.

12th day of Christ...

The Gift of The Word of God. (The Sermon on the Mount). Matthew 5-7.

Jesus gave us the gift of His teachings ... through the Scriptures. He taught us our to live righteously.. As we learn of His words and choose to live righteously, we can have JOY.

11th day of Christ...

The Gift of Faith. (Christ walking on the Water) Matthew 14: 13-33; Mark 6:45-51

If we have faith in Christ, we need not fear all that is around us in this world. Christ will lift us up and strengthen our faith as we follow Him.


more tomorrow on day 10...  wa-hoo!!