In our calendar year, speaking for Americans, the fourth Thursday of every November is Thanksgiving.  At this point, after the parades, the family gatherings, the phone calls to loved ones, most are stuffed from their feast of THANKS.

Within days, Advent, a liturgical season in the church, will begin its four weeks of lead in to Jesus’s birth. Symbolically, these weeks of Advent, helps us to refocus our thoughts and prayers.  We anticipate the coming of our Lord, His holy birth into the realm of humanity. We walk the journey in four weeks, but those who went before us, waited lifetimes or longer. They had waited for a Messiah, King, to lead them. His arrival was as an infant. Joy sprang from the hearts of believers that this was THE MESSIAH they had longed for, the news spread.

Reach inside your mind and wrapped in your believer’s cloak, be thankful for the strength of those who in Biblical times, kept the hope for a Messiah alive. They or their next generations who followed were rewarded with the infant Messiah’s miraculous birth in Bethlehem. With each week of Advent prepare your heart and mind to be blessed again with the news of Our Emmanuel’s birth story. Feel the anticipation and excitement as His birth-day celebration nears.

Jill