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The First Sunday in Advent, Day 1 - God Created Everything - Including You

It's the first Day of Advent, and I want to thank you for coming along with me as we celebrate that Our God Came to Earth For Us.  I wanted to write a series of Advent meditations that could be geared towards children.  The first part of this is written so that kids - your kids, my grandchildren - could read, or hear what is written and "enter into" Advent for themselves.  If you don't have kids you can either read it, or just skip ahead to the section entitled "For Parents and Other Not Kids".  These are purposefully short so that - hopefully - we can keep their interest.

 The beginning of Advent this year is going to be about how God Keeps His Promises.  We'll start with Creation and move through the O.T. story to understand WHY God had to send His Son into the world.  As the angel said to Joseph and Mary, "To save people from their sins".

 For the Kids:

 Advent reminds us about God.  We can’t see God.  That is one of my Granddaughters reminds her Mom – “But Mom, I can’t see him!”.  But we can know that God is real by looking all around us and seeing the beauty and wonder of God’s creation. 

A good question to begin Advent is to ask “Why Did God choose to come as a baby?”  

In order to understand that we need to go back to the very beginning.

God’s word, the Bible, tells us that God created everything.  Genesis 1:1 says,  
“First this: God created the Heavens and Earth—all you see, all you don't see.”

He created the Planets, our Earth, the Sun, Moon and Stars.  He created the sky, and clouds; the days and nights, as well as the water and the land.  In the water he created the fish to swim and on the land the animals and the birds to live.  And, last of all he created human beings – people – and that’s where we come from. 

God created a man and a woman and families began with them.  They looked like God, just like you look like your Mom or Dad.  They were beautiful to God and he gave them a perfect place to live in with everything they needed.  
What do you think God said when he was done doing all that creating? 

Genesis 1:31
“God looked over everything he had made; it was so good, so very good!”

God loved everything he created, and that includes you too.  God has given you a family and he created your family so that you would know He loves you.  

Here’s an Activity you can do together:  Let’s go outside and look around.  What do you see?  How many things can you see that remind you that God created that too?  

Here’s something else to do:  Have someone print this next page off and color it…this reminds us that God created everything including you and your family. 



To Parents and Other “Not Kids”:  

This first day is based off the first chapter of the Jesus Story Book Bible entitled, “The Beginning: a perfect home.”

The beauty of Advent is that it gives us time to think about why God sent His “one and only Son”, our Savior, Jesus, into the world.  With so many activities taking place during this season, we can easily lose sight of the “Reason for the Season”.  Advent reminds us that God did things for a reason.

The first thing God did was create the world.  His creation was “very good”, and that included the creation of the man and the woman – our ancient ancestors.  

God created a world where He would have fellowship with Us.  Fellowship with God might seem too "out there", but believe me, it is as real as God is real.  He designed us to know him and to live our lives "with" him, and "for" him.  

Tomorrow we’ll talk about how Sin came in and tried to destroy what God created.  When that happened, God made a promise – a promise that took a long time to come true.  

That’s the theme of this week…that God Always Keeps His Promises. 

When Jesus came he was the fulfillment of God’s promise.  That’s important for us to think, or meditate on. 

Advent requires “waiting”, but not a waiting that is without hope; but instead a waiting that looks for fulfillment.

Peace

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