Each night for the 13 days before Christmas, my siblings and I would sit at the dinner table. In the middle of the table sat a burning candle. Mom would read us a few scriptures to teach us about Christ. Then we’d sing a Christmas song. One-year Mom told us that when the candle was all the way burned down to the bottom with nothing but a little wax left that she would make us a special cake. We were all very motivated by the idea of cake so the next night we each came to the kitchen table with our own candles. As Mom would read, we’d take our candle’s flame and gently encourage the Christmas candle to burn faster. This went on for a couple of nights as my poor mother tried to read us the words of Christ and we tried various means to make the candle burn faster.
The Christmas candle was taking forever to burn all the way down to the bottom so we decided to meet before mom’s readings and burn it on our time. We felt guilty about just burning the candle though so one of us read the Bible while the others started burning little holes into the Christmas candle. Mom came in and saw what we were doing. We thought we might be in trouble but instead she just laughed and said, “Wonderful! I’m raising a bunch of pyromaniacs who read their scriptures”. Then she went and got a lighter and joined us in our quest to burn that candle all the way to the bottom. (By the way, lighters can burn candles faster than other candles can burn candles. We got to eat cake that night!)
My latest challenge is connected with Advent. The 30 days before Christmas I’m remembering Jesus by reading some scripture verses and doing 30 days of kind deeds. The hope is that this will make Christ the focus of my Christmas celebrations. So far, it’s been a good experience.
And no, I’m not going to tell you what I did for my good deeds because it’s suppose to be anonymous. I’m also a little selfish because I want all those blessings in heaven. Don’t have any idea what I’m talking about? That’s okay. I will fill you in with the Bible story. When Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount he said people who do good deeds get rewards in Heaven. There’s a catch though. The angels don’t write it down on their heavenly Ipads if you blab all around town about it. Oops. I just told the entire internet all about my good deeds challenge. Somewhere there is a little angel who is hitting the delete button.
This challenge really has made this Christmas special though. What are you doing to make Christmas a wonderful time for you?
my 13 day challenge 