{"id":1089,"date":"2011-12-21T03:40:42","date_gmt":"2011-12-21T08:40:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/ziegelbaur\/?p=1089"},"modified":"2011-12-21T03:40:42","modified_gmt":"2011-12-21T08:40:42","slug":"absent-minded-at-advent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/ziegelbaur\/?p=1089","title":{"rendered":"Absent-minded at Advent"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Advent Wreath - 3rd Sunday in Advent<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Advent is a special time in the Church calendar year.\u00a0 In anticipation of celebrating Jesus’ birth at Christmas, I wanted to be sure that in our little International Church in Yaounde\u00a0we lit the advent candles one Sunday a week in the 4 weeks before Christmas.\u00a0 So, since the last Sunday in November, I’ve been making sure the advent wreath is set up, arranged for different families to do a reading and light the candle each week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For the 4th Sunday in advent – just last Sunday – I\u00a0reminded\u00a0our family that we need to be sure we arrived early enough to get it set up.\u00a0 For once, we were all actually ready well ahead of time.\u00a0 Traffic is pretty congested this time of year on our route from home to church, which meets in the Hilton Hotel downtown.\u00a0 But we\u00a0arrived in great time!\u00a0<\/p>\n

And as we pulled into our parking spot I realized… I’d forgotten to bring the advent wreath!\u00a0 Ah!\u00a0 Kicking myself, I thought, “I knew this would happen some time.\u00a0 NOW what am I going to do?!”\u00a0 It’s not the end of the world to skip this portion of the service.\u00a0 But it will feel so incomplete to light 3 candles and forget the 4th.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So, as I was helping get our church supplies out of the little storage room in the deep recesses of the hotel where guests never go, I passed a counter where several pretty flower arrangements seemed discarded.\u00a0 I asked a hotel employee, “Are these going to be used?\u00a0 May I borrow one for just a couple hours?”\u00a0 He replied that he didn’t care if we never brought the flowers back.<\/p>\n

Ok, this will be nice, at least we’ll have a pretty flower arrangement on the front table.\u00a0 Then as I looked closer, I saw the spongy block that the flowers were suck into, and thought candles could stick in there too.\u00a0 So I asked the same very kind and helpful hotel employee if there were like 5 candles that I could use.\u00a0 “Attendez deux minutes” he said, wait 2 minutes.\u00a0 So I waited.\u00a0 And soon he emerged from the recesses of the hotel where no guest goes with 5 nice white candles.\u00a0 After arrangeing them in amongst the flowers, I asked one more thing of him — matches.\u00a0 And there he came with a small box of Hilton Hotel\u00a0matches.\u00a0 And “voila!”\u00a0 we had a very impromptu advent wreath.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Improvised advent "wreath"<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

God is good.\u00a0 He cares even about\u00a0the little details, like\u00a0providing an advent wreath for the 4th Sunday — even covering for my\u00a0absent mindedness.<\/p>\n

The service included other\u00a0last minute improvisation moments\u00a0but we’re flexible and it all worked out to be a wonderful worshipful service with loads of music.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Worship singing with Judith on flute, Gabby on keyboard, Michelle on vocals, Hwan Soo on guitar and Josiah at the computer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Report This Post<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Advent is a special time in the Church calendar year.\u00a0 In anticipation of celebrating Jesus’ birth at Christmas, I wanted to be sure that in our little International Church in Yaounde\u00a0we lit the advent candles one Sunday a week in the 4 weeks before Christmas.\u00a0 So, since the last Sunday in November, I’ve been making…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflection"],"yoast_head":"\nAbsent-minded at Advent - The Ziegelbaurs<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/ziegelbaur\/?p=1089\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Absent-minded at Advent - 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