Thursday, 8 December 2011

Advent 1 - A Jesse Tree






It was our All Age Praise service today and so we built a Jesse Tree. I can hear you ask – “So what’s a Jesse Tree?”

It comes from Isaiah 11 “A shoot will come forth from the stump of Jesse and a branch out of his roots”. The Tree connects the Advent season with the love and faithfulness of God throughout 4000 years of history and of course it leads us to Jesus, the Messiah.

A full Jesse Tree depicts a different for each day of Advent, but we only chose 6 of them, given that we only had one service and we made it from tree branches painted green, to show the new life that Jesus brings. We dressed it with our own Christmas decorations telling of various times in History. So we had scenes from the Creation story (a globe and a whale) Noah and the flood (Ark and Rainbow), King David (a Crown and star) Mary (the Holy Family, Mary and lilies) and finally we thought about the coming of Jesus, being the Light of the World so we had cut-outs of a Sun, a Star and Candle-light.

While the children were busy beavering away, the adults discussed each of the readings in turn, and the whole service was broken up by some very lively songs and other more thoughtful ones. So we enjoyed ‘Colours of Day’ and the Arky Arky song; Mary’s song of Praise ‘Tell out my Soul’ was followed by the newest version of ‘The Lord’s my Shepherd, we then sang ‘Light of the World’ and closed with ‘Shine Jesus Shine’ – of course!

Thank you to all who worked so hard to make it happen. We had a great time and learned an enormous amount; the Tree now sits in the Church so why not go and have a look?

HAPPY ADVENT!                                                     

Deacon Olivia

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