Advent Devotion

Posted on Dec 17, 2025 in General |

Advent by Candlelight Devotion by Jean Walter, 1990 & 2025

Jean Walter wrote and delivered this devotion for the very first Advent by Candlelight in December, 1990. Her daughter Wendy Boyce read this devotion 35 years later for Advent by Candlelight, December 6, 2025. It is relevant and timeless because it points us to the true Reason for the Season.

We are very happy you are here spending this time with us today. At this season of the year, time becomes very precious to us. It seems we have so many things we want to do to get ready for Christmas. We as women often feel that it’s up to us to plan Christmases that will be perfect for our families and friends.

But really, providing a perfect Christmas isn’t our responsibility. Christmas was God‘s idea and He planned it perfectly. It took 4,000 years after He promised a savior for the time to be exactly right for the first Christmas. Then, at exactly the right time and in just the right place, Jesus was born and it was Christmas.

The substance of Christmas, what Christmas really is, that’s all God‘s doing. It’s His priceless gift to us. It’s like a priceless diamond. We can wrap it exquisitely, but we can’t really increase its value. It’s already priceless. That same diamond is just as priceless if we wrap it in an old newspaper and twine. We can’t really make Christmas any more wonderful than it is, and we can’t really mess it up no matter what we do. Our Christmas preparations are merely wrappings. What Christmas really is, God has already made perfect.

Mary probably didn’t think the first Christmas was so perfect. That Christmas probably didn’t go exactly the way Mary planned. She was looking forward to the birth of her first child and she was probably planning on being close to her family 

and friends when the baby was born, not being 100 miles from Nazareth in the little town of Bethlehem. When you’re nine months pregnant you just don’t plan on a 100 mile donkey trip. But God planned on Jesus being born in Bethlehem. So that’s where Mary was and she gave birth to Jesus in Bethlehem and in a barn. Lots of babies are born in barns: baby cows, baby horses, baby donkeys, but not baby people. Surely when Mary contemplated her new baby’s arrival she didn’t plan on it happening in a barn. But that was God‘s plan. So Mary gave birth to Jesus in a barn and she wrapped Jesus in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger. I’m sure that’s not the bed Mary and Joseph had in mind for Jesus. Joseph was a carpenter. Back in Nazareth there undoubtedly was a little crib or cradle that Joseph had lovingly built for the new baby. That’s where Mary and Joseph planned to lay Jesus. It was God‘s plan that Jesus lay in a manger.

After Mary made sure Jesus was tucked safely in his manger bed, she probably planned on sleeping. I’m sure the last thing she planned on was Christmas company. But there they were, strange men at the stable door. Shepherd’s came to see her newborn son. It was not Mary’s plan, but it was what God had planned. In fact, God made a big production out of making sure those shepherds came to see Jesus through an angelic messenger, then a multitude of the heavenly host.

Sometimes we don’t feel as if Christmas time is so perfect. After all, if we were planning a perfect Christmas this year, families would all be together. Miles wouldn’t separate us from our children and grandchildren. There wouldn’t be kids in hospitals or grandpas in nursing homes or sons in Saudi Arabia or empty chairs where Mom sat last year. We wouldn’t have unemployment or broken homes or hard feelings.

It’s true, often the stuff that is around Christmas isn’t ideal. Sometimes it is newspaper and twine. But underneath those wrappings, no matter what they are, there is still God‘s perfect Christmas.

Some of you may have experienced a Christmas time that was nothing at all like you planned.  You planned on baking and shopping and sending out cards. Then something happened that you didn’t plan on: a life-threatening accident or a critical illness. You got into the car but you didn’t drive to the malls to shop. You drove to the hospital. Other people were shopping, baking, and decorating. You were sitting in the hospital at someone’s bedside. Not much got done to get ready for Christmas. You managed a gift for the kids and the tree got put up. Then it was Christmas Eve and you went to church and you heard again the message of Christmas: “To you this day is born a Savior.” Then it struck you, how absolutely wonderful Christmas is. What an incredibly beautiful Christmas God planned. You didn’t bake one cookie. You didn’t send out one card. Most of the decorations were still in the attic. Gifts under the tree were very sparse. Yet this Christmas was just as wonderful as any other Christmas. It is what God has done in Jesus that really makes Christmas, not the things that we do.

If the people for whom we are shopping and baking and decorating know the baby Jesus born at Christmas time as their Savior, Christmas is perfect for them. And without that Savior there is no priceless diamond, only worthless glass, no matter how exquisitely we wrap it. A batch of fudge, a beautiful centerpiece, another gift under the tree, those things can’t really make a perfect Christmas.

So if you lost 20 pounds and you bought this gorgeous new dress and you’re going to look absolutely stunning, and you found perfect outfits for the kids and they’re all going to look like they stepped out of the catalog, that’s great. And if you’re wearing last year’s dress and the hand-me-downs for the kids aren’t fitting as well as you planned, or the outfits you planned on sewing are never going to get done by Christmas time, that’s still great. For all of us, the first Christmas, God’s Son wore swaddling clothes so we could be dressed in the robes of His righteousness. We can’t wear anything more beautiful.

if you got the new wallpaper up, the walls painted, the furniture reupholstered, and everything turned out to look even better than you hoped, that’s great. And if you’re not sure you’re even going to get around to scrubbing the worst of the fingerprints off the wall, and the Davenport that looked a little shabby last Christmas looks really shabby this Christmas, that’s still great. For all of us, the first Christmas Day, God’s Son lived in a stable so that someday we could live in a heavenly mansion. We have a home that’s indescribably beautiful.

If you have all your shopping done and all your gifts wrapped, that’s great. And if Christmas shopping isn’t going so smoothly, that’s still great. All you’re really going to wrap is some of the wrapping. For all of us, God has taken care of the perfect gift for everyone on our list. God gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him will have eternal life.

Christmas is a very special time of the year. It gives us a unique opportunity to use our talents to serve our families and friends. Christmas is special, so it’s natural that we want to wrap it beautifully. We don’t want to do away with the baking and the shopping and the cards and the decorating. We want to decorate Christmas trees and set up nativity sets. They’re an important part of making special Christmas memories. They are things we can really enjoy doing. What we can do without is the pressure that makes us feel that we have to do these things to make Christmas perfect. There’s nothing, not one thing, that we have to do to make this Christmas perfect. Christmas will be perfect even if we haven’t crossed every item off our to do list. And Christmas is going to be perfect, even if this is a year when our wrappings aren’t going to be so wonderful. Christmas is always perfect. God planned it that way.