Monday 8 December 2014

Advent candles tell their story..



Churches are often full of light at this time a year as we prepare our buildings for Christmas and candles take centre stage in our worship, with the lighting of Advent Candles and the myriad of Christingle Services held up and down the country.

This is no different at Christ the King and we took this opportunity to use church candles as a teaching aid within church and schools to share an important message.

A Candle for Christmas* is a story about a small undervalued birthday cake candle wanting to have an ‘important’ job like all the other candles she sees around church: altar, Christingle, Paschal, Advent, and Votive.

In her journey around the church and her interaction with the other church candles the Birthday Candle began to understand how the different sorts of candles help the worship and life of the church. But as she was to learn size and prominence don’t matter; however small and apparently insignificant we may think we are, we are all important to God and our work and worth are valued and recognised. As the little Birthday Candle was told:

“Importance has got nothing to do with size. In many ways you are the most useful candle of all when we get to Christmas, because you remind us that Christmas is a really important birthday; it’s the birthday of Jesus – the time when God came into our world not as a great king, not as a high and mighty ruler, but as a tiny helpless baby. That’s what we’re getting ready for in church during what we call Advent. So you, (little) birthday candle are just now about the most important candle of all.”

Like a candle flame
Flickering small in our darkness
Uncreated light
Shines through infant eyes
God is with us, alleluia. Come to save us, alleluia. (Graham Kendrick)

Ian Grange

*based on an originally story © Vaughan Roberts published in the Nov/Dec 2000 edition of Together with Children 


No comments:

Post a Comment