God With Us: A Family Advent Celebration

by Catherine Pawlak

"God With Us" is designed to make the celebration of Advent simple, memorable, and gospel-focused for the entire family. Daily readings corresponding with twenty-five symbols from the Old and New Testaments, short prayers, and extension activities provide a flexible and engaging approach to celebrating Advent for children ages 4-14, and the adults who love them.

The Jesse Tree is a Christmas tradition that traditionally takes place during the Advent season. In the days leading up to Christmas, a tree, banner, or branch is decorated with ornaments depicting symbols from stories in the Bible that point ahead to the lineage and birth of Christ, the long-awaited Messiah. This book uses the Jesse Tree format to celebrate God's enduring faithfulness to His people through the sending of His Son to earth that first Christmas night. Simple yet beautiful images of hand embroidered felt ornaments accompany each day's reading, drawing in children and adults alike to the story of God's love as shown in the birth of Jesus. Appendices at the back of the book list the verses referenced for each reading in full, as well as images of each day's ornament or symbol that can be photocopied and made into ornaments.

Gather your family to recount what God has done, who He has been, and who He still is to His people. As one generation “commends your works to another” (Ps. 145:4), you will find your attention rightly focused on God's magnificent gift to His people at Christmas – Jesus Christ, God with us.

Kindle Edition

First published November 19, 2014

Reviews

[Beth Lev · Rating 5 out of 5]

We started this book for the first time in 2014. We use it each Advent season and get more out of it each time. It’s the perfect guide to celebrate advent as a family and re-center our days around the true meaning of Christmas!

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This advent is magical! The writing is so robust, while long for small children, they hung on every word, every day, every story. The thought provoking questions meant to ignite conversation with the family and your kids at the end were so humbling, empowering, enlightening, challenging, and hopeful. We were all sad to see it come to an end, but are looking forward to it next season. What a beautiful new tradition, I am so thankful to have found this.

*I made wood ornaments with the image for each day to hang on branches we collected in the woods, and this was exciting for the children to participate in alongside the book, bringing it even more to life, enhancing their experience each evening as they looked forward to it (and fought over who's turn it was to hang the ornament), and a good reminder all month looking at them sitting in a vase on our table.

[Lindsey Burnett · Rating 3 out of 5]

So this was super okay. I liked that each day was short and sweet, but there were quite a few instances where I felt the author made some statements that were biblically inaccurate. For that, I have this book a 3 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

[Stephanie Bammes · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very simple but excellent resource for doing the Jesse tree advent study! We really enjoyed it. It wasn’t quite as “in depth” if you have kids older than 10 though. It connected everything to Jesus and God’s plan from the beginning.