My Unfinished Jesse Tree and What Advent Is For

Thoughts on what we actually need in the next season; plus a link to a new Penelope's Loom podcast episode

One of the great joys and burdens of living in a large family—for newer readers, that’s my husband Jon and I and seven, going on eight, children—is the need for simplicity. We can’t function, individually or familially, if basic needs become haphazardly or inconsistently fulfilled or just plain unmet. We all must eat and drink and be clothed, and this requires a measure of order that requires the culling away of superfluidity.

This means that what remains important is relatively clear. After all, even in our tech dependent time, food needs to be physically procured and prepared and served, for instance. And clothing needs to be washed, dried, and stored so it can be found. These things takes planning and time as well as sheer elbow grease.

Which also means that the things I individually prioritize must often give way to other much simpler needs. I’d much rather read a book or draft a Substack or converse with a friend than sort through dresser drawers and kid clothing, again. I’d much rather indulge my own ideas of what I deem important—things that bring me admittedly very small worldly attention and personal satisfaction—than scrubbing toilets or dusting furniture or sorting papers, again. In short, I’d pick trumpeting myself proudly over actually serving my nearest neighbors.

But my sin actually points to my ultimate lack. “Give us this day our daily bread,” as we pray in the Lord’s Prayer and as Martin Luther explained it in the Small Catechism, certainly includes a petition to God to provide for our caloric requirements, but it also includes much more.

Daily bread includes everything that has to do with the support and needs of the body, such as food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, home, land, animals, money, goods, a devout husband or wife, devout children, devout workers, devout and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, self-control, good reputation, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like.

The repeated words “devout” and “good” here mean that we ought not to be concerned only with putting grub on plates and fabric on flesh. It means we recognize our bodily needs as intimately connected with our spiritual needs. We breathe and chew and swallow and move, not because we are mindless, soulless automatons, but because God has made us His people, created for His devotion and goodness, and for love and service of our neighbors. We exist for His loving purposes.

Martin Luther and the family at prayer.

And as the New King James version puts 1 Corinthians 13 so beautifully,

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; ⁵ does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; ⁶ does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; ⁷ bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love is not prideful but bears joyfully, as Christ did for us. Which brings me to my unfinished Jesse Tree and Advent.

A few years ago, a friend shared about her Jesse Tree and a great resource for making one. Then Concordia Publishing House brought out a Jesse Tree devotional. I did research, bought a beautiful wood tree with pegs and thin wood circles (after getting some that turned out to be too big for the tree). I started making a list of what readings I wanted or liked, based on the above two resources. I started printing and gluing. Then it all came to a screeching halt, because I have a family with needs.

My Jesse Tree has been sitting in a closet ever since.

Well, it’s not in the closet now.

Advent is preparation; it is slow. I love the Scriptural readings that walk us toward the manger, the reminders of why Christ became incarnate for us. He did not come immediately, though Eve perhaps thought for a minute that He had. No, He came in a certain time and place, after thousands of years of God’s people waited and suffered and sinned and repented. They knew their Saviour was coming, but none of them knew when.

A Jesse Tree can be a great way for children and adults alike to remember the promises of God through the Old Testament. But it is not necessary.

Too often, in a quest for the Good, I become bogged down with the Ideal: the best book, the best method, the best way. The truth is that few of my ideals are actually ideal; they are human-conceived and can point to the Good and the True, but they are mostly adiaphora, or things that will not gain me or anyone else heaven. The truth is that there is only one Way, and He did not come to us as an ideal, but as a child—holy but helpless and human.

And so He calls us, too. His Word is spoken out loud to us hearers. An kid-friendly, simple Advent wreath can be good; a hymn like “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” sung or read can be a blessing. A Jesse Tree can even be a wonderful catechetical tool. But if you don’t have one, or yours is unfinished like mine, you can rest knowing that Christ laid as a newborn in a carved-out tree, and as a man He bore another one, heavier than the entire world, for us already.

I really appreciate Ashley Hales’ words on this in her post, “Advent is not a Cottage Industry.”

Advent is not a Cottage Industry

Love is not full of anxiety or fuming. Love indeed is patient and kind. It does not envy or go crazy with a glue gun. Love is long-suffering, it bears with one’s own foibles and the foibles of those we love. It hopes, believes, and endures all things — even ugly ornaments or ones left undone.

When we lose what we need by focusing on our own efforts—going crazy with a glue gun, heh—we lose what Christ’s coming was for. Because He already finished what we absolutely need by His coming, His fulfillment, His love. Ashley again: “When we make Advent (or any part of the life of faith) about a product to buy, a feeling to have, or a behavioral result, we’re believing our money or our feelings or our output is the thing.”

These are not the things, as the trendyish phrase goes. They are not even remotely close.

Jesus is the thing. He’s the embodiment of love who comes to a people who have largely forgotten hope in a promised Messiah. He comes to a young girl unprepared and poor. He comes to a man who chooses to endure shame alongside his betrothed. He comes to an old man whose quiet hope and its fulfillment even allows him to die. He comes to a widowed woman devoted to the place of God. He comes to outcasts and the poor and downtrodden and the weary. He comes to the self-righteous control-freaks who, when Jesus doesn’t fit into their box, admonishes them so they can wear the gentle yoke instead.

He comes now, to us.

Advent means coming, and coming means waiting. God’s people did not know how long they had to wait for His promise to be fulfilled, so when they trusted Him, they lived and waited, waited and lived. We do the same. Now and not yet. We have both joy and yoke as pilgrims on our way.

I still hope to finish our Jesse Tree. But I am content knowing that even if it isn’t done this year, or done not exactly like my control-freak tendencies would like, it doesn’t matter.

I will always appreciate planning and order in our household. But I pray God always and sometimes relentlessly reminds me of what we all actually need, and that His good is always better than my ideal. That He is the only One who brings light into the world.

Arise, shine, for Thy light is come. Source.

A New Podcast Episode at Penelope’s Loom: Kate and I talk Advent and Christmas Traditions (plus some Epiphany). It’s lots of good fun and great joy, because these traditions aren’t laws; they’re gifts.

I don’t say this enough, but I love hearing your comments. If you feel so inclined, please leave them here.