FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT

After two glorious days of sunshine, today has been wet and windy - we were so glad we decided to go to Tenby yesterday!  We stayed in this morning, which meant that I could light the candle I had brought for the 4th Sunday of Advent, which I duly did, and you can see the candle above the flickering fire.

I then took a shot of the book I have been following throughout Advent.  The book, which is a series of Meditations for Advent and Christmas, was written in 1988 by J. Barrie Shepherd, with a morning and evening meditation.  

I must have bought this in 2007 because the first entry I have written on a blank page after the first two meditations is dated December 2007, when we went to Tenerife for the two weeks before Christmas, which we both found rather strange - being in permanent sunshine but also seeing blow-up snowmen and Father Christmas figures in lots of places around us.  We did notice, though that there were also many Nativity sets and not only outside churches.  It is a well-used book and is brought out every year.

I wrote a prayer following each day's meditation and at the beginning of Advent had  written, which is rather appropriate for the candle of peace today:

Father God,
I pray at this Advent that your love and peace will be with me, my family and friends as we wait for your promised coming.  Amen

The bottom right shot is of the livestream of our church service this morning - it was so good to be able to join with them as they sang various well-known carols, so the rafters here were ringing with singing!

We decided to go out for an hour just after lunch, bought what provisions we needed and had forgotten to bring, had a hot chocolate but then came back, because it had got even wetter and windier.  We are now in our cosy holiday home, all doing our own thing, but together, which is rather nice.

Mr. HCB has just finished a lovely jigsaw of Tenby that Amanda bought him yesterday - they both had a hand in it, but I just let them get on with it because as some of you may know, jigsaws are not my thing.

Hope you all have a wonderful day and a very happy Christmas.  Love from the three of us, the HCBs and Amanda. xxx