Today is the second day of Advent. Each day I will post a short blog aimed at kids that will help tell God’s story from the beginning to the birth of Jesus. And each day Meghan, my wife, will make a Christmas Tree ornament that helps us to remember the day’s Advent lesson. If you want to make them along with us all you will need is some felt, some glue, and some ribbon.I hope you will join us each day this Advent. If you missed the first day of Advent you can read that post here.

What rules do you have in your house? In our house we have six; 1) Use your listening ears 2) Share toys/games, 3) Use proper voice/tone, 4) No pushing, grabbing or biting, 5) Say please and thank-you, 6) Eat in a clean way. These are the rules that my kids are supposed to follow. Most days they do really good. But not everyday. Sometimes they make bad choices, sometimes they break the rules. I bet sometimes you break the rules too.

When God made people he had rules too. HIs rule was ‘don’t eat from the tree of knowing good and evil.’ A lot of books make this tree look like an apple tree. And maybe that is why this rule seems silly. Why wouldn’t God want want us to eat apples? But it wasn’t really about what we put in our mouths and stomachs, it was about what we would put in our hearts. Would we listen to God, or would we listen to someone else?

In this story, we didn’t listen, we broke the rules. This meant a lot of things had to change, like we couldn’t live as close to God as he wanted. But one really important thing didn’t change, God’s love for us. He promised that even though we were in trouble, and even though things had to change he would make things all better, he would keep loving us.

Today on the second day of Advent we remember that we broke the rules, but God loves us so much we promised to make everything all better.