Advent Candle Ring

For an excellent review of the Advent season, colors, candles and other details, please visit this link.

For some time I've held on to some wood that had a special story behind it. In the section below I detail that story. I read that text during the presentation I made while giving this to my former church. The ring itself is about 14" across and was designed as I went. The center bar is arched about 1-1/2" above the table top.

For those who don't know, the advent candle is used by many Christians to help mark the weeks leading up to Christmas. There are three purple candles, a pink candle and a white candle. Each candle represents some attribute of Christmas: Hope, Joy, Promise, Peace and the Christ Child. One candle is lit each week during the reading of a passage related to the topic it represents. On Christmas Eve the white candle is lit to mark the birth of the Light of the World.

Presentation text

Once upon a time there was a little church in a small town in Colorado. This little church had a vision, a vision of one day being a very big church. But that is not our story. Yet something neat happened in that little church, and that is our story.

As I said, the little church had a dream about being a big church. One day the people of the little church realized that they would never be a big church if they only had a little building. The people gathered together and earnestly sought the aid of their Heavenly Father in determining a path for their future. After a short while the people noticed that while they had plenty of room for their worship services, their classrooms were far too crowded. And so the little church set off on the task of building new classrooms where their children might learn of God and hear the good news of the Gospel. But of the raising of that building I do not speak.

Now the little church had in former times been a house. Two houses in fact, a duplex sharing a common garage. The people of the little church had built a sanctuary onto the house and turned the bedrooms and living areas into classrooms. Thus was the little house changed into a little church. But all was not peaceful within the new little church. For deep in the rooms that had once been family rooms of the little house there lurked ... fireplaces. Not your ordinary quaint brick hearths but looming, gigantic piles of rock. Cast out of concrete and made to look like lava stone these fireplaces had soaked up the soot of countless smoky fires and they stood by always ready to attack the clean Sunday clothes of innocent passers-by. Perched upon the piles of cement-stone were two mantles of wood, thickly painted with a plastic colored stain. Something had to be done about these things.

Whilst the people of the little church were building their new classrooms, one of them realized that this was the perfect time to rid the little building of the terror of the fireplaces. And so with great enthusiasm did the people descend upon these things with hammers and chisels and crowbars, reducing the monstrosities to piles of rubble which were trucked outside and dumped in a heap, later be carted off and disposed of forever. In the holes now left behind the people built closets so that things could be stored, and thus was something useful made of what had once been an eyesore.

But our story does not end here. For one man, a member of the crew that had wielded hammers against the stone, stood and studied the pile of rubble that remained. His attention was drawn the two great slabs of wood that had been the mantles. Covered as they were with the plastic stain, dust and soot one would think little about them that could be called positive. Yet this man knew something about wood for he was a shaper of wood, and he realized that within the confines of the ugliness that he beheld there might be something of beauty and worth. Finally he grabbed the two hunks of wood, tossed them in his truck, hauled them home and stored them in his garage. Time passed and the wood was for a while forgotten. Then one day he thought again about it and again he took it out and considered what he had. Taking a few tools to hand out he cut through the stain and discovered the old mantles to be made of solid fir. Immediately he thought of a plan for this wood. In its former state it had been of no value to the church, indeed it was despised. But when he was done it would be redeemed for a prominent use in their worship service.

The man took the mantle and cut it into many pieces, shaping some with a saw, others with a lathe and sanding all of them to a gentle smoothness. Then taking a fine stain he colored the wood to preserve and protect it. Not painting it as had been its previous state, but staining it so that the beauty of the wood could shine through in celebration of the majesty of his Father's creation. And when he was done he had this ...

This was a true story. The little church is our church. The fireplaces were real and stood where we now have the Sunday School and Hospitality supply closets. I was the one that decided to save the mantles from the garbage heap and bring them home. This is an Advent candle holder, which I present to the church in celebration of the first day of Advent, which starts this Sunday. Now this little candle holder isn't special because I made it. It's still just some hunks of wood all stuck together. And I'm not the greatest woodworker to grace the face of this earth, far from it. But it should form a very important object lesson for all who see it. For just as the old fireplaces were ugly, dirty and of no use to the church so did our sin make us ugly, dirty and of no use to God. And just as I looked at the wood of the mantles and saw the possibility of something beautiful hiding within them because I was a worker of wood, so too did God look at us and see the possibility of something beautiful because He is a worker of souls. And just as I had to cut away much that was ugly to shape the wood to my purpose, so does He have to cut away that which is ugly in our lives to transform us into the image of His perfect Son. And so let this Advent candle holder be a reminder that just as it was redeemed from a despised chunk of wood, so are we redeemed from a hopeless state of sin. And let it help celebrate the birth of our Lord who came to make that redemption possible.