Art Reflection for Advent: Week 3

This art series is designed to let you pause during this busy holiday season. Each week during Advent, we’ve been focusing on one stanza from the hymn “As with Gladness, Men of Old.”

The entire third stanza of goes like this:

As they offered gifts most rare
At that manger rude and bare;
So may we with holy joy,
Pure and free from sin’s alloy,
All our costliest treasures bring,
Christ, to Thee, our heavenly King.

Whenever treasure and Christmas or Advent are associated, my mind jumps to the wise men’s gifts or elementary students monologing as The Little Drummer Boy (claymation, anyone?).

But I think that’s where we go wrong. Sometimes we become so wrapped in the gifts we’re lugging to the manager we forget the best present is ourselves.

We push, strain, undercut, overbudget, and stretch ourselves until a moment of being is so expensive we can’t afford who we truly are.

I don’t want to live like that anymore.

Related articles

• Artwork Reflection for Advent: Week 1 (abbyjreed.com)
• Art Reflection for Advent: Week 2 (abbyjreed.com)