Preparation This Week
Find a suitable Christmas tree — preferably a live one — and place it prominently in your home. This week, the tree stands alone: no lights, no ornaments, no decorations. The bare tree is the point. Gather your family around it for worship using the readings below.
Why a Christmas Tree?
When I was a child, after my family had picked out our Christmas tree and my father had brought it into our house, my family would spend about an hour decorating it. Then we would all go off to bed or back to our playing. The tree was simply a mantle for displaying heirlooms of unknown origin that came out again each December. It never occurred to me to wonder: Why a tree?
From the first chapters of Genesis through to the last chapter of Revelation, God uses trees to tell His story. He created man in His image to commune with Him through a life of worship. The eternal life offered through the Tree of Life was lost through the first Adam, and regained through the second Adam, Jesus Christ.
The center of God's story is the tree at Calvary, on which Jesus the Christ was destined to die. This week, use your Christmas tree to help you reflect on your place in God's story.
"From the first chapters of Genesis to the last chapter of Revelation, God uses trees to tell His story."M.J. Gallagher — Advent Christmas Tree Devotional
The Story Behind the Tree
In the beginning, God planted a garden and placed within it two trees of supreme significance: the Tree of Life, offering communion and eternal fellowship with God, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, representing the boundary of creaturely obedience. Adam and Eve were invited to eat freely — except from one tree. They ate. The fellowship was broken, the garden was closed, and the Tree of Life was barred to them.
But God was not finished with trees. He would use them again and again throughout His Word — as symbols of strength and growth, as places of curse and redemption, as images of the coming kingdom. And at the center of human history, God would place His own Son on a tree, bearing the curse that Adam's tree had earned, so that the way to the Tree of Life might be opened once again.
The Christmas tree standing in your home is not a pagan relic or a meaningless decoration. It is an opportunity to tell that story — every year, in a form that your children can see, touch, and remember.
Scripture Readings for Week One
- Genesis 2:4–17 Creation and the two trees — the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
- Genesis 3:1–24 The temptation, the fall, and the loss of the Tree of Life
- Deuteronomy 21:22–23 "Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree" — the law that pointed to Calvary
- Jeremiah 3:6–15 Israel's unfaithfulness and God's call to repentance
- Acts 10:34–43 Jesus, hung on a tree — and the promise of forgiveness through His name
- 1 Peter 2:13–25 Live as people redeemed by the one who bore sins "on the tree"
- Revelation 22:1–5 The new creation — the Tree of Life restored, accessible to all who are in Christ
Questions for Family Discussion
After reading, invite each family member to reflect on one or more of these:
- Why do you think God chose a tree as the instrument of both the curse and the redemption?
- What does it mean to you personally that Jesus "bore our sins in his body on the tree"?
- When you look at the bare tree this week, what story does it tell you?