The Jesse Tea

December is flying by, filled with its usual crazy mix of mundane end-of-semester duties and delightful seasonal joys, including people to see, places to go, work on the annual family letter and the writing of my annual advent poem. I feel crammed to bursting with too much to do and too much to ponder (if that second is possible) and too little time to do it in. I think that's true of most Decembers, but it feels particularly true of this year (just more work has come my way than usual recently) which means sometimes I feel like I'm running on fumes.

So I'm feeling extra grateful for any opportunities to catch my breath and also to exercise some creativity. Last Friday was a little bit of both those things, when I hosted a "Jesse Tea" for five children in our local little homeschool group.

I fell in love with the Jesse Tea idea when I first read about it here on Alice Gunther's blog Cottage Blessings. I probably first saw it a couple of years ago, and it's been in the back of my mind ever since to try to do this. I'm so glad I was able to do it for the homeschool group this year.

The Jesse Tea takes the traditional advent idea of a Jesse Tree (I love the play on words!) with its symbols of God's promises in Scripture, and moves it into the realm of a tea/celebration with the snacks taking on the symbolic roles. The snack ideas themselves are incredibly simple and I adapted/tweaked them even further to help my budget and to exercise some bits of my own creativity. I spent more time pondering the devotional thoughts that I talked through with the kids as I presented them with each snack or activity (I skipped one of the snack steps, the Noah boats, and had the kids color place cards with arks and rainbows on them instead). God's faithfulness to keep his promises and his loving and rescuing work each step along the Story were natural themes that kept coming out in the devotional ponderings.

I wasn't able to take many photographs -- and hesitate to use photos of the other kids without their parents' permission -- but these couple of photos will give you a glimpse of the "Joseph's coats" the children decorated (bread shapes, soft butter, colored sprinkles) and also the "Flowers of Jesse" we enjoyed at the end (shaped from spice gumdrops).




I wish I had gotten photos of some of the "Isaac's Bundles of Sticks" (pretzel sticks tied with red licorice laces) and some of "Abraham's Stars" (white chocolate chips with a dark purple plate for background). The kids also enjoyed "Moses' Burning Bush" (broccoli florets dipped in honey mustard dressing) and several other creative treats. We even had gummi worms (a big hit!) with our apples, to remind us of how sin entered the world, the disobedience of Adam and Eve to which God responded with his redemptive, rescuing work.

I was delighted to see how well the children responded to the whole thing. I'm already thinking about how I could do it again and do it even better, but this really was a lovely event! What I especially loved was hearing the kids answer questions I asked about the Bible stories and seeing them "make the connections" between the symbols and stories and between the stories themselves. My favorite was when we talked about the root of Jesse, and how God promised a "small shoot" would grow from the stump, all that was left of David's once great royal house. When I asked the kids "and who was the tiny shoot that grew from the root of Jesse," a lovely six year old girl piped up "Jesus -- when he was just a little, tiny baby!"