1st December - Hut 348

Tonight the Kings School helped us to launch the ninth annual Brighton Beach Hut Advent Calendar. Our theme this year is angels and we've asked each group creating a hut to interpret that in any way that they want.  Angels are integral to the Christmas story in a variety of ways and we hope to explore lots of different aspects of their roles in the birth of Jesus throughout this month.

It has been a beautiful day here in Brighton and as the hut was being prepared we were witness to a gorgeous sunset with amazingly clear skies and not a breath of wind.

This gave the hut an air of serene calm as a host of simply crafted cardboard angels hung around.

The art students of year 7 had made these as a school project and the budding artists had great fun searching for their particular angel amongst the crowd. 

Many of the angels had messages written on their wings.  Some were quotations from the Bible such as the words of God spoken to Moses in Exodus 23 
"I am sending an angel ahead of you. He will guard you along the way. He will bring you to the place I have prepared."

Others were thoughts from the students about angels including this from Libby: "Angels are often silent but they are listening to every thought that stirs our souls"

Each night we will be collecting an angel which will be added to the display on Christmas Eve when we're also inviting everyone who comes to dress as an angel.

The message on the angel given to us to keep tonight was, "I think angels represent guidance and when someone passes away angels come down, take you to heaven, and give you a new, fun life there."

We were also broadcast live on the internet by @surfgalsussex on a streaming platform called Periscope.  This proved very popular and had over 25,000 viewers during the broadcast and people are still watching it now.  



You can view her broadcast here and she promises to come to as many huts as possible and broadcast live from each of them.

This has been a great opening night and really captured something of the excitement mixed with peace that is an important part of our wait for the coming of God into the world on Christmas day.  The next hut is number 191 and will be created by Deepdene school.