Advent is a good time to think back on how God prepared the hearts of His people for the birth of His only Son. That way, when we have heard how they grew closer to God all throughout their history, we might be encouraged to draw close to God ourselves.

It would be impossible to look at every single thing that God did for His people before Jesus was born, but maybe we can look at a few of those things. We will be looking at the Jesse tree. This is the name given to the promises that God made throughout the Old Testament concerning the birth of His only Son.

Just like our Christmas tree, the Jesse tree has beautiful decorations. But instead of having stars and lights on it, it has the promises that God made to us and to His people, promises made out of love.

The tree is named after Jesse, the father of David, the great king of Israel. The reason for this is that some of the most important promises of all were made to Jesse and to his son David. They were promised that God's only son would be born in their family.