I don’t mean to be the Advent version of Mariah Carey defrosting every November to shove my Advent devotional in your face… but did you know I wrote an Advent devotional? She’s had a little glow up—beautiful printables, banging playlist, kidsize devotions and colouring sheets which are just waow waow waow 🤩✨
So, let me be real: I want Christmas, not Advent. I want the celebration, not the tension of waiting.
But waiting is part of our job description as God’s people. We live in an every day Advent, longing for Jesus to come back and make this bin-fire of a world right again.
Maybe we’re waiting on test results, or for our work to be noticed. For an apology, or for grief to sting a little less. For a certain relationship, or for the fog of mental illness to lift. For a doctor to say, ‘you're going to have a baby’, or a friend to say, ‘I see you’.
If we don’t know the ache of an empty womb, then we know the ache of an empty bed, an empty room, an empty mind, or the quiet ache of an empty Sunday evening.
This little ebook baby is the product of an Advent year in my life—and a hefty 108 page one at that. It’s part bible study/part devotional/part storytelling/part good-old-fashioned blog post.
Basically, it’s a big part of me.
It’s for the doubter and the depressed. The one limping into Christmas with personal pain in one hand, and the public chaos of the world in the other. It’s for those of us struggling to believe we are really held in the palm of the promise keeper’s hand.
Luke portrays the people of Israel as stranded and wandering in an empty, howling expanse of wilderness. The darkness is thick to touch. Rocks of fear trip their feet and the weight of hopelessness slows them down. A black sky presses down on them. They cannot bear to take one more step. But then, a glint of colour on the horizon.
The dawn of hope—The Rising Sun.
A wee note to anyone who feels like Advent quietly snuck up on them, or worse, not so quietly DUMPED itself into your to do list with aaaaalll kinds of pressure and expectations and guilt and hoo-ha. To the one who doesn’t feel ‘ready’:
I wrote a book on Advent and I still don’t feel ready. Often, I spend these early December days scrambling around in frustration, kicking myself and trying to play catch up. I tell myself to get it together, dang it.
But God doesn’t humour my self pity. In my forgetfulness, all I find is His faithfulness. He knows that even in my most well-intentioned moments my heart drifts. And He calls me back every time.
Every Advent, this is the Jesus I meet:
The One who stepped down so I could give up. Give up striving, working, mustering my own strength, and playing catch up. The Lifter of my Head, the Person of Jesus–He is my first love. Not the lights, the candles, or any exceptionally pretty devotional book (👀).
Yes, Advent is about about being ready, about preparing. But I don’t want to forget Jesus has already done it all. He has already prepared a place for us. A place at His table, a place in His arms. We just have to come.
As we wearily recover from this year, we don’t need more to do. We need this blocked-off section of our calendars to remind us of the eclipsing truth: He is on his way.
He will wipe away every tear and bring an end to our illness, grief, pain and suffering once and for all.
He has risen, friends. And someday we will rise with Him. But until then, we wait.
Buy the ebook here for the price of a boujie Christmas coffee.