Advent 2020
Advent 2020
Hold On Beloved. Resurrection Day Approaches.
PLAYLIST
I put together a playlist for Advent, and I’m sure I will continue to add songs as I come across them. You can listen to the playlist on Spotify here.
I’m also trying to keep all the instrumental songs together at the very end of the list so if you want to listen while reading or just in the background, there’s a couple songs there. :)
DEVOTIONALS
ADVENT, A THREAD IN THE NIGHT by E.M. Welcher.
This is the book I’m using for for my Instagram Lives.
ADVENT REFLECTIONS by The BibleProject
ADVENT 2020: JESUS CHRIST IS BORN by She Reads Truth
In my own private readings I am using both The Bible Project and She Reads Truth stories.
ACTIVITIES
Both of these were put together by my sister Allysin as part of a youth program we run.
DAY #1 (December 1st)
I’ll keep the resources for each day listed here so that you can easily find them. :)
Oh How We Need Advent (This Year More Than Most) by E.M. Welcher
Luke 1
"Waiting is our destiny, as creatures who cannot by themselves bring about what they hope for; we wait in the darkness for a flame we cannot light. We wait in fear for a happy ending we cannot write, we wait for a 'not yet' that feels like a 'not ever'. -Lewis Smedes
Advent Activity: Decorate your Christmas tree (or random plant, or bookshelf, or whatever)
DAY #2 (December 2nd)
“God travels wonderful ways with human beings, but he does not comply with the views and opinions of people. God does not go the way that people want to prescribe for him; rather, his way is beyond all comprehension, free and self-determined beyond all proof. Where reason is indignant, where our nature rebels, where our piety anxiously keeps us away: that is precisely where God loves to be. There he confounds the reason of the reasonable; there he aggravates our nature, our piety—that is where he wants to be, and no one can keep him from it. Only the humble believe him and rejoice that God is so free and so marvelous that he does wonders where people despair, that he takes what is little and lowly and makes it marvelous. And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly…. God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings. God marches right in. He chooses people as his instruments and performs his wonders where one would least expect them. God is near to lowliness; he loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and broken.”
― Dietrich BonhoefferAdvent Activity:
DAY #3 (December 3rd)
"Life in a prison cell may well be compared to Advent...the door is shut, and can only be opened from outside." --Dietrich Bonhoeffer
DAY #4 (December 4th)
“Waiting for the Lord is akin to waiting for a sunrise. We do so with both anticipation of the beauty to come and patience knowing it won't be quick. Differently from witing for a train or a stoplight to change, we wait knowing that if we pay close attention, we'll see the sky slowly changing, in time new colours emerge, one after the other, new and radiant with each progressing moment.
How foolish it would be to wait for sunrise with only the occasional glance to see if it has risen yet, instead of savouring the sunrise unfold.” -Author Unknown
DAY #5 (December 5th)
“The season of Advent means there is something on the horizon the likes of which we have never seen before ... What is possible is to not see it, to miss it, to turn just as it brushes past you. And you begin to grasp what it was you missed, like Moses in the cleft of the rock, watching God’s [back] fade in the distance. So stay. Sit. Linger. Tarry. Ponder. Wait. Behold. Wonder. There will be time enough for running. For rushing. For worrying. For pushing. For now, stay. Wait. Something is on the horizon.” Jan Richardson
DAY #6 (December 6th)
“...And then, just when everything is bearing down on us to such an extent that we can scarcely withstand it, the Christmas message comes to tell us that all our ideas are wrong, and that what we take to be evil and dark is really good and light because it comes from God. Our eyes are at fault, that is all. God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succor in abandonment. No evil can befall us; whatever men may do to us, they cannot but serve the God who is secretly revealed as love and rules the world and our lives.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer
DAY #7 (December 7th)
“To predispose our mind to welcome the Lord who, as we say in the Creed, one day will come to judge the living and the dead, we must learn to recognize him as present in the events of daily life. Therefore, Advent is, so to speak, an intense training that directs us decisively toward him who already came, who will come, and who comes continuously.” - Pope John Paul the Second
DAY #8 (December 8th)
“The lack of mystery in our modern life is our downfall and our poverty. A human life is worth as much as the respect it holds for the mystery. We retain the child in us to the extent that we honour the mystery. Therefore, children have open, wide-awake eyes, because they know that they are surrounded by the mystery. They are not yet finished with this world; they still don’t know how to struggle along and avoid the mystery, as we do. We destroy the mystery because we sense that here we reach the boundary of our being, because we want to be lord over everything and have it at our disposal, and that’s just what we cannot do with the mystery…. Living without mystery means knowing nothing of the mystery of our own life, nothing of the mystery of another person, nothing of the mystery of the world; it means passing over our own hidden qualities and those of others and the world. It means remaining on the surface, taking the world seriously only to the extent that it can be calculated and exploited, and not going beyond the world of calculation and exploitation. Living without mystery means not seeing the crucial processes of life at all and even denying them.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer
DAY #9 (December 9th)
"Advent Prayer
In our secret yearnings
we wait for your coming,
and in our grinding despair
we doubt that you will.
And in this privileged place
we are surrounded by witnesses who yearn more than do we
and by those who despair more deeply than do we.
Look upon your church and its pastors
in this season of hope
which runs so quickly to fatigue
and in this season of yearning
which becomes so easily quarrelsome.
Give us the grace and the impatience
to wait for your coming to the bottom of our toes,
to the edges of our fingertips.
We do not want our several worlds to end.
Come in your power
and come in your weakness
and make all things new.
Amen.” - Walter Bruggeman