Resources for Advent and Christmas

Anticipating Christmas: A 5-Day Advent Plan, from YouVersion:
So often, the holidays come and go before we have a chance to focus on preparing our hearts for Christmas. Advent is our way of remembering that God came to be with us, is still with us, and will come again. Over the next 5 days, we’ll examine the four Advent themes: hope, peace, love, and joy.

Names Of Jesus For Advent, from Bible Society Australia and bible.com
In this series, we read and reflect on 14 names of Jesus – various titles he is given, and ways he his described. See from both Old Testament prophecy, and the Gospel accounts of his life, just who Jesus is through his names. Be encouraged as we approach the celebration of Jesus’ birth by reflecting on who he is – the marvellous complexity and depth of Jesus’ purpose and his character.

Advent & Art: Using Art to Abide in Christ Throughout the Christmas Season, from bible.com/Thomas Nelson
The season of Advent calls us to stay alert to the peace and light Christ brought in His birth and His eventual return. To help us sharpen our gaze, we will incorporate artwork from the Abide Bible alongside Advent Scripture verses to prepare our hearts for Jesus’ arrival.

AND as usual, Anglican Mainstream publishes the regular Advent daily devotion sent by one of our readers.

More articles on Advent and Christmas:

Teach children how to tell the Christmas story, by Joe Carter, The Gospel Coalition

Advent Meditation: From Splendor to Squalor, by Matt Smethurst, TGC:
Many religions throughout history have acknowledged the value of humility. None has dared speak of a humble God. The reason is simple: the notion of humility applied to deity is seen as a category mistake. So the claim that the biblical God—not a member of a pantheon, not an option on a menu of deities, but the one Creator of all—that he would stoop to serve his creatures, all the way down to a torturous cross, is not just startling. It’s scandalous.

Christmas Transcendence, by Rob Vaughn, Current: Even the most secular people are open to the idea of ‘something beyond’ at this time of year.

Singing multiplies the hope and meaning of Christmas, by the Archbishop of York

Advent and Christmas: God brings change, inside and out, from Gafcon Great Britain and Europe:
At Advent we remember the supreme historical high points of God coming into our hearts and lives through the incarnation, and the final appearance and judgement of Christ at the last day. But God’s ‘advents’ are not restricted to the past and the future. He acts daily to sustain the universe, to answer the prayers of the faithful, to carry out his purposes.

Why do Matthew and Luke offer different birth narratives? by James Bejon, Psephizo

Mary shows how to do “expressive individualism”, by Andrew Symes, Anglican Mainstream: The Magnificat as a prophetic critique of the contemporary secular ideology of the self.
In the bible, the individual self, consisting of my inner thoughts and feelings, is not autonomous, the centre of everything, worthy of pampering and worship. Rather the ‘I’ only exists because of the Creator and only finds meaning in relationship to him.

He really was little, weak and helpless, by Stephen Kneale, Building Jerusalem
“In his humanity, Jesus took on all that means to be a human. That includes being little, weak and helpless. If we want to have a go at the carols, ‘no crying he makes’ is a better candidate…”

Waiting with hope this Advent season, by Claire Musters, Christian Today
Advent is about having expectant hope, but actually sometimes it is our own expectations that cause our disappointments. Perhaps God hasn’t done what we wanted or hasn’t acted in the timeframe we would have wanted him to. It is so important to keep laying down our own expectations and asking God for his.

Church of England makes bid for Christmas No.1, by Heather Preston, Premier
A new carol version of ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’by young composer, Rebecca Dale  is due to be released on 1st December as part of the Church of England’s #AtTheHeartOfChristmas campaign.