Introduction to Advent

While the New Testament nowhere instructs or commands that Christians keep an annual holiday celebrating Jesus’s birth, by the fourth century, ancient Christians celebrated four Sundays including the day of December 25 in remembrance of the first advent of the Lord Christ. That tradition has been preserved down through the centuries in churches of many a denominational stripe and style today.

The coming of Jesus was rightly honored along with the other events in Christ’s life and ministry—through Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost—as the hub in the time cycle of each year, just as the Word made flesh began a new age of history. The joy of His first human breath as our Immanuel, “God with us,” was divine light invading darkness and the reversal of the tragedy of our exile from Eden.

When people think of Christmas and the Bible, minds are immediately drawn to the much beloved passage in Luke 2—the only Gospel and text in the New Testament that details the night of Jesus’s birth.

Many of us probably recall growing up and watching the Charlie Brown Christmas Special when Linus—after having the stage lights dimmed and dropping his security blanket—quotes from Luke chapter 2 for all the Peanuts gang. The typically melancholic Charlie Brown, especially, was joyfully reminded of the true meaning of Christmas following days of disenchantment with all the commotion of modern commercialism in the form of gift lists, decoration contests, and school plays. This cartoon is still a favorite of so many today, even as adults, and it is rather surprising that such an explicitly Christ-centered story of Christmas continues to run annually on network television.

This year, our advent devotional series will focus in on Luke 2, walking step-by-step and verse-by-verse through the entire chapter as we journey toward the celebration of Christmas Day. We will see the coming of Jesus through the eyes of Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, the angels, and many others, and we will enter the hope of a people waiting in sin’s exile under the weight of oppression for the promised arrival of a King and a Kingdom of righteousness.

Starting tomorrow, and following an ancient contemplative practice of prayerful reading known as lectio divina, each devotional that magnifies a verse or two will be accompanied by a brief devotional commentary and reflection and conclude with a guided prayer that we can all pray together as a DBU Family to treasure and store its message in our hearts. 

We sincerely hope these devotionals will help us all, even as we enjoy all the delightful music, the delicious food, decorous lights, and beloved family traditions to remember the true meaning of Christmas: the coming of good news and great joy for a world that still so desperately needs it.

Read Luke 2:1-40.

Prayer

Father, thank you for sending your Son for the world, not only for the Jews but for all people who live in exile in a fallen world. Bless our souls by Your Spirit over the coming weeks as we daily turn our attention to Scripture and to the life of Your Holy Word made flesh, who dwelt among us, and who invaded darkness with His light and death with His life.

As we remember Your merciful plan of salvation, may it fill us with a fresh hope this season in what You have done, what You are doing, and what You will do for all whose trust is in You. Soften callous hearts, call back wayward sons and daughters, fill the doubtful with faith, and encourage hearts weighed down with many sorrows and troubles by the Good News that God so loved the world.

Amen.