Advent

Edward Hayes

Posted on by Kath Walden

Take time to be aware that in the very midst of our busy preparations for the celebration of Christ’s birth in ancient Bethlehem, Christ is reborn in the Bethlehems of our homes and daily lives. Take time, slow down, be still, be awake to the Divine Mystery that looks so common and so ordinary yet is wondrously present. An old abbot was fond of saying, “The devil is always the most active on the highest feast days.” The supreme trick of Old Scratch is to have us so busy decorating, preparing food, practicing music and cleaning in preparation for the feast of Christmas that we actually miss the coming of Christ. Hurt feelings, anger, impatience, injured egos—the list of clouds that busyness creates to blind us to the birth can be long, but it is familiar to us all.

Mike Wilkins

Posted on by Kath Walden

Often times when we think of becoming a Christian, we think of what it is doing for us – that we are reconciling in our relationship with our creator that we are having our sins forgiven, that we are being saved… I think that the call to receive Christ is more like Gabriel’s visit to Mary where he asks us, will you carry the Christ, will you carry the salvation of the world?

Katherine Walden

Posted on by Kath Walden

Today is the first day of Advent 2020
Putting together a Christmas newsletter or website? Wanting some Christ based reminders of what Advent and Christmas are all about? It’s almost impossible to find Christian oriented Advent Calendars anymore but a heads up, Advent was never meant to be a count down to Santa’s arrival and a daily dose of chocolate.

Use the TAG menu on this website to discover some quotes that will help you anticipate the birth of our glorious King Jesus.

Advent Quotes

Frederick Buechner

Posted on by Kath Walden

In the silence of a midwinter dusk, there is a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself. You hold your breath to listen. You are aware of the beating of your heart. The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment.

Author Unknown

Posted on by Kath Walden

December 21, 2019

Sometimes it seems as though we spend our lives waiting. Daydreaming about an upcoming vacation, worrying over a medical test, preparing for the birth of grandchild-our days are filled with anticipation and anxiety over what the future holds. As Christians, we too spend our lives waiting. But we are waiting for something much bigger than a trip, bigger even than retirement or a wedding: We are waiting for the return of Jesus in glory. Advent heightens this sense of waiting, because it marks not only our anticipation of Jesus’ final coming, but also our remembrance of his arrival into our world more than 2,000 years ago.

Dennis Bratcher

Posted on by Kath Walden

12 Dec 2019

At the heart of the nativity narratives in both Matthew and Luke, is a simple fact: amid the struggle of a people who had longed for 500 years for God to act in the world in new ways, God came to be with them in a way that totally identified himself with us, as human beings. Amid the most unlikely of circumstances, to the most unlikely of people, God became man for the salvation of all people.©2003

A W Tozer

Posted on by Kath Walden

If the tender yearning is gone from the advent hope today, there must be a reason for it; and I think I know what it is, or what they are, for there are a number of them. One is simply that popular fundamentalist theology has emphasized the utility of the cross rather than the beauty of the one who died on it. The saved man’s relation to Christ has been made contractual instead of personal. The “work” of Christ has been stressed until it has eclipsed the person of Christ. Substitution has been allowed to supersede identification. What he did for me seems to be more important than what He is to me. Redemption is seen as an across-the-counter transaction which we “accept”, and the whole thing lacks emotional content. We must love someone very much to stay awake and long for his coming, and that may explain the absence of power in the advent hope even among those who still believe in it.

Jack Noble

Posted on by Kath Walden

On the first day of Advent… is God not trying always, in so many ways, to get our attention? Not, I think, merely so He can be worshipped and adored, but in order to be in companionship with us. The Gospel is absolutely transparent, as John makes so clear – God comes, finally in a Person, the person of Christ Jesus.