Advent 2025
The season of Advent is the beginning of the church year. We have purchased a devotional that we are going to be using for our Advent focus this year.
The themes for the four weeks of Advent are:
Nov 30 - HOPE
Dec 7 - PEACE
Dec 14 - JOY
Dec 21 - LOVE
Download a copy of the devotional so you have a digital or pick up a printed copy on November 23 so you are ready to go on November 30
Introduction to Heaven's Earthly Life, Wendell Berry and the Poetry of Advent.
The Christian year – and in that sense, the Christian faith – begins
not with the brilliant flowers of Easter, the dazzling flames of
Pentecost, or the soft glow of Christmas morning. It begins with the
longest nights of the year, the growing shadows of despair, conflict,
sorrow, and hate – for it’s there that the God of hope, peace, joy,
and love will arrive.
The word “Advent” means arrival. It’s the four-week season of
mindfully watching, waiting, and preparing for Jesus to arrive – and
at the same time to arrive ourselves at the manger, so to speak,
not thousands of years ago on the other side of the world, but
wherever we are, right here, right now. That’s the journey of Advent.
God arriving – and each one of us arriving, too. “It gets darker and
darker,” the poet Wendell Berry once remarked to the writer Anne
Lamott, “and then Jesus is born.”
Poetry can help us adjust our eyes to the darkness – and thereby
notice the light. In this Advent devotional, we let scripture and
Berry’s poetry be our guides, together pointing us toward weekly
practices that can help us prepare for the radiant joy to come.
So grab your favorite Bible and Berry’s New Collected Poems,
Collected Poems, and This Day (the poems in this devotional can
also be found online). Week by week, we’ll make our way through
the dark, arriving at last on Christmas day, that beautiful glimpse of
heaven’s earthly life.
Heaven's Earthy Life - Advent 2025
A guide for the season of Advent, through Hope, Peace, Joy & Love with Wendell Berry |