Introduction and Day One
Hope
Dear faithful reader,
Earlier this month I published an Advent devotional based on a photo series I did a few years ago on Instagram. As someone who was (and in many ways still am) going through a season of wandering and wondering, it was a meaningful practice to help me focus on what the four weeks leading up to Christmas meant to me.
While you can purchase the ebook for $2.99 or the paperback with journal for $9.99, I am giving all readers a free preview of the series and then posting a word a day from now until Christmas for paid subscribers.
I hope you enjoy the series and be sure to share with others.
Introduction
I was born a fourth-generation Lutheran. I was baptized when I was exactly two weeks old. When it came to the liturgical calendar, my family didn't miss a single Advent or Lent service throughout my entire childhood. I don't think I intentionally skipped a Wednesday service until I was in college.
As I struggled with career changes and moves to different cities and shifting beliefs, the first practice I let fall to the side was weekly Wednesday services during both Advent and Lent. Eventually, I had to admit something was missing.
As a lifelong Lutheran, Advent has always been meaningful for me. It's not just that I love the preparation for my favorite holiday, Christmas; it's the ritual of preparation and the anticipation of what is to come.
I am not a patient person. I like to be in control. The Advent season helps me slow down and consider my place in the world. It helps me see the complete story of salvation: a story of glory and humility, brokenness, and resurrection. As someone who has struggled with understanding her faith in a world that more often than not feels upside-down, I have found that returning to an Advent practice helped ground me. It removed the noise and focused me on the road from the manger to the cross.
In 2019, I found a social media post suggesting a word and a picture for every day in Advent. I had been looking for a practice that would help me focus on the season and do something more meaningful than just decorating the house for Christmas. Writing a daily post with a matching picture helped me enter Christmas Eve with a much better understanding of the Christmas story and my place in it.
And if you, like me, have found yourself on a path of deconstruction and reconstruction, I hope that spending the next 28 days leading to Christmas will help you to reflect on your own faith journey. If you are reading this from the e-book, I hope you will take time to write your own reflections on the word for each day. If you are reading the paperback plus journal, I hope you will use the journal to reflect on the daily words and discover what those words have to tell you about your own journey to the manger.
May your Advent season and Christmas celebration be a hopeful preparation for the time when all things will be made new.
Day One - Hope
Every year, our children receive a new Christmas ornament in their stockings. I work hard to make it unique to their circumstances in a given year as a way to memorialize their changing lives and interests. Over the years, this has included Lighting McQueen, Elsa, Minnie Mouse, sports balls, and mountains. It has always been a favorite part of opening their stockings on Christmas morning. They cannot wait to see the new ornaments they get to add to our colorful family tree.
In 2021, our family moved across the country from Texas to Indiana. Both of our kids were born in Indiana. After six years of core memories being formed in the Lone Star State, our 12 and 10-year-olds were still struggling with the move away from their friends and a life they loved. That Christmas, my ornament for each of them was an act of hope. I spent hours on Etsy looking for just the right ornament to mark the transition while recognizing that Texas would always be a part of their identities. In the end, I selected ornaments depicting both Texas and Indiana, trying to acknowledge that their hearts and bodies were in two separate places. I hoped they would see the ornaments as a representation of their hearts being in two different locations, that they would see the ability to have their home be both a place and a feeling.
Our daughter angrily tossed the ornament to the side. My heart continued to break through her heartbreak. I continued to pray for healing. I didn't lose the hope that my children would eventually see the good in a difficult move. And eventually, they began to see Indiana as home.
Hope isn't a wish for something to happen; it is an expectation of what could be. We cling to hope when all seems lost. It is hope that keeps us going. It is hope that makes the future something to look forward to and not to fear.
It is hope that kept the Israelites going for generation after generation. They survived years of enslavement. They had to keep hope alive for 40 years in the wilderness. They struggled through years of exile and then continued to believe in a Messiah who would rescue them from the oppression of the Roman Empire. They forgot the words of the psalmist:
My soul faints with longing for your salvation, but I have put my hope in your word. Psalm 119:81 NIV
They hoped for physical redemption; instead, God was preparing hope in the form of a helpless babe who would grow up to be a man crucified on a tree. It was a hope that was stronger than princes and nations. It was hope in a Messiah who would come to make all things new.
May the first candle of the Advent season remind us that our hope is in something greater than what we can find here on Earth.
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