ADVENT RESOURCES

Advent is a four week season within the traditional church calendar. The word 'advent' means coming or arrival. It has been celebrated for centuries by churches from many traditions and is the beginning of the liturgical church calendar. This study is just one of many ways you can celebrate this season of anticipation, longing, and hope for Jesus' arrival among us.

Many devotionals you might be familiar with begin with a suggested text to read from the Bible and then a page of reflection from the author. I have at least 3 of this kind of Advent books on my shelf and love them. But this is not that kind of study. The format of this workbook is based on the ancient tradition of fixed-hours of prayer and is, at its heart, an invitation to a rhythm of prayer and scripture reading.
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This is a rhythm of life practiced by many, including biblical characters like Daniel and Peter, and mentioned often in the Psalms (Daniel 6:10; Acts 10:9; Psalm 119:164). Throughout the history of christianity people have engaged in this practice in a wide variety of ways. While it is in no way a command of scripture, people of faith have often shaped the rhythm of their lives around fixed times to pause, pray, and read scripture.

This study is centered around the 4 traditional themes of advent: hope, peace, joy, and love. The main section of each week is focused on reading scripture. The reading for each day includes, a Psalm and a section from the Old Testament and New Testament. I have tried to keep the sections manageable - which for me means 15 minutes of audio / 5 pages of text. There is 1 ‘reading’ per week. My hope is that this gives you enough time to meditate on the text and engage with it in more than one way (audio/written, alone/
together, meditate/study etc).

At a minimum, you need 15-30 minutes per week. But I invite you to spend more than that.  The core of the study is one collection of scripture passages that contribute to the central theme of the week. The audio version of this reading takes less than 15 minutes to listen to. So I often encourage people to start there, and then dig deeper. You can spend time on each passage, annotate the pdf, listen to the playlist, explore recommended art pieces, or complete activity sheets and reflection exercises.
There is enough material here to spend time reading and reflecting every day. The interactive workbook and app content includes:
- Scripture: weekly Bible reading including selections from Psalms, Old Testament and New Testament
- Audio: recording of all prayer and scripture readings
- Music: links to playlists on YouTube/Apple/Spotify
- Art: links to recommended art to explore
- Workbook: the interactive workbook is available for print and download and includes active links and reflection exercises.
- Activity Pack: a printable pdf with memory verse, and a set of coloring pages and worksheets for each week.

The readings and audio recordings for this project are all in the NET translation. This is for two reasons:
1) the NET is one of only two translations that I know of that allow print or publication of more of a few verses of text without special licensing.
2) one of the best Bible study practices for anyone reading only in English is to read more than one translation. The NET is an excellent modern translation and ideal for this since it is not generally available in print so is likely to be different from any Bible you might have at home.