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    Not Yet Christmas: It's Time for Advent
    Not Yet Christmas: It's Time for Advent
    Not Yet Christmas: It's Time for Advent
    Ebook87 pages58 minutes

    Not Yet Christmas: It's Time for Advent

    By J.D. Walt

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    About this ebook

    It’s time to stop crying in our soup about the consumeristic commercialization

    of Christmas. Instead of bashing the culture for making Black Friday bigger than Thanksgiving, let’ do something different this year. Let’s do Advent. Instead of quibbling over saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” let’s recover what it means to celebrate Holy Days. Instead of our cheesy slogans

    about the “reason for the season,” let’s practice a sacred season for the sake of the reason. Let’s joyfully embrace the fact that we will do Advent in the midst

    of a culture that loves Christmas but doesn’t really understand it. When the church reclaims Advent, the culture will behold Christmas.

    This twenty-five-day reader offers an opportunity for individuals, groups, and communities to get on the same page in preparation for the celebration of Christmas. Here you will find the trusted texts that have guided the church for centuries combined with daily insight and prayers composed by some of the best Christian poets of our time.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAsbury Seedbed Publishing
    Release dateOct 6, 2014
    ISBN9781628241600
    Not Yet Christmas: It's Time for Advent

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      Book preview

      Not Yet Christmas - J.D. Walt

      future.

      ANTHEM OF ADVENT

      It’s ironic. The song the church tends to save until Christmas Eve, Joy to the World, is actually not a Christmas carol. It’s an Advent anthem. It’s a song about the second coming of Jesus. It’s a sign that we’ve so Christmas-ized Advent that we turn one of the few and precious songs about the Second Advent into a carol for the first Christmas. Take a look:

      Joy to the World

      Joy to the world, the Lord is come!

      Let earth receive her King;

      Let every heart prepare him room,

      And Heaven and nature sing,

      And Heaven and nature sing,

      And Heaven, and Heaven, and nature sing.

      Joy to the world, the Savior reigns!

      Let men their songs employ;

      While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains

      Repeat the sounding joy,

      Repeat the sounding joy,

      Repeat, repeat, the sounding joy.

      No more let sins and sorrows grow,

      Nor thorns infest the ground;

      He comes to make his blessings flow

      Far as the curse is found,

      Far as the curse is found,

      Far as, far as, the curse is found.

      He rules the world with truth and grace,

      And makes the nations prove

      The glories of his righteousness,

      And wonders of his love,

      And wonders of his love,

      And wonders, wonders, of his love.

      —Isaac Watts

      NOT YET CHRISTMAS

      A PRAYER FOR THE OPENING OF ADVENT

      Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead [your people] like a flock! You who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth.

      —PSALM 80:1

      From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him.

      —ISAIAH 64:4

      Come, Holy Spirit, and inaugurate Advent in our midst. Come and open up the book of a new year of our Lord. Lift our hearts to long for your coming and deepen our longing to imagine your kingdom.

      We confess—Advent, the season of holy anticipation, has become for us a sign of anxiety. Like Martha, we busy ourselves with so many things, preparing for a celebration of our own design. We confess—our attention has become distraction. Our hearts, minds, and souls are divided as we literally surf the channels of our consumeristic culture. Yet, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand (Isa. 64:8). Begin anew this Advent to shape us. Make us like Mary to sit at the feet of our Lord Jesus and discover the only necessary thing: your Presence. Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved. Shape these days of Advent into a season of undivided attention, of holy

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