The Sinner / Saint Devotional: Advent and Christmas

By Kathryn Morales, Chad Bird and Kyle G Jones

The day after Halloween, everything around us— ads, store displays, music, and the like— put us on notice: Christmas is coming. With the announcement of Christmas's imminent arrival comes work, work, and more work. We mutter under our breath for lazily storing the Christmas lights in a tangle; we wring our hands over finding good gifts and planning the perfect Christmas meal; every major checklist item includes dozens of decisions and subtasks, each with their own obstacles and pressures to complete. The biggest checklist item: completing all your work with Christmas cheer.

In this pressuring cooker of Christmas preparations, The Sinner/Saint Devotional: Advent and Christmas walks you through these church seasons, shifting your focus from work and checklists and putting it on the work Jesus did and does for you.

Each devotion includes an opening Scripture passage, a devotional thought, a closing prayer, and a suggested Scripture reading for further reflection. They present you with the Gospel of Advent and Christmas: how Christ has come for us and will come for us again. You will be reminded repeatedly that these seasons are not mere past events to remember, but comfort for today. Comfort from the God who keeps his promises and sent his Son for the forgiveness of our sins.

• Language: English
• Publisher: 1517 Publishing
• Release date: Oct 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781956658019

Book preview

The FIRST WEEK of ADVENT

Walking Backward into Christmas

The First Sunday Of Advent

BLESSED BE THE LORD GOD OF ISRAEL, FOR HE HAS VISITED AND REDEEMED HIS PEOPLE AND HAS RAISED UP A HORN OF SALVATION FOR US IN THE HOUSE OF HIS SERVANT DAVID.

—Luke 1:68-69

Time has a hold on us. The lead-up to Christmas—what the church calls Advent—has a way of bringing time’s grip on us into the foreground. Time moves us in one direction whether we’re ready or not. But time’s power is limited. It can’t dictate the direction we face. We are free to face backward as it pulls us forward.

The season of Advent reverses our view to what has been as we move closer to what is to come. Evidence hangs on our Christmas trees. As we hang our ornaments—the 20-year-old childhood crafts, hand-me-downs from generations past, and gifts to mark special occasions—we pivot to face what has been as we move toward what will be. We prepare for the coming Christmas by looking back and remembering Christmases past.

Zechariah’s Song in Luke, also called the Benedictus, turns us around to rehearse the past promises of God in anticipation and hope of God’s imminent work in Jesus. God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we should be saved from our enemies… to show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our father Abraham (Luke 1:70-73). In Advent, we turn to face God’s ultimate salvific act of remembrance in Jesus’s incarnation, death, and