Advent Week 1: Hope
This is how the waiting begins.
Advent begins in the dark—with one small candle and a stubborn kind of hope. Not the shiny, everything’s-fine version. The gritty, keep-going kind.
This week, we start again. We wait. We bless what’s unfinished. Because the world is still a mess. And God is still coming.
This week’s reflections:
Each devotion will go live early that morning, so be sure to refer back to this list as you journey through the weeks of Advent.
Sunday, November 30 - Advent Day 1: Start with one candle.
Monday, December 1 - Advent Day 2: Begin Again
Tuesday, December 2 - Advent Day 3: Hope is not optimism.
Wednesday, December 3 - Advent Day 4: Wassail the Bare Branches
Thursday, December 4 - Advent Day 5: The Sower in Knitwear
Friday, December 5 - Advent Day 6: O Dayspring
Saturday, December 6 - Advent Day 7: Prophets of a Future Not Our Own
Listen along:
Our Required Listening: Holiday 2025 playlist is here to keep you company in the season of waiting. Listen along to some of my favorite holiday tunes this year on Apple Music and Spotify!
My only brother, ironically named Andrew, died last summer of an overdose. He taught me so much about showing up, about grit, about holding a candle in the darkness. The world likes to tell us that all addicts are merely the sum of their bad decisions, that their disease is a moral failing. But my “brother in the background” taught me so much about hope. He fought like hell for his family when it would have been so much easier to throw in the towel decades ago. He loved God and is the sole reason that several in his street ministry ever found Hope. He showed up for years when it was SO HARD, and he is my definition of gritty hope. He reminds me that the mess isn’t all there is—God, I’m so grateful for that.
It's hard to look out at the world
and feel a lot of hope
when the unsheathed verbal sword's
become the way we cope
with just about most everything
and everyone we meet,
and condemnation's what we bring
when we go prowl the street.
We've thrown Christ beneath the bus,
but He just rolls His eyes.
He was born and died for us,
and the big surprise
is however mean the game we play,
hope is offered every day.