Advent

The Advent season remembers Jesus’s past arrival at his birth and also anticipates his promised future arrival. It often encompasses the four Sundays before Christmas, and many traditions assign each Sunday a theme—hope, peace, joy, and love—to guide prayer and contemplation.

Journey through Advent with your church, small group, or family. Below you can find a reading plan, downloadable daily calendar, written guide, and class module that explores the birth of Jesus as narrated in the Gospel of Matthew.

Advent invites us to imagine a kind of hope that’s rooted not in wishful thinking but in the unchanging nature of God and his promise to restore every part of his creation.

The kind of peace envisioned during Advent comes not through military victory but through the way of Jesus. He brings true peace by honestly addressing and working to heal the deeper sources of division, such as fear and pride, that compel people to violence.

Advent joy is not an experience of happiness based on favorable circumstances. It’s a deep sense of safety and freedom people feel because of God’s loving character, which remains constant through all circumstances, and because God can be trusted to ultimately bless and heal creation as he promised.

In the Bible, love is not something you fall in and out of or something you achieve on the path to self-fulfillment. Instead, it involves a steady commitment to care for the well-being of others—never self-seeking, always self-giving—even when it costs us.