First Sunday of Advent
Scripture Reading for Today:
Jeremiah 33:14-16
14 “‘The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will fulfill the good promise I made to the people of Israel and Judah. 15 “‘In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line; he will do what is just and right in the land. 16 In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. This is the name by which it will be called: The Lord Our Righteous Savior.’
Psalm 25
Of David.1 In you, Lord my God, I put my trust. 2 I trust in you; do not let me be put to shame, nor let my enemies triumph over me. 3 No one who hopes in you will ever be put to shame, but shame will come on those who are treacherous without cause. 4 Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths. 5 Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long. 6 Remember, Lord, your great mercy and love, for they are from of old. 7 Do not remember the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways; according to your love remember me, for you, Lord, are good. 8 Good and upright is the Lord; therefore he instructs sinners in his ways. 9 He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way. 10 All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful toward those who keep the demands of his covenant.
1 Thessalonians 3:9-13
9 How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you? 10 Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith. 11 Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus clear the way for us to come to you. 12 May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. 13 May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.
Luke 21:25-36
25 “There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. 26 People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. 27 At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. 28 When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” 29 He told them this parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees. 30 When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near. 31 Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that the kingdom of God is near. 32 “Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 33 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. 34 “Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap. 35 For it will come on all those who live on the face of the whole earth. 36 Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.”
NLT
Signs of the Season
by Amy Bratton
Amy Bratton is the Director of Operations & Publishing for the New Leaf Network and the project manager for the Canadian Multivocational Ministry Project. She lives in Saskatoon, SK with her husband, Tim, and their two sons, Oswald and Ira. She is a lay leader at Riversdale Neighbours church and an Adjunct Professor with Rocky Mountain College in the area of Spiritual Formation. She writes and speaks about the history of Christian spirituality, with a focus on the early Methodist understanding of Christian maturity known as “perfect love.” Read more from her in her book Witnesses of Perfect Love: Narratives of Christian Perfection in Early Methodism.
Welcome to the 2024 New Leaf Advent Reader, Advent Undone: When the Mysteries of Christmas Have Come Unravelled. In the coming weeks, reflections will be coming to your inbox and online from writers and artists across Canada. As we wait for the arrival of Jesus on Christmas day, the season of Advent makes space for our complicated emotions and complex situations. Advent makes space for the both/and nature of the Gospel. The lectionary readings that you will find paired with the reflections lean into the already and not yet as we read scripture passages that anticipate both the first and second coming of Christ, noticing the ways in which God’s presence is very much with us, and still not yet arrived.
If you are new to the Advent Reader this year, my name is Amy Bratton, and I am the editor of this collection. This is the seventh annual New Leaf Advent Reader and I find it such a joy to collect voices from across Canada to share some reflections on Advent and our theme with you. This network is a diverse place, we have met so many wonderful people through New Leaf events over the years, and I truly wish we could ask for an Advent reflection from each one of you. This is just a small sample of the richness of the Canadian church that the team at New Leaf has been blessed to encounter.
If you have followed the New Leaf Advent Reader in previous years, you will notice a few things that are different this year. First, we will be sending you fewer reflections. This reduction reflects the constraints of our staff team this year. Our time is increasingly finite in 2024 due to budget limitations, but we are still eager to offer reflections four times a week this year.
The second tweak you will see this year is the inclusion of artists among our contributors. It has been an immense blessing to have artists contribute to our conferences in the last few years, so we intentionally reached out to artists as we planned this year’s Advent Reader. As you engage with these reflections that don’t fit our typical format, we hope that they expand your heart and engage your imagination in new ways.
The Advent Reader theme this year, Advent Undone, is inspired by the newest release from New Leaf Network Press, Blessed are the Undone: Testimonies of the Quiet Deconstruction of Faith in Canada by Angela Reitsma Bick and Peter Schuurman. This book is full of stories of Canadians who are walking through faith coming undone. As the book makes its way out into the world we have been talking to people who have shared their own experiences of coming undone. This Advent we wanted to give some space to reflect on how Advent and Christmas are different after things have come undone.
In the best possible way, the good news of Jesus coming to the world upends what we expected, and we are no longer the same after any encounter with Jesus. Yet, there are also ways in which family traditions and cultural narratives can be stinging reminders of places of loss and differences in life after faith comes undone.
My own journey of coming undone was in my 20s when I had the opportunity to study theology at a depth that went far beyond what I had been exposed to growing up in church. The genuine but young faith began to enter contexts where questions and doubts were welcomed (maybe even fostered) as I came into communities that wrestled with our ideas of God and were willing to encounter God in the questions.
One of the reasons I feel like I came through the journey richer and deeper is that there were guides along the way assuring me that part of Christian maturity is questioning a more simplistic faith. Friends and professors told me that there are signs and signals in the life of faith reminding us that some things need to come undone and be redone closer to the centre of God’s love.
The fig tree Jesus speaks about in Luke 21 is an image of the dependability of the signs of God’s Kingdom, pointing us to the cycles of growth in spiritual life – seasons of questions and seasons of answers, seasons of doubt and seasons of faith – like fig leaves growing in spring and falling in autumn. If we don’t understand these signs, and if we can’t recognize the need for these different seasons of faith, then our journey of coming undone can be burdened by the unrealistic demands we place on ourselves and the church. What could be a moment of growth toward maturity instead becomes harmful.
For example, I have unravelled the Christmas card version of the birth of Christ, with Mary and Joseph alone with baby Jesus in a stable full of animals. It didn’t take long for this picture, maybe intended to signal the humble beginnings of the King of Kings, to be challenged as I read the gospel accounts more deeply, and began learning more about 1st-century hospitality and family practices. But because of many faithful guides, losing that picture didn’t mean losing faith, and I was able to rebuild a more hopeful narrative to replace the Christmas card tableau. What I envision now at Christmas is a community that gathered around Mary and Joseph to welcome Jesus into the world, whether they knew this baby was Messiah or not. They were not alone against the world, love would have surrounded the humble and ordinary start to God’s human life at Christmas, just like any other child in that community.
So as my faith continues to be undone and redone, laced with God’s love, I am comforted by the presence of God who is known for lovingkindness that is as old as time described in Psalm 25:6. Through the ages we have been on this journey longing for love and community as we ask hard questions along the way.
Thank you for joining us on the journey of Advent Undone. I’m eager to share these reflections with you.
Thank you for reading the New Leaf Advent Reader, a collection of reflections from writers across Canada. If you are enjoying the reader, sign up to receive the readings in your inbox each day here: SIGN UP
And please share this reflection with your friends and family who might also enjoy it.
Explore the year’s Advent Reader posts:
Every year since my kids were old enough to anticipate Christmas, I have hoped to add practices to our family routines to mark the days of Advent with a touch of the sacred among the commercialism that crowds in at this time of year. So far, I have had little success making space for my idealism, and this year is no exception…
I start decorating my home for Christmas early. It isn’t really out of excitement, more practicality. Thanksgiving is actually my favourite holiday, so over the years, I’ve collected a bunch of decor for the earlier celebration. Orange is my favourite colour, fall is my favourite season and way back when I was a varsity athlete, Thanksgiving was the only weekend in the fall term I had enough days off in a row to go home. Then as a pastor, it was the main holiday I had the most flexibility around my work…
Water is life. We need it to survive. A hot July afternoon has us craving for multiple glasses of the cold stuff. Water is also comfort. Nothing beats a steaming cup of chai on a chilly December morning. But water outside my body, especially deep water, is a different matter altogether. It presents itself as danger…
There is a big difference between a paper cut and a stab wound. Though some might argue that a papercut hurts much more, it heals quickly, and soon you forget all about it. It was just a little cut and, after all, the paper didn’t mean to hurt you. Stab wounds, on the other hand, are rarely accidental…
Welcome to this place outside where you were told the Light lived.
Welcome to a place of fear-filled change, mighty rest, or rebellious hope…
I live in Regina, SK, on Treaty 4 Territory, where it is pretty dark this time of year.
I love it.
I savour it.
When it starts to dissipate, I find myself thinking fondly about when it will return the following year…
This year, four of my closest friends are navigating their first Christmas after separating in their respective marriages. As a child of divorced parents myself, Christmas is always a reminder of relationships unravelled. This year our community is unravelling further still. My heart yearns for the contrast of cold weather and warm homes, for hot drinks over long conversations, for a peaceful break from the hectic rhythms of the year, while my mind knows some of those conversations will be heavier this year…
Christmas records appear in heavy rotation when the calendar hits December 1st at my house. I can't help it; I'm just a sentimental fool for Christmas music. I have some well-worn favourites, but my most cherished cuts will always be the jazzy classics. Give me Bing Crosby and Carol Richards crooning out "Silverbells," and I'm already imagining decking the halls of my house with garland and lights…
I teach World Religions at a Christian university in Ontario, and the course material often disrupts the Christianized world of some of the students. For many, taken-for-granted notions about other religions and their adherents are shaken up, and mostly in a good way…
It has been such a pleasure walking through the Advent season with you. This has become such an important resource for so many across North America. We continue to be surprised and delighted by all the folks who choose to take this annual advent journey with us. So thank you from the bottom of our leafy hearts for being a part of this…
Take a moment and read Luke 1:68-79.
There once was a man, trained in the scriptures and a tradition, who could not bear children with his wife. One day they received a word from God that they indeed will have a child. What’s more, this child will DO something. This child would somehow be a catalyst for change in their world. And their world needed a catalyst…
I stopped being a child in 2018. I stopped seeing the sun in 2019. I stopped knowing the difference between truth and faith in 2020. I stopped living in 2021. Time had turned on its head and flipped me off. This was the battlefront, and I was ill-equipped…
I came across a google doc in my files the other day called “Christmas in our Bubble!”
Don’t be fooled by that exclamation mark. It’s not true enthusiasm but a stubborn attempt to force some cheer onto our family’s plans for December 25, 2020…
Welcome to the 2024 New Leaf Advent Reader, Advent Undone: When the Mysteries of Christmas Have Come Unravelled. In the coming weeks, reflections will be coming to your inbox and online from writers and artists across Canada. As we wait for the arrival of Jesus on Christmas day, the season of Advent makes space for our complicated emotions and complex situations.
Explore last year’s Advent Reader:
There is a small forest near my home that I love to walk in at dusk. The trail is well-worn. My feet know the way by heart. Why do I choose this trail time and again? There are certainly ones that are more peaceful and full. Maybe it's because God and I have done a lot of business there together. I've looked for His divine presence in the soft pine needles on the earthen floor on more than one occasion. I've added a lot of tearful prayers to the sounds of gently swaying trees as night falls…
As I reflect on today’s scripture readings and read in John how the religious people of the day denied Christ, it makes me think of those who are skeptical of reconciliation, those who are so comfortable with this present life that they do not want to think of our past history and the life’s journey of Indigenous people who have survived residential school or descendants who are suffering from inter-generational trauma. I have to ask the question, “What would Jesus do?” “Who does He call us to be?” “How do we obey the Great Commandment?”
As we reach the end of the Advent season, it’s not lost on me that the reflection I’ve been asked to write falls on December 22nd; the arrival of the winter solstice and the longest night of the year.
The reality of encroaching darkness has been with us for some time, and perhaps – like me – you’ve had to fight the urge to crawl into bed by 5:00 pm as your body tries to tell you it’s time for sleep, and the daylight seems to last only for an instant…
Essential to any meaningful relationship is ongoing communication. We know this on an instinctive level. This is especially true of a parent-child relationship. Parents listen intently for that first word and look forward to the time when their child can communicate their needs with words rather than tantrums…
I put my Christmas tree up this year the day after Halloween. It’s the earliest I have ever done so. If you knew me, you might be surprised at that. I’ve historically been a person who gets a wee bit overwhelmed by the expectations and the busyness of the season, so Christmas decor doesn’t usually go up until after American Thanksgiving (it’s ok, Canadian friends; my husband is American, and he loves American Thanksgiving, which is why that is an acceptable demarcation of seasons in our home). But this year? This year is different…
Advent is a time of waiting. Waiting for a time when it does not feel like evil is triumphing. Waiting for God’s restoration, when all in the world will be set right. Waiting for the Christ child to return as King.
This year as I reflect on the season of advent I realize more than ever that I am tired of waiting…
It’s Monday night and I am sitting at a long wooden table. Around me are eight others from our neighbourhood, a mix of professional artists and people who just love art…
Advent is one of my favourite seasons in the church calendar. Scott Erikson, in Honest Christmas, writes: “Advent means ‘coming’ in Latin, and these weeks are meant to prepare our hearts, minds, and souls for the arrival of God-with-Us, Jesus Christ, born to the virgin Mary a couple of millennia ago. You’re supposed to feel the wait – the anticipated arrival of something you want so badly – and by feeling the wait deeply, you’ll be even more satisfied by the celebration of the arrival of Christmas Day.”
"Joy" is a word that saturates the Christmas season. It echoes through carols, decorates cards and T-shirts, yet at times, amid the tumultuous backdrop of climate crises, global conflicts, and pervasive injustice, it can seem superficial…
This past summer as the kids played in their pools and begged me for more and more bubble solution and popsicles, I stumbled upon a feature from the podcast, OnScript. The episode focused on the work of Ted Smith and his latest book, The End of Theological Education…
I love everything about surprises. I appreciate the thought and effort necessary to create a successful surprise party. The collaboration required, the time offered, and the kindness demonstrated. All that love wrapped up in the word surprise makes me feel warm and fuzzy…
For someone who deals with anxiety, the fact that the Bible often says "Do not be afraid" is always hard for me. This is how Psalm 27 begins. Stating, “The Lord is my light and my salvation—so why should I be afraid? The Lord is my fortress, protecting me from danger, so why should I tremble?” I can see how this makes sense…
What can the birth of a man 2000 years ago possibly have to do with people who live today? This question came to rest in my thoughts as I was mowing my lawn for the last time this year. I ruminated on it while attempting to avoid disturbing the fallen leaves that provide a safe refuge for the wildlife that overwinters in them…
My friend Lorraine and I stood outside gazing at the night sky filled with a million stars shining and twinkling brightly against the darkness. The air was brisk and cold but we were bundled up in our parkas and snow pants, hoods over our toques, scarves wrapped around our necks and covering our mouths, warm boots on our feet and woollen mittens on our hands so we didn’t notice how cold it was out there…
My son is named Raven and so people often send me anything and everything that comes across their feed that has to do with corvids. And so, I was reading about crows recently (as one does) and I was moved by the concept of a scarecrow…
In today’s reading from Psalm 85:10-13, the poet describes the divine forces of love, faithfulness, righteousness, and peace all reaching out for one another from every which way, meeting in a surprising collision that results in the healing of the land and paves the way for the arrival of the Messiah…
At the Ancaster Fair this past Fall I walked past one of those crazy mirrors that distorts everything. Among several ways it changed reality was to make me look thirty pounds lighter. I liked that. But it also made me five feet taller and distorted my body to look like a wavy spaghetti noodle incapable of existence…
I find the Christmas season is hard to untangle as a pastor, as a mom, and really just as a person. So many of our cultural customs have faith stories conflated with consumerism. I love how Christmas lights interrupt the darkness of our shortest days…
Perhaps after reading today’s lectionary, you were like me: uncertain of how to frame your thoughts and reflections in a way that would encompass compassion, hope, generosity, and love, considering the current political climate…
One of our farm chores that often falls to me is closing the animals up at night. As I wrap up my work and shut down my computer, the brightness of its screen gives way to my dark walk out under the stars to close up the chicken coop and ensure all of our animals have what they need for the night…
Welcome to the sixth annual New Leaf Advent Reader. I am so excited to share this collection of reflections with you! In 2018, when we put out our first set of daily reflections, I felt like I was leveraging the whole network to find people willing to write a reflection for this unknown project…