It’s beginning to look a lot like . . . Christmas.
Really? Isn’t it just October?
I know we’ve just started enjoying fall and pumpkin-spice everything, so it may feel too early to be thinking about Christmas tunes and tinsel trees. However, our TGC editorial team has been working on something special for the Advent season, and we’re excited to get to share it with you.
For generations, churches and families have used Advent wreaths to help prepare for celebrating the Lord’s birth at Christmas. The evergreen wreath symbolizes eternal life and includes four candles—typically three purple and one pink, with a white candle in the middle that symbolizes the purity of Christ. Various traditions assign different topics to each candle, and the candles are usually given names to remind us of the good news of Christ’s birth.
About the Book
To celebrate this season, TGC’s editorial team put together 25 devotional readings that use the Advent wreath as a guide to focus hearts and minds on Christ during the month of December. Structured around traditional Advent themes—hope, peace, joy, love, and faith—these reflections will encourage your heart in this season of celebrating Christ’s first coming, and longing for his second.
Our devotional, The Weary World Rejoices: Daily Devotions for Advent, offers daily Scripture readings, thoughtful reflections, questions to consider, and songs for rejoicing. In this devotional, you’ll get to hear from all of our editors: Quina Aragon, Winfree Brisley, Justin Dillehay, Courtney Doctor, Samuel James, Melissa Kruger, Collin Hansen, Megan Hill, Betsy Childs Howard, Brett McCracken, Ivan Mesa, Matt Smethurst, and Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra. Pre-order today to make sure your copy will arrive in time!
Ideas for How to Read It
You can begin the devotional on December 1 and have one reading per day until Christmas. Or, if you prefer to follow the Sundays in Advent, you can use these reflections for five days a week leading up to Christmas, and then use the final week after Christmas (week 5) to continue to reflect on a life of faith in light of the good news of Christ’s birth.
If you’d like to use this guide with your family, you could pick one devotion from each week to accompany the lighting of your Advent wreath in the home. In whatever ways you choose to use this devotional, we hope and pray that these readings will encourage your heart and help your mind focus on Jesus throughout this season.
We look forward to celebrating the good news proclaimed by Isaiah so long ago:
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. (Isa. 9:6)
The Gospel Coalition