Waiting for Christmas
25 Advent readings with David, Zechariah, Mary and Joseph, guided by the book of Luke
A daily Advent devotional for December 1 to 25, guided by Luke. Twenty-five readings trace one promise from David's tent to the manger, with a carpenter, a shopkeeper, a nurse, and a delivery driver beside David, Zechariah, Mary, and Joseph. Each day ends with a question and a prayer.
279 pages25 chaptersEnglish
About this book
You know the Christmas story from the carols. This year you want to read it for yourself.
Waiting for Christmas is a daily Advent devotional for December 1 to 25, guided by the book of Luke. Each day reads one passage and asks two questions: what was promised, and how was it kept. It starts with a king told his house will never end, waits with an old priest who cannot speak, walks the hill country with Mary, and takes the road to Bethlehem with Joseph. These daily scripture reflections suit quiet mornings alone or with the household, and need no prior knowledge. The book does not promise that what you are still waiting on from God will arrive by the twenty-fifth. It shows how He kept one promise, and how small and near the keeping looked.
Inside:
- Twenty-five readings with one person of today each week: Caleb the carpenter, Marjorie at her hardware store, Lena the nurse, and Dan in his delivery truck
- What it says: the passage in everyday words, then and now side by side
- Did you know?: one checked fact that changes how the verse reads
- Today: where the passage meets your work, money, family, or faith this week
- A question and a prayer to close each day
- The promise card, a running exercise that fills in as the promise is kept
- A guide for small groups at the back
The perfect Christmas gift for a mom, a grandfather, a grown son far from home, or a friend who loves the season and has never read the nativity story straight through. Slip it under the tree or into a stocking, and it is just as much a book to keep for yourself.
When you close it on Christmas Day, you can trace one promise from a king's tent to a manger, and you know what to do with the day now that it has come: go, see, tell, and keep it.
Pick up one to keep and one to give, and a December tradition begins in two houses.
What is inside
- Day 1: The house God builds
- Day 2: A promise set to music
- Day 3: A name before the birth
- Day 4: The light finds an address
- Day 5: Green from the cut
- Day 6: Small among the clans
- Day 7: The days are coming
- Day 8: The lot falls on his name
- Day 9: Your request has been heard
- Day 10: The silence has an end
- Day 11: Healing in its wings
- Day 12: Four words on a tablet
- Day 13: His first words were thanks
- Day 14: The road before the sun
- Day 15: A house with no stone
- Day 16: A yes in one breath
- Day 17: Someone who already knows
- Day 18: A song in the past tense
- Day 19: The one who waits to open
- Day 20: Embraced from afar
- Day 21: A word said twice
- Day 22: The name he was handed
- Day 23: The road Rome ordered
- Day 24: The night shift hears first
- Day 25: Just as it was told
A look inside
Day 1: The house God builds
The man who wanted to build God a house is told, in one night, that God will build one for him.
Caleb is on his knees in his father-in-law’s garage with a carpenter’s pencil, and the floor plan of the fixer-upper is taking shape on a sheet of plywood. He has walked it twice with the agent and once on his own, standing in the street. The wall between the kitchen and the back room comes out. He draws it anyway and puts a line of small crosses through it, so that anyone reading the plan will know it is gone.
Above him the two rooms he and Jo rent are warm and small and full of wedding presents still in boxes. He is thankful for them. He is also thirty-one and has built other people’s porches for twelve years, and he would like to drive home one evening to a doorframe he set himself.
The bank said before Christmas. That was eleven days ago. He does not check the phone while he draws. He has decided that.
Jo comes down the stairs in his work jacket and stands over the plywood. She does not ask which room is which. She points to the back corner, where the window would be, and says, “That is where the tree goes.” He writes the word tree there, in capitals, and finds he is smiling at a floor that does not belong to him yet.
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