Waiting for Christmas
25 Advent readings with David, Zacharias, Mary and Joseph, guided by the book of Luke
A daily Advent devotional for December 1 to 25, guided by Luke, tracing one promise from David's tent to the manger. Four people of today, a surprise for Christmas Day that children can join, and a guide for small groups with 25 meetings at the back.
275 pages25 chaptersEnglish
About this book
You love December, and you know the story mostly 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. It follows one promise from David's tent to a manger in Bethlehem and asks two questions of every passage: what was promised, and how was it kept. It is the real story behind the carols, with the nativity story scriptures explained in plain words, and with four people of today who are each waiting for something of their own: Caleb, who builds kitchens for other people, Marjorie and Ray at their hardware store, Lena on the night shift, and Dan on his delivery route. It does not promise that what you are waiting for will arrive this month. It shows what God does with a promise.
Churches, Bible study groups and families can read it together, because the back of the book holds a small group guide for churches in December.
- Twenty-five readings, from the king in his house of cedar to the shepherds at the feeding trough
- Every day: the passage in plain words, one thing about its time worth knowing, a word for your own day, a question and a prayer
- One week each with David and the prophets, Zacharias, Mary and Joseph
- A surprise for Christmas Day, built from one marked word in every reading and collected on the card at the back, and children can join in
- A guide for small groups with twenty-five meetings, each with an opening, the passage, questions to talk over and a prayer
- Scripture quoted from the World English Bible
The perfect Christmas gift for a mom who reads her Bible every morning, a friend who hums the carols but has never read Luke, or a family that wants a nativity countdown with something to build toward. 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 know what to do 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 looked at it once more on his own, from 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 those rooms. 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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