Why Celebrate Advent?

Kay >> Hi. I’m Kay Daigle of Beyond Ordinary Women Ministries. Welcome to this podcast episode and video. Whichever way you’re watching or listening, we are thrilled that you have joined us. I am joined today by Nika Spaulding. Nika is a speaker, an author, a writer, and she is almost finished with her DMin in New Testament. Welcome Nika.

Nika >> Thanks, Kay. I’m excited to be here. And I’m excited for this topic. I think you and I both are, so this will be fun.

Kay >> Yeah, I think so too. So when do you finish this New Testament degree?

Nika >> So all I have left is the thesis, so I suppose it’s as quickly as I can write, which means not for a while. So it’s not going as fast as I anticipated, but I think I’ll be done in June 2025 and ready to graduate. So hopefully I’ll knock that.

Kay >> That’s really right around the corner.

Nika >> Yeah, it feels like it’s right there. Like I’ve done all the, you know, the classes and you know, how it goes. Can you do all this work? And then you’re like, the finish line is, I can see it, but what’s between the finish line and now is like 90 pages. So I can knock that out.

Kay >> Yeah, well, I can hardly wait to read it.

Nika >> Thank you.

Kay >> Anyway, Nika and I do want to talk about Advent and I think that we both have really benefited from celebrating Advent through the years. For me, I didn’t grow up in a church that celebrated Advent in any way. We weren’t a liturgical church in any way. We didn’t do things like this, and it was really only as an adult that one of the churches I was in even had the Advent wreath and the candles in the church.

But I have really grown to love Advent over the last few years. What about you, Nika? What is your background with Advent?

Nika >> Yeah, it sounds so similar to yours.

So I not only didn’t grow up in a liturgical church, I didn’t really grow up in the church at all. So my only experience of Advent was I had a great aunt who had sent my brother, sister and I chocolate Advent calendars, so I thought Advent was like chocolate. Like I thought it was like you get a piece of chocolate a day and my sister would eat all of hers before we even got to December 5th, and my brother would like hoard his and hide, you know?

And so I had no idea Advent was a part of a church tradition until I was an adult. And it’s interesting because I asked my two roommates who did grow up in the church but did not grow up in liturgical churches like you, and neither of them had any concept of it until they were adults. And I asked them as well, Did you have a concept of Lent?

You know, you think of these two seasons: Advent prepares you for Christmas and Lent prepares you for Easter. And they both knew what Lent was growing up, but not Advent, which I thought was really fascinating. Once I learned what it was, once I learned sort of the rhythms of it, and once I learned how significant it is throughout church history, I love the season of Advent.

And I think it’s incredibly important to my rhythms of worship and what would otherwise be a very busy season because Advent is during the month of December typically and sometimes it leaks into November but very busy season for me and I’m sure for many people listening. And without Advent, I think I would whiz right by it. I mean just completely miss the significance of the season.

Kay >> Yeah, I’m kind of like you because I think the first time I really heard about Advent was more about the Advent calendar that you were just marking the days. It was more of a marking the days until Christmas, til Santa, actually.

Nika >> Yeah.

Kay >> I really think that originally those Advent calendars just kind of got you to Santa, and I didn’t realize that they were really rooted in the church either. It was just more of a fun thing to do with your kids. And that was really all that I knew about it.

I have a quote from Tish Harrison Warren. She’s got this book, Advent, that I really like.

And as we think about what Advent is, I thought this was sort of a good start to our conversation. “We begin our Christian year” — and as Nika just mentioned this will be the start of the new Christian year as Advent.

“We begin our Christian year in waiting. We do not begin with our own frenetic effort or energy. We do not begin with the merriment of Christmas or the triumph of Easter. We do not begin with the work of the church or the mandate of the Great Commission. Instead, we begin in a place of yearning. We wait for our King to come.”

Nika >> So good.

Kay >> It’s a time of waiting, really.

Nika >> Yeah.

Kay >> So tell us more about it. You mentioned four weeks.

Nika >> Yeah.

Kay >> What is that?

Nika >> So yeah. So Advent is really just the simple word. It just means arrival. And we get it from a Latin term that the church would use. But the Greek word was parousia, the idea of like the coming of Christ. So when you think about the original first time Jesus comes, and you think about how long the people of God waited for that moment, right?

You think about Protestant Bibles, our Bibles, end with Malachi. And so we kind of go, oh, Malachi ends, and then Matthew opens, and now we’ve got Jesus after 400 years of what we typically call silence or waiting and all of that. But the way the Bible was originally designed is actually 2 Chronicles was the last book of the Bible.

And when you get to the end of 2 Chronicles, the temple’s rebuilt, and they expect the glory of God to descend upon it like it did in the days of old. And God doesn’t, his glory does not descend. And so the people are left like, Oh no. And so there’s this massive like oh, at the end of 2 Chronicles where you’re going, when will God’s glory return? Like when will God come to dwell with us again? And so then you open up to the New Testament.

And so Advent is really just a word that means like arrival, but it’s arrival like Tish says, like after a long waiting if you mark the Christian calendar. So you mentioned the Christian calendar. If you didn’t grow up in liturgical tradition (I didn’t), so if you’ve never heard this before, you are in a in a club of people that I belong to for the longest time. So you have Advent, then you have Christmas Day. Then you actually have two weeks of Christmas season, which is where if you go to liturgical church, you’re still singing Christmas songs well into January, which is really fun.

And you sing them until when the Magi would have come. And then we move into Lent and then Easter. And so you have these rhythms of the Christian church. Well, Advent starts it all.

So you start with four Sundays prior to Christmas, and typically purple is the color of Advent. So you might see churches put purple out and you’ve always maybe wondered why they do that. Purple is for Advent and purple is for Lent, and those are seasons of waiting and preparation and they end on the big days, on the two big days of our calendar, Christmas and Easter.

Prior to those big days, we have a season of waiting. And so the four weeks prior to Christmas, each week represents like a Christian attribute or an ideal or this, you know, this thing that we want to become more of, these things that God has called us to be.

And so the first Sunday is hope. The second Sunday is peace. The third Sunday is joy. And the fourth Sunday, to the surprise of no one, is love because that’s obviously the most important one. And then you end on Christmas Day whenever Christmas Day falls, and that is the Christ Sunday or the Christ Day, which is of course, Christmas. So you have these four weeks.

And what’s really fun is if depending on the churches you go to, you might focus on that. So you might preach on hope and talk about hope and do readings on hope. And then you light a single candle typically in the wreath, and now you’ve got hope. And then the next Sunday hope is already lit and you talk about peace.

And so you can spend your four weeks really thinking about these really important things that belong to the Christian heritage, these ideas of I mean, big ideas. I mean these like big things of Christ, which is, you know, hope, peace, joy and love. You would think like what a great time to focus on those things when the world is focused on buying more gifts, making more treats, going to more parties.

And none of that is bad merriment. Good. All of that is like beautiful. We should celebrate all through the seasons but if you focus too much on those, you miss out on the real reason of these weeks leading up to Christmas.

Kay >> Right. I read something really interesting. I don’t know if you’ve read this before, but originally in the medieval times, the original Advent that surfaced the four Sundays were death, judgment, heaven and hell.

Nika >> Yeah. Yeah. So the season of Advent. So this is what’s interesting about Advent. Advent has it’s been around for a really long time, so nobody knows exactly how it started. Right? We know by the four hundreds, Christian churches are celebrating and acknowledging Advent. We know that. But what’s interesting is in some of the earliest traditions, there was a season of fasting and a season of repentance.

And when you think about that, if you think about the original waiting on Jesus, the original first coming of Jesus, that was an invitation to fast and repent. If you think about you know, the Israelites had really forsaken the direction God was calling them. They had forsaken, you know, they’ve already lost the land. They’d been in exile.

God very graciously allows them to come back into the promised land under, you know, Darius and Xerxes. Like you see Ezra, Nehemiah, this idea that they’ve come back into the land after they’ve lost it because of their rebellion. But in coming back to the land, they don’t really get back all that they’ve lost. They’re talking about the glory of God.

And so that 400 years was an invitation to worship again. Are you going to repent of all of your revolt? Are you going to walk with God? And so throughout the church tradition, many, many many years and still I believe in the Eastern Church today, it is a season of fasting, which is something to think about that.

Think about if you were fasting in the middle of December. I actually did a fast in December and I did it as part of a seminary assignment. And it was the dumbest time to fast because every party I went to would be like Have a cookie. And I was like, I can’t really have a cookie, you know, like, Why can’t you have a cookie? And in my mind, you know, you’re trying to fast in secret. And I was like, this is hard.

So imagine you are fasting and you’re thinking about all that Christ will save you from when he comes. And that’s a very different posture. And I don’t necessarily know that’s a bad posture I prefer to focus on the positives, but it is a part of the church tradition.

Kay >> Yeah, it is. Prayer, fasting and alms were the traditional disciplines that the church used during Lent as well as during Advent because the big celebration days, the big feast days are Christmas and Easter. And there’s always fasting before those days. And I think even the Anglican Church still encourages those traditional disciplines in their churches.

And I’m with you. How do you fast in December? But the great thing about fasting is you never fast on Sunday. So even if you were fasting, you ve still got those Sundays.

Nika >> Yeah.

Kay >> So you can convince your friends to have their parties on Sundays.

Nika >> When I first learned about Lent just like you understood it from Mardi Gras perspective, like this, like cultural Lent. And then when I really studied what Lent was and realized, oh, Sundays don’t count. Like I realize like oh, that’s sweet. Like we still recognize in the midst of our season of preparation: Christ has come, Christ has forgiven sins, Christ has died on the cross, Christ has risen.

And that to me is like it’s this really beautiful, refreshing break in the midst of, not that fasting, I think should be laborious. I think fasting is an invitation to greater intimacy with the Lord. When you think about what you just said, you think of the Sermon on the Mount and the examples he gives, he talks about fasting, prayer and alms giving, right?

And he’s like, and do it like this and do it cheerfully and don’t announce it, but do it because you are the people of God. And this is how you want to show your allegiance to the one who you belong to. And so it’s a really beautiful thing that I’m so grateful I’ve brought into my life are these rhythms of the church calendar because I missed them and I I’m grateful for what they produce in me in those seasons.

Kay >> Well they were very thoughtfully done. I mean, there were reasons for all of those things and I appreciate the fact that they did this for such a long time, and that is still with us, and that I know about it these days.

Nika >> Yeah.

Kay >> So tell me a little bit more about some of the ways, or maybe let’s go into why someone should celebrate or acknowledge Advent. And we’ve sort of talked about some of that. But go ahead.

Nika >> Yeah, I think with any you know, we’ve talked so many times about discipleship you and I, Kay, both on these podcasts and in other ways. And the thread that seems always go through all of these conversations is there has to be intentionality. I never get around really mature Christians and I think, okay, how did you become what God is making you into and there is a part of it always that God is at work in your life.

Always. God is at work even when we don’t want him to be. But the thing that mature Christians seem to have in common is they set aside time, they institute rhythms, they are intentional about how they spend their days, how they spend their time, how they spend their money, how they connect with the Lord. And so, like when I talk about this frenetic pace of Christmas, that’s fun, that’s enjoyable, all that’s fine.

And you know what? I’m super intentional in that season. I have a favorite things party every year. My roommates go and buy napkins so that every season we have, I don’t understand this, but this is important to them. They change out the pure air filters so that they’re more Christmasy smells, if you can imagine what that is.

So if we’re going to be intentional with that, I think that Advent is an invitation to be really intentional. And so we say on Christmas, this is crazy. We don’t say, Santa’s fine. Whatever. Keep your Santa traditions. We say that a God man was born to a virgin teenage girl in Bethlehem in the middle of the first century when Herod is trying to murder all these babies, and we believe that little baby grows up and saves the world like, that is God incarnate.

That deserves more than one day. That deserves more than waking up giving presents to your kids in your favorite matching pajamas. Like that deserves to be ready to celebrate Christmas, I believe you have to prepare yourself for the full weight of that. And that is what Advent is.

It will form you into the person that is when Christmas comes, you are experiencing what that day really means for you, what it really means for the world, for the people that you love. For this cosmic re-creation that we’re all waiting on. And it prepares you for the next time that he’ll come. Because that’s the thing about Advent, is that it’s interesting.

Like depending on your church traditions, they’ll say, well, there’s two advents that we’re celebrating, some say three. And so the first one that we’re celebrating is the first advent. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and the second one is he’s going to come again. And that is our great hope of a final salvation.

And Advent is an invitation to reflect on both of those.

The third one, depending on the church tradition is his being with us in the Eucharist. So for the higher liturgical, they say there’s also an Advent every time we serve Eucharist, Christ is there with this. I’m not a part of that tradition, but I didn’t want to ignore that because I think it’s important. But I think that’s part of it.

And then I would say, too, we are such a divided church on so many issues. I mean, as we are recording this, we are heading into a election cycle where I don’t know about you, Kay, but I am sick of the commercials. I am looking forward to the election being over for a whole host of reasons.

But the divisive, vitriolic commercials! And I see that leak into our churches. And what Advent is and what all of the church calendar is, is a chance for the catholic church, I mean, small “c”, the united church, to come together and with one voice say this is our season where we prepare ourselves for Jesus coming. And I think there’s something significant and important about a united church using these seasons to prepare ourselves to be a more hopeful people, a more joyful people, a more loving people.

And so that’s another part of why I think Advent is so significant it’s bigger than you and it’s bigger than your family. It’s global and it’s 2000 years old. I mean, maybe! We don’t know that it goes all the way back to the first century. So will say 2000-ish years old, but it’s old.

It’s beautiful and it’s global, which means there are Christians in Ethiopia celebrating Advent. There are Christians in Africa, which is Ethiopia. There are Christians in Asia.There are Christians, the whole world of Christians celebrate Advent together if we would receive that. And I think that is an incredibly beautiful thing to be a part of.

Kay >> Yeah, that’s something I’ve always loved about some of the liturgical things or even saying the Lord’s Prayer regularly in the church is that you are united with all the global Christians in doing this. It is not just you. It is not just your church community. It is all of the church. And really if you focus on that when saying those kinds of prayers, it really is awe-inspiring to think about it.

And the fact that it goes back so far, we are still saying the same things that they have said for centuries. And I really love that.

Another thing that you were talking about was just the coming, and I like the idea of us sort of putting ourselves in the place of those who were waiting for Jesus.

And I like Advent devotionals that help me do that because the people of God have been waiting since Adam.

Nika >> Yeah.

Kay >> You know.

Nika >> Yeah.

Kay >> For the coming of Jesus and all those centuries waiting and waiting and waiting. And it, you know, it puts us in their place thinking about his coming and the way the world was. And it also is a time and this is part of Advent for us to think about his next coming because our world is just as broken and just as messed up.

And we are messed up still, despite the fact that we have been redeemed by the cross, we still are messed up and everything around us is messed up. And you’re talking about, you know, the whole electoral thing. If nothing makes it more clear, this does. We are broken and we have a really hard time in life. And then the world is broken and we deal with all kinds of suffering and pain, and we need Jesus to come again.

We are waiting. We’re sitting in this darkness waiting for the light to come.

Nika >> Yeah, if there’s one thing that mature Christians will tell you is God doesn’t ever seem to be in a hurry. And the invitation to wait is not new to our generation, and we wait horribly. You know, I remember, you know, not having the Internet.

It’s the Internet. Like you’re being connected to things that five months before that, I could have never known or whatever. But I remember those dial tones, like ringing, mingling and like waiting to get on the Internet and having no patience for that. I mean, having no patience for anything like I want solutions now. I want things fixed now. I want everything.

And so Advent goes, hey, let’s go put on the sandals of those who they watched the temple be rebuilt. They believed God’s glory was going to come down. And he didn’t. And they waited. And they waited. And they waited. And does that mean God wasn’t working? No. Does it mean that God forgot about them? No. Does that mean that God wasn’t true to His promise? No.

God is always remembering us. He’s true to his promises. But you look at even you know, I’m in the beginning of Exodus right now in a personal reading plan and 400 years of them enslaved. Right? And you just sit here and you go, how long, O Lord?

And how long, O Lord, is the refrain of the Psalms at times is the refrain of the people of God. And so Advent allows us to be almost comforted by this waiting that we experience. That in the midst of the brokenness we’re asking God now, right now, how long O Lord until you will make all things right? How long O Lord till you’ll heal this person I’m praying for, until you’ll fix my marriage, till you’ll save my kid. Like how long is the heartbeat of those in lament. And Advent allows you to go, Gosh, there have always been seasons when God’s people weren’t sure God was working, weren’t sure how long it was going to take, and yet we see God’s faithfulness in the end.

We see how the waiting brings about greater trust and greater dependance on God. And so Advent is a season where we go, Gosh, I’m going to put on the sandals of those who did wait and that helps me to wait now.

If anybody who’s listening to this right now, if I were to say to you, is there something you’re waiting on God to do? And if you’re really honest with yourself, you’d say, Yeah, yeah. At a minimum, we’re all cosmically waiting. Like the creation itself, like Paul tells us, groans. Like the creation itself is like, Hey, we’re — This isn’t good enough. We’re ready for the new heavens and the earth.

But all of us people are waiting on God to do something. And we need reminders that when it feels like God is slow, he’s still at work. And when it feels like God has forgotten us, he never forgets. And when it feels like God isn’t going to keep his promises, he always keeps his promises.

And Advent prepares you for that and allows you to be comforted in your waiting because saints have always been. When you’re talking about the things we do with believers every Sunday when I was a resident theologian, when we get ready to do the Apostles Creed and I would this how I’d say, “Hey, we joined believers all over the world and throughout history who say, this is what we believe.”

Like this idea. Like right now we’re connected to believers all over the world in different time zones and we’re connected through history. And that is also part of this is like you’re connected to those who had to wait, those who are currently waiting, those who will continue to wait. And in the waiting, we trust that God is good, God is at work, and he doesn’t forget us.

And that is a part of Advent that we need. I mean, we need to be reminded that God has not forgotten us and he’s still at work in this broken world. And we need him to come back and fix all of this.

Kay >> One of the things that I found interesting when I first started studying about Advent was that John the Baptist is one of the main figures in the weeks of Advent. And in the liturgical church, he’s a normal thing that they preach on during this time period. And I think it goes back to you talking about lament. If we’re really sitting in the waiting, really waiting with hope, John the Baptist is a great character because he calls people to repent. And we may not fast, but I do think repentance is very helpful as a time to think through what is wrong with me and my world and what am I looking forward to in hope that Jesus is going to come and fix.

Nika >> That’s so good. Yeah. John the Baptist, right? Because you have these Isaiah passages.

Kay >> Yes.

Nika >> The voice crying out in the wilderness.

Kay >> John the Baptist — they’re the 2 biggies.

Nika >> Yeah. And then he’s like, this connection, right? I mean, it’s really beautiful what the New Testament authors do with him. Also when people are like, Oh, that’s a little weird. I’m like, right, he is. That’s by design. He looks like Jeremiah wailing. He looks like all the weird prophets. He’s the last prophet before the real prophet comes.

And I even think about what you’re talking about with he comes, he calls people to repentance and you think, okay, he’s, he’s the cousin of Jesus, right? I mean, this is like imagine being the cousin of Jesus and you grow up with this guy and it’s like — you know, he’s Jesus because you were called to call everybody to repentance for this guy.

And then you call out Herod and then you’re going to get your head cut off. And you send your disciples to Jesus and they’re basically like, hey, John’s in trouble. Like, are you, in fact, him? Like, are you actually the guy? Because I’m in danger here. And Jesus, maybe what John’s expecting is that Jesus comes in and knocks Herod off his throne and sits down on the, you know, the chair. You don’t know, but what Jesus sends back is, oh, yeah, no, yeah, I’m him.

And then John gets his head cut off and you go — what? But when you think about John the Baptist even this guy who’s family of Jesus, he knows what it is to wait. He knows what it is to suffer. He knows what it is to call people to repentance. And he is such a beautiful figure of what Advent is.

And don’t you know, when the new heaven and earth come, John the Baptist will be there. And he might be able to say like — Gosh, I wish I had a few more years on this earth, that was like a crummy ending. But he lived his life faithfully and he did what God was calling him to do. And Jesus goes — Yeah, no, I am the Messiah, but this isn’t how it’s going to go down, John. And I think that is such a beautiful reminder, too.

The Christmas season is like it’s almost like instant gratification, right? I want this present. If you have the money and the resources and someone who loves you, I want X. Oh, no, X is under the tree. I’m so surprised. Right? At least that’s how I did presents with my parents growing up. I just told them like, one thing I wanted so I always got it. And that is like, okay, great. That’s sweet. We buy each other presents. There’s nothing wrong with that. We should do that. We should buy people presents. We should celebrate people. We should celebrate Christmas.

But that instant gratification is so different than what we typically experience in the Christian life. Does God often answer prayers instantaneous? Of course he does. But if John the Baptist teaches us anything, sometimes it’s continued suffering. Sometimes it’s the end that we didn’t want. But it’s not the end of the story because there is a second coming.

And that is an important reminder in the midst of, because if you’ve lost somebody, then you know the holidays are hard. And so I want to speak to the person who’s listening and going, I don’t plan to have a happy holiday. We’re missing someone around the table that would be there or relationships right now are really hard or I’m not going to be able to go home for whatever reason. And I want to tell you, like in the midst that Jesus comes into the darkness as a light and he will come again in the midst of this darkness and make all things right. And so Advent is also hope for those who are brokenhearted.

Kay >> Yeah, I love that. Absolutely. So what would be some ways that you would suggest for people to celebrate Advent? If they wanted to really have a meaningful Christmas, and they wanted to spend the weeks in advance preparing for that and sitting in the waiting, how can they do that?

Nika >> Yeah. I think, one, what’s so beautiful is because the churches have been doing this for so long, it’s actually like you’re beautifully resourced to do this. And what I mean by this is depending on whatever church tradition you’re in, chances are that church tradition has a list of readings for Advent. So I would encourage people, and in fact we wrote our own for St Jude, and I’ll give them to you to put up on the Beyond Ordinary Women website.

Yeah. In case someone says I don’t even know where to look — look no further, we have that. But one of the things that I think any family should and could do is I would get an Advent wreath. So it’s three purple candles. One pink. Pink represents the joy, so goes purple, purple, pink, purple, and then white. okay, and if you just google Advent candles, everybody has them. Hobby Lobby sells them. Michaels sells them. You don’t even have to try.

But I would get that and I think I would have readings. I would do it on Sunday evenings with my family. And I have roommates and we do liturgical traditions and we’re not family, but we’re family. And so that’s one of the things is I would find readings because I think they allow you to slow down. It allows everybody in the family to participate.

And so I’d find readings and I would light the candles and I would go through, but I would go a step further. And I would do this if I were leading a ministry. I know a lot of times ministries take a break during December, and that’s like I never did Advent with any of the women’s ministries I led because we didn’t meet during December. But I did finally lead an Advent class when I was at St Jude because I was like, “Nope, dang it, we are doing Advent.”

So we had we had a class each week. I would each week focus on that week’s word. So if you want to do the repentance, the prayer, all that, fine, but I would recommend Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. But we talked all about hope and we read passages about hope, and then we would talk about what we’re all hoping for.

So I remember I got sticky notes and I just had people put things that they’re hoping for on this board and then we read it together is really beautiful to think about because that also what I didn’t do is what’s something that you hope for that only God can do? Like, you can’t make that happen. God is going to have to make, God is going to have to move for that to become a reality.

And like, let’s hope big because hope is vulnerable because if you hope in something, you pray for something and it doesn’t happen, you risk heartache and God’s worth risking heartache on. So that’s what I would do. Each week then we talked about what brings you peace and then we talked about what brings you joy. And we did this each week and this is what I would do, whether you’re leading a family, whether you’re leading a ministry, a small group, a devotional group, I would spend each week talking about those things and then asking people what it is they’re hoping for.

And if you don’t know how to talk about them, the Bible project has an Advent series. Their videos are phenomenal. I think each of them is 5 minutes. I mean, you’re talking a very short explainer video, all about hope, all about peace, all about joy. So you can just play that video and then talk about hope. And so that’s one of the things that I would do.

I would also spend time in prayer asking God to come again. I think that’s also a part of the season is an invitation to say you came once and you changed the world when you came once. What you were saying, Kay, earlier, like we still need more. We need you to finish the rescue operation. We need you to come and fix all these broken things.

I would pray as I read through Revelation. Go read Revelation six and then go read Revelation 20 and 21, where it talks about there’s no more hunger, there’s no more pain, there’s no more tears and go, God, I want that.

And I pray to that end that you would come again and fix all that’s broken. But as I prayed, I wouldn’t lose sight of what the scriptures also tell us that God is not slow in how we count slowness. But he doesn’t desire for anyone to perish. And so this waiting that we’re in is so that more people can come to know Christ.

And so I would be bold talking about Advent with coworkers, with friends, with family to say like, hey, this is a season where I’m focusing on Jesus coming, and I want you to know he came. He came for you. He loves you. He came for you. And so I think that’s another thing that I would add into rhythms is being intentional.

I think, again, that sums it all up — be intentional. That’s what I would say. And so at our church, I don’t know if y’all do this, Kay, we only sing Advent songs in Advent. It drove me crazy because I wanted Christmas songs. Like I wanted to sneak a few Christmas songs in.

Kay >> Not us.

Nika >> Okay, yeah. But to that end, I do enjoy singing Advent songs like Oh Come, O Come Emmanuel. So if you’re not sure what I mean by this, like there are Christmas songs where Jesus has been born. Yay, yay, yay. And then there are songs are like, Come O, Come Emmanuel kind of songs. And those tend to be a little bit more somber.

And so we only sing Advent songs in the season of Advent, and then on Christmas Day and then the two weeks after Christmas, we sing Christmas songs. Which means we’re the only people singing Christmas songs. Well, that’s not true. A lot of Christians do that, but we’re still singing Christmas songs in January. But create a Spotify playlist and play it during carpool and talk to your kids about why these songs were written and what it means. And a lot of them are really old.

Like they’re really old songs are hundreds of years old. And so talking about how we as a church have been singing Advent songs since the first Advent. And so I think that would be what I would encourage people do is just be intentional. Do something to mark this time and say, I’m setting this apart to prepare me for the weight of Christmas.

The weight of Christmas is big. We’ll never fully comprehend it. You can sit through the rest of your life and ponder Christmas, and you’ll never fully wrap your brain around it. But I want to be prepared to ponder it in a way that honors the Christ King who came on Christmas.

Kay >> Yeah, yeah. I love all those ideas and definitely encourage that. One of the books that I have that I’ve enjoyed the most just if you want to have a little devotional for yourself or maybe your whole family, depending on how old they are, is Watch for the Light.

Nika >> It’s so good. Yeah. Highly recommend.

Kay >> Yes, I really, really love this one. And it is readings for Advent and Christmas. And it has readings from a lot of ministers and Christian leaders and Christian writers through a long time. They’ve pulled from their writings, and it’s really good. This is my favorite devotional for Advent that I’ve used and I really do love it. If you’re used to doing a devotional every day turning to something specifically for Advent in this time is another intentional way to get your mind thinking about our waiting, thinking about the coming of Jesus and what he did for us.

All those things that are going to prepare us really for Christmas.

Nika >> Yeah, I think that’s so good. Those readings that you just pointed out, friends, I always think like, Oh, reading that takes time, five to 10 minutes per devotional. You could read it as a family. You can read it to your cat. I mean, it’s in there. They’re so beautifully written. What they pulled, they’re meaty. You’re not going to get to the end of it and be like, Oh, okay, that was kind of fluffy. They’re beautifully written reflections on Advent.

I would add Tish’s book to that. I think that’s another recommended resource. And then if you really want to nerd out, I mean, if you really, Fleming Rutledge it’s like this big has a book, Advent, which if you really want to nerd out, go for that one. And that will be a good reading.

But I do think like having that daily reminder, and you know what? Buy yourself a chocolate advent calendar, like grab that little piece of chocolate and then read your little devotional. You get the best of both worlds. But it all comes back to intentionality.

So whether you’re leading a ministry, whether you’re leading a family, whether you’re just leading yourself and whether you’re leading a small group that meets in your house, or whether you’re not leading anything but you have influence or you want to influence a group that you’re a part of. I mean, do not underestimate like what intentionality can do. Kay and I both have led large ministries, and so many of our best ideas were someone else’s who took the time to say, Hey, have you ever thought about this?

So just be intentional is what I’d say. And it’s not hard to find beautiful, incredible resources out there. You just have to decide, I want to spend this season really joining with the rest of the church throughout history and all over the world and saying, I’m preparing myself for Christmas morning. And then celebrate, yay, Christmas is yay, yay, yay, you know, and that’s a really beautiful way to end that season.

Kay >> Right. Well, thank you, Nika. I’m so glad that you brought up this topic when we were texting back and forth about what we might talk about, because I think it’s so timely for us to just go ahead and do this and have it ready for this Advent that’s coming very quickly here. And I think by the time that we post this, it’s going to be right at the beginning, right before Advent starts.

So I hope that this will be an encouragement to each one of you out there to not only participate in Advent intentionally this year, but also encourage others, as Nika said, those around you to participate with you. I think that would be great.

Nika >> I love it. I’m excited about this, Kay. Thank you for letting me be a part of it.

Kay >> Oh, thank you for coming. This was terrific.

And we just invite you to browse our website BeyondOrdinaryWomen.org. We have many resources. This is the only one on Advent, I’m sorry, but we do have many resources. But we will also have a list on our website of the resources that Nika and I have just been talking about, in case you’re not quite sure what we said, that will be written down, you can read and we’ll give links to those things.

But browse our website for other thoughts about really your own soul care and how you relate with God. How you come before him and wait for him in a hard time. Advent is one of those ways.

Nika >> Love it.

Kay >> Thank you for joining us.