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Honest Advent: Awakening to the Wonder of God-With-Us Then, Here, and Now
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$9.49
Used
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Trade Paperback
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9780310361879
Overview
Overview
For those who are looking for something honest, something real, something with a little more human grit to it and a little less conventional red and green: Honest Advent offers a new kind of devotional.
For too many of us, Christmas has lost its wonder. Maybe for you, the joy of the season is painfully dissonant with the hard edges of life right now. Or maybe you feel wearied by the way Christmas has become a polished, predictable brand. Or maybe this sacred story feels too far removed from our world today, a world that's hard to make sense of.
But what if the Christmas story is not just something that happened a long time ago . . . but a story that is still happening today? Honest Advent: Awakening to the Wonder of God-With-Us Then, Here, and Now illuminates the astonishing, hope-filled truth that the God who showed up in the hardest parts of our humanity is still doing so today.
From celebrated artist-storyteller Scott Erickson: 25 days of heart-stirring images and thought-provoking meditations to rekindle the wonder of God-with-us in this season. Honest Advent creates a space for you to encounter the Incarnate Christ in unexpected places: like a pregnancy announcement in an era of political unrest and empirical bloodshed, the morning sickness of a Middle Eastern teenager, and the shocking biology of birth that goes far beyond the sanitized brand of Christmas as we know it.
Then, through powerful benedictions, prayers, and questions for honest reflection, you will discover how the wonder of God-with-us is still happening today: in your unexpected change of plans, your unaccomplished dreams, your overcrowded lodging, your humble stories of new beginnings. In a world that's difficult to make sense of, and a season that's so often overtaken by consumerism, find here fresh eyes to see this powerfully sacred story.
Jesus appeared in a way no one expected: incarnating by way of human vulnerability. He does the exact same thing in our lives today: bringing light and life through our ordinary everyday vulnerabilities.
- Format: TradePaperback
- Author: Erickson, Scott
- ISBN: 9780310361879
- Condition: Used
- Dimensions: 8.30 x 0.60
- Number Of Pages: 224
- Publication Year: 2020
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“The magic of Christmas is knowing...God-with-Us in all of our goopy humanity."
Jennifer E. - 4 years 3 months agoScott Erickson’s Honest Advent introduces “pregnancy, biology, history, and mystery as sacred meeting places with the incarnational Christ.” “God came to use floating in embryonic fluid…Embedded in the uterine wall of a Middle Eastern teenage woman It trusted to care for Its fragile knitting process…birthed out of another paradoxical mystery–one where the finite and Infinite wove together salvation in the belly of a Middle Eastern young woman…The presence of God was felt as the unease of morning sickness…who’s willing to be attached by a placenta for nourishment and life to Its own creation…This is the work the Spirit is wanting to do in the soul womb of all humanity.” Breath is “a multifaceted word alluding to the hidden animating Spirit from whom all life emanates.” And it all begins in the very lungs of a baby. Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus. “Three sets of inhales and exhales braided quietly together. The sound of a new family.” The Christmas story starts with a once upon a time of “who’s who of misfits throughout the Jewish tradition…Each one of us, in a way, is a genealogy of all kinds of histories that are worthy of both celebration and regret…a culmination of holy moments and juicy moments too…and it is this paradox of interior genealogy that we carry into the season of Advent, wondering if Christ could come into our complicated midst as well.” “The magic of Christmas is knowing that the saving Christ has always been in the fecal muck with us–and still is today, God-with-Us in all of our goopy humanity…An honest Advent…leads to an honest hope, which perhaps saves us from two unholy polarities–the empty positivity and blind optimism that masquerade as hope…or the surrender to despair and hopelessness…to consider every situation…as the very birthplace for divine participation.”