Introduction to the Advent Devotional Guide
Greetings from the Belmont School of Theology and Christian Ministry and welcome to the latest installment of our Advent Devotional Guide.
For going on two decades now, the Advent Devotional Guide has been a valuable resource for the Belmont community, and regular readers will notice we’ve made two adjustments to this year’s guide.First, apart from Sundays, rather than listing Scripture passages, we’ve decided to publish them in full. Our hope is that having easy access to the passages for each day of Advent will encourage contemplation of these rich texts.
Second, rather than publishing a devotional for each day of Advent, this year’s guide offers a devotional for each Sunday of Advent, along with devotionals for Christmas Eve and Christmas.
The authors of the Christmas devotionals will likely be unfamiliar to you. Nicholas Norman-Krause and Jordan Daniel Wood are our two newest full-time faculty members in the School of Theology. We are delighted to welcome them into our community, and we hope you’re encouraged by their reflections.
As ever, these devotionals are not intended to be definitive pronouncements. Rather, we offer them as suggestions for contemplation and invitations to conversation. None of us claims to have ready-made answers to your deepest questions, and we don’t pretend to be spiritual experts. As Christian people, we’ve caught a glimpse of God’s infinite love in Jesus Christ, and now we long to see in that light, to move within the movements of God’s grace.
So as we wait on the Lord together this Advent season, we pray these texts and reflections would shake a little dust off ordinary perception, offer a few fresh angles of vision, and encourage you as you seek to live in sync with the one who is making all things new.
Adam Neder
Professor of Theology
Associate Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
