Advent: Through Image & Word

Christmas neither ignores the tragedies and terrors of our world, nor does it minimize them in any way. Instead, the story of Christ’s coming into the world is set within a context of fear and violence and scarcity and stark oppression.

This is one of the most important things that pastors and leaders ought to be reminding their people in the months to come. Anything less than that is not, in fact, the gospel according to Saint Matthew and Saint Luke.

Such a message and such a gospel reassures us that God comes into the world with eyes wide awake, as it were, and penetrates the darkness of this sin-fractured world to its core in order to sow shalom from within.

As our Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters would remind us, salvation begins at the Incarnation. It does not begin at the preaching and healing ministry of Jesus. It does not begin at the cross. It does not begin at the resurrection.

God’s saving work in the flesh of Jesus Christ begins the moment Mary conceives the only begotten Son by the power of the Holy Spirit. (It belongs long before that, of course, in Genesis 3, but the Incarnation is sui generis in salvation history.)

It is the whole story of Advent and Christmas and Epiphany, moreover, that defines our faith—not just the “little town of Bethlehem,” or the baby who “does not cry” in the crib, or that one “holy night.”

That’s what Phaedra and I have tried to capture in this collection of illustrated prayer cards: the “whole” story.

It includes familiar themes, such as Faith and Hope, Shepherds and Angels, but also less familiar ones, like Feasting and Sorrow, Fear and Doubt, the Fantastical and the Mundane, Nicholas Day and Epiphany.

How can they help?

They can aid your morning prayers, or serve as a mealtime conversation-starter with housemates, or become a resource to small groups and children’s ministries, or contribute to a sermon illustration, or otherwise.

The hope, in the end, is that both word and image, prayer and action, might become a natural habit for all of us who follow Jesus in these strange and unsettling times.

You can purchase them here through the Rabbit Room. And please pass this along to anybody you think might enjoy having them!