Emerging Scholars Blog

InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network

Advent Resources 2020

2020 Advent Resources: Week 4, Advent Project from Biola

advent candles photo
Used under Creative Commons License CC BY-ND 2.0, Photo by Jorbasa

Each week this Advent season, we’re sharing a different resource readers may find helpful. This week we highlight Biola University’s 2020 Advent Project, an Advent calendar of devotional reflections with art and music chosen from historical and contemporary sources:

http://ccca.biola.edu/advent/2020/

Many Advent calendars end at Christmas, but this one goes all the way through the Twelve Days of Christmas to the Feast of Epiphany on January 6. We pray that it encourages you throughout the rest of Advent and the celebration of Christmas too.

May God bless you richly in this last week of Advent, and bring you a joyful Christmas and hopeful New Year.

–Hannah, for ESN

2020 Advent Resources: Week 3, The Visual Commentary on Scripture

advent candles by Myriams-fotos photo
Photo by Jorbasa Image “3. Advent 2016” by flickr user Jorbasa Fotografie, shared under Creative Commons License CC-BY 2.0

Each week this Advent season, we’re sharing a different resource readers may find helpful. When our minds are overflowing with the complexities of this year, visual art is a form of experience that can help us enter into Advent. The Visual Commentary on Scripture has curated an Advent calendar of visual art for this year.

Each day features a suggested Scripture reading and a thought-provoking collection of three images designed to go with that reading. The images include both contemporary and historical art, and also provide brief commentary on each piece of art and how all three pieces together engage with the Scripture reading. 

I have found the experience of the art and the ideas posed in the commentary help me to think about Advent more deeply. I hope you find this resource helpful as you wrestle with the waiting and questioning of Advent.

2020 Advent Resources, Week 2: Black Liturgies

advent candles photo
Photo by Myriams-Fotos, shared under Simplified Pixabay License, https://pixabay.com/service/license/

This year, we’re sharing a different Advent resource each week. We’re especially focusing on resources that provide deep reflection in a doable amount of time, and that feel the weight of this year and also point us to the riches of our hope in Christ. Today we’re delighted to point readers to Cole Arthur Riley’s Black Liturgies, an ongoing collection of contemplative prayer and reflection shared through Instagram.

Cole Arthur Riley describes herself at her website Black Liturgist as “a writer, liturgist, speaker seeking a deeply contemplative life marked by embodiment and emotion.” She also serves as the Content and Spiritual Formation Manager for Chesterton House, a center for Christian studies at Cornell University.

Cole weaves together biblical images and stories, quotations from literature, contemplative prayer, and contemporary events, expressing the lament and longing of this Advent with profound beauty. You can find the beginning of Cole’s Advent 2020 prayers here, or simply head to Black Liturgies and start with the most recent Advent prayer.

Cole Arthur Riley, Founder of Black Liturgies

2020 Advent Resources: Week 1, The Daily Prayer Project

I love lavish Advent and Christmas decorations–Advent logs with a candle for each day of the season settled on a mantlepiece over the fireplace, real Christmas trees, colorful lights festooning yards and houses. Like many of us this year, though, I’m preparing to honor the season with a variety of adjustments. I don’t have a fireplace or an Advent log, and my space constraints and other factors make a real tree impossible right now.

I’m excited, though, because I have found some alternative ways to honor the season. Though I don’t have a mantelpiece, I have a long hallway. Rather than lighting one candle each day on an Advent log, I plan to set up one new luminary each day along the corridor. (My landlord will no doubt be relieved that I’m using LED tea lights rather than flame). It felt important to me this year to mark the growing light each day of Advent. Maybe that’s the thing that stands out to me most as this season of waiting begins again. It’s felt already like a year with so much waiting, so much difficulty for so many people, so many reasons to look forward to Christ’s coming to heal all things. I’m glad I found a way to light a new candle each day. It reminds me that Christ comes to us in many ways while we wait for the final restoration, and often those ways seem as quiet and fragile as one flame in a winter night.

I imagine many blog readers are also adjusting usual expectations this year, and that you may be feeling that you have less time and headspace for seasonal activities than usual. Some readers may feel you have too much time on your hands in a moment of lockdown or waiting between things. I pray that Christ will be with you, lighting your darkness and giving you hope to look forward to the city where the Lamb will be our light. 

Wherever you are and whatever you’re experiencing, we wanted to share some Advent resources to help you cultivate that hope. We have tried to choose resources that are inexpensive or free to access, that represent a diverse range of Christian experiences, and that can be helpful even if you don’t have much time or headspace.

This first week, we’re featuring a small booklet for Advent 2020 by The Daily Prayer Project (pictured below). It provides short morning and evening prayer liturgies to go with Scripture readings from the Revised Common Lectionary. I especially appreciate the way it selects liturgical readings and songs from Christians in many different times and places, the simple but effective layout, and the thoughtfully chosen art included in the booklet.

Whatever Advent resources you choose this year, may God draw near to you in this season.