Join guest Brian Zahnd and along with podcast posse from Crackers and Grape Juice for the Advent season.

The Anticipated Christ is an Advent and Christmas devotional that takes the reader from the first Sunday of Advent through Epiphany in a collection of daily meditations.

In the Christian calendar Christmas is anticipated by four weeks of waiting. This is Advent—a word derived from a Latin word meaning “arrival.” During Advent we await the arrival of the Messiah of whom the Hebrew prophets spoke. During Advent we allow the messianic poems of the Hebrew prophets to seep deeply into our soul. With Isaiah and the great company of Hebrew prophets we wait for the one who will bruise the serpent’s head. We wait for Immanuel—the one who is God with us. We wait for the ruler to arise in Bethlehem who will shepherd God’s people. We wait for the child born unto us upon whose shoulders the government will rest; we wait for the Prince of Peace in whose kingdom the lion lays down with the lamb. Advent is about waiting—a practice most of us in our secular age struggle with, but a holy practice we would be wise to cultivate.

And when Christmas does arrive, it’s not a one-day celebration—the birth of Messiah is far too big an event to celebrate for a mere day. No, Christmas is a twelve-day feast during which we meditate on all the marvelous stories surrounding the birth of Jesus Christ that help us explore the meaning of the Incarnation. And after the twelve days of Christmas have run their course, we arrive at Epiphany where we celebrate and contemplate the revelation of Christ to the Gentiles, as the Magi come with their gifts to pay homage to the child born King of the Jews. This is what the six-week journey from the first Sunday in Advent to Epiphany is about. It’s a journey out of secular banality and into the sacred mystery of the Incarnation.