We live in unsettling times, and this is a time for unsettling the domesticated idea of the Christmas story. That’s what the award-winning daily devotionals in the Unsettling Advent series from Word&Way aim to do. Starting for the 2025 year on Nov. 30 and running through Christmas Eve, join more than 20 writers as they help us with this meaningfully journey of considering an Advent in unusual times.
This is not a safe set of reflections that warms your heart by the fire like. Rather, we’ll be challenging readers to engage this period of waiting in a different way because our current circumstances oddly offer echoes of the first Advent. We will ponder together the lessons of God coming 2,000 years ago and God working in our context today of religious nationalism, starvation, and soldiers in the streets.
For Unsettling Advent in 2021, we considered Advent in a time of death/COVID, racial injustices, and insurrection. In 2022, we explored Advent in a time of war (in Ukraine), refugees, and (gun) violence. In 2023, we reflected on Advent in a time of state executions, political anxieties, and bloodshed in Israel. In 2024, we considered Advent in a time of rulers clinging to power, dangerous pregnancies, and violence in Lebanon.
The devotionals have multiple top awards from the Associated Church Press and Religion Communicators Council. And they led to a Lenten devotional book in 2023.
