This reading plan serves as a guide through the Advent season, traditionally celebrated during the four weeks leading up to Christmas. We’ll explore the biblical themes of hope, peace, joy, and love, diving deeper into human longings for healing and restoration—our anticipation for God’s new world.
Day 1
Today’s Scripture: Philippians 2
God’s Great Arrival
Welcome to the first day of the Advent reading plan. For many, Advent evokes images of candles, calendars, and nativity scenes. It’s a season of joy and anticipation.
The word “advent” comes from the Latin adventus, meaning “coming” or “arrival.” During the Advent season, we remember the first arrival of Jesus in history and look forward to his return when he will renew all of creation. Advent shapes communities to pray, give, and worship while they learn to wait with expectation.
This season teaches us to lament the world’s fractures, to practice generous love, and to live as people formed by God’s future. We light candles, read Scripture, and set our hearts on the story of God coming to dwell with humanity.
Over the next four days, we will walk through the key Advent themes of hope, peace, joy, and love. Each one reveals an aspect of God’s character and calls us to live in light of the world he is making. Between the first advent and the second advent, Jesus’ return, our lives take their shape from the story God is telling.
This reading plan invites you to meditate on these themes to deepen your understanding of Advent and, perhaps, to experience the season in a new way.
Reflection Exercises:
In this season of anticipation, where in your daily life can you practice the same kind of self-giving humility that Jesus modeled?
As you read Philippians 2:5-11, how does the picture of Jesus’ humility and exaltation help you reimagine what it means to “wait with expectation” during Advent?
Day 2
Today’s Scriptures: Psalms 130, Isaiah 40:21-3, 1 Peter 1:3-9
Living Hope
When we hear the word “hope,” it may call to mind wishful thinking, like crossing our fingers for good weather or a better outcome. But that kind of hope relies on circumstances that may or may not happen. When things don’t go as we hoped, it can be crushing. Our hope disappears like vapor.
Biblical hope is different. The Bible often pairs hope with waiting. The Hebrew words for “hope”—qavah and yakhal—are often translated as “wait,” describing a patient, forward-leaning trust. We attend to God’s promises, remember his track record, and let that memory strengthen our expectations. The psalmist waited for God “more than watchmen for the morning” (Ps. 130:6). The apostles spoke of a “living hope” anchored in the resurrection of Jesus and the renewal of all things (1 Pet. 1:3).
This kind of hope faces the dark and keeps watch. It acknowledges grief without surrendering to it. Morning is coming; the cross and empty tomb guarantee it.
Clinging to this hope empowers costly faithfulness—truth-telling, peacemaking, mercy, generosity—because God’s future is already breaking in through the risen King.
Practice waiting this week. When anxiety rises, pause and remember a moment of God’s faithful care. When you’re tempted to grasp for control, choose a small act of trust. Hope grows through these daily habits and becomes a signpost for others who are searching for light.
Reflection Exercises:
- How do these readings expand your understanding of hope as patient trust rather than wishful thinking?
- Where in your daily rhythms could you practice a small act of trust that works against anxiety or desires for control?
Day 3
Today’s Scriptures: Isaiah 9:6-7, Colossians 1:15-20, Matthew 5:9
Peacemaking
We often think peace is something we can secure. Some say it comes through strength. If we build the most powerful army, no one will dare to challenge us.
Others say it comes through silence. If we avoid conflict and ignore problems, maybe they’ll go away. Israel’s prophets once warned against the kind of “peace, peace” that only papers over wounds (Jer. 6:14). It sounds good, but it doesn’t heal anything.
Advent invites us to look at peace in a different way. The prophet Isaiah spoke of a child who would be called the “Prince of Peace” (Isa. 9:6). His reign would end oppression and set things right. Jesus fulfills that promise, but not by marshaling armies or by pretending everything is fine. He tells the truth about sin and division, then he heals it. On the cross, Jesus takes on the hostility and violence of the world and absorbs it in love. Through his death and resurrection, God reconciles all things to himself and opens the way to lasting peace.
Jesus calls his followers “peacemakers” (Matt. 5:9), people who join him in the hard but beautiful work of reconciliation. Being a peacemaker means telling the truth about brokenness, forgiving instead of retaliating, and choosing to love both neighbors and enemies. It means being willing to repair what we can and trust God with what we can’t.
True peace doesn’t come by force or by avoidance. It comes through the presence of the King, who makes all things whole, and through the people who choose to walk in his way.
Reflection Exercises:
- Imagine a peaceful world. What kinds of actions and attitudes would be necessary for all people to live with shalom, or peace, seeking the well-being of each neighbor?
- Where do you feel the temptation to seek peace through control or avoidance? How might following Jesus reshape your response in that area of life?
Day 4
Today’s Scriptures: Habakkuk 3:16-19, Isaiah 61:1-9, John 16:16-22
Rugged Joy
In the Bible, joy has a surprising way of showing up. Sometimes it bursts out in celebration, like Israel singing as God leads them out of Egypt. Other times it takes shape as a quiet song in the middle of struggle, like the prophets teaching exiles to expect joy even before they return home.
Joy doesn’t wait until everything is repaired and restored. It takes root in God’s presence and grows even in hard soil.
Advent joy doesn’t mean everything is going well. It’s not shallow optimism or a quick distraction from pain. It’s the deep gladness of knowing God is near, faithful, and making all things new. Jesus told his disciples to remain in his love so that his joy would be in them and would become complete.
This joy doesn’t depend on circumstances. It flows from union with God.
That means joy can live alongside sorrow. You can grieve real losses and still experience a steady undercurrent of hope, because joy anchors itself in God’s promises. It remembers the ways he rescued in the past, and it leans forward to the day when he will wipe away every tear.
The Advent season invites us to practice this kind of joy. As we remain in God’s love and join his Kingdom work of generosity and mercy, we let joy overflow through our lives like a song that begins quietly now but will one day fill all creation.
Reflection Exercises:
- Today’s passages describe joy that flourishes in unlikely places. How do they invite you to see joy not as the absence of hardship but as a gift, rooted in God’s presence and promise?
- In this season, what practices—such as gratitude, generosity, or remembering God’s past faithfulness—could help you cultivate joy even when life feels unsettled?
Day 5
Today’s Scriptures: 1 Corinthians 13, John 13:34-35, John 15:12-17
Created to Love
Love can feel like something that just happens to us. People talk about “falling in love” or chasing it as a way to feel whole. Songs say “love is all you need,” often imagining it as a path to personal fulfillment. But Advent points us to a deeper kind of love—not accidental or self-focused, but steady, costly, and others-centered.
This love takes shape in commitment. It looks like seeking another person’s good, even when that requires sacrifice. The Apostle Paul describes love as patient, kind, and enduring, not self-seeking. And Jesus embodies this kind of love completely. On the cross, with his enemies mocking him, he prays for their forgiveness (Luke 23:34). He gives his life for friends and enemies alike, showing that true love always moves outward.
Living with this kind of love does not mean neglecting our own needs. Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31). We care for others best when we see ourselves and them as mutual image-bearers, both equally and deeply loved by God.
Advent draws our attention to the future that will arrive in God, an entirely restored world where this kind of love defines and compels every relationship.
It also calls us to start living into that future now. Each act of self-giving love—welcoming a stranger, forgiving someone who wronged us, caring for a neighbor in need—reveals a small but powerful work of the Kingdom that Jesus is creating and promises to complete one day.
Faith and hope will one day give way to sight, but love endures forever. As we give of ourselves, we participate in the very love that defines God, the love that Jesus reveals.
Reflection Exercises:
- How do these texts challenge the idea of love as mere feeling? How do they reframe love as an active way of living that reshapes community life?
- Think about a situation in your life marked by rivalry, indifference, or distance. What would it look like to introduce even one act of unexpected love there, not to get something in return but to reflect God’s character?