Advent: The Season of Hope, Waiting and Beginnings

Advent: The Season of Hope, Waiting, and Beginnings
by Tish Harrison Warren
November 2025 Book of the Month

Every year, the season of Advent sneaks up on us. The world around us starts playing Christmas music, hanging lights, and rushing toward December 25—while the Church quietly lights one candle each Sunday and whispers, “Wait.” Advent is the Church’s bold refusal to be swept along by the frenzy. It’s an act of spiritual rebellion against hurry, noise, and distraction. It’s the season where we learn again how to long for God.

Tish Harrison Warren’s Advent: The Season of Hope, Waiting, and Beginnings is a luminous guide for that kind of waiting. Part of the Fullness of Time series, it helps ordinary Christians enter deeply into the rhythms of the Church year. Warren—an Anglican priest and author of Liturgy of the Ordinary—writes as a pastor who knows how restless our hearts can be. She doesn’t romanticize Advent; she shows us why we need it. Because before we can sing “Joy to the World,” we have to tell the truth about the world as it is: dark, divided, and desperate for redemption.

Why Read It Before Advent
Advent begins Sunday, November 30, but preparing for it begins now. Reading Warren’s book ahead of time helps us resist the seasonal rush and enter December with intention. Think of it as preheating your heart for the season—a way to create space before the noise of the holidays takes over.

Warren helps us see that Advent isn’t just a countdown to Christmas morning, it’s a sacred time of waiting. It’s a time to name the ache in our hearts and in our world, and to learn what it means to wait well. The Church invites us to dwell in that longing, because in naming our need for Christ, we make room for Him to come.

By reading before Advent begins, you’ll be ready to step into the season not as a consumer swept along by the cultural current, but as a disciple.  A disciple who is attentive, grounded, and awake to what God is doing in your life and in the world.

Highlights from the Book

Waiting as Formation
Advent teaches us that waiting is not wasted time. Warren reminds us that waiting forms us—it teaches us trust, endurance, and dependence on God. In a culture that prizes instant gratification, Advent’s deliberate slowness becomes a radical act of faith.

Honest About the Darkness
Before we can sing “Joy to the World,” we must first tell the truth about the world’s pain. Advent makes space for lament, for acknowledging what is not yet right. Warren writes that only when we name the darkness can we truly see the light.

Hope with Flesh On
Advent hope is not abstract optimism—it’s embodied, tangible, and rooted in the incarnation of Jesus. The same God who once took on flesh will come again to make all things new. Warren beautifully connects this cosmic promise to the texture of our daily lives—our work, relationships, griefs, and joys.

The Church’s New Year
Advent marks the beginning of the Church’s calendar—a quiet new year that begins not with fireworks but with a flickering candle. Warren invites us to reorient our sense of time and meaning around the story of Jesus rather than the demands of consumer culture. In doing so, we discover a slower, saner, and more sacred rhythm of life.

Practices for Home and Heart
The book offers simple practices for prayer, reflection, and community life—ways to bring Advent’s themes of hope and waiting into the places we actually live. These aren’t heavy-handed obligations but gentle, grace-filled invitations to notice Christ’s presence in the ordinary.

An Invitation to Redeemer
Redeemer, this Advent I want to challenge us to slow down—to resist the cultural current that tells us joy can be bought, scheduled, or achieved. Let’s reclaim Advent as sacred space. Let’s learn to wait, to watch, to hunger for Christ’s presence in a world that numbs itself with distraction.

Advent by Tish Harrison Warren is more than a seasonal read—it’s a call to live awake. It will help us name our longings honestly and hold them before the God who keeps promises. Whether you’ve been observing Advent your whole life or this is your first time, this book will draw you into the deep, quiet center of the season: hope.

Let’s walk into Advent not as people rushing toward a holiday, but as a community preparing for a King.

Grace and peace,
Pastor Drew