2024 Advent Devotional
A Daily Advent Devotional from Lancaster Bible College
‘For Unto Us a Child Is Born…’
Lancaster Bible College invites you to enjoy, reflect upon, be challenged by and find inspiration in a daily Advent devotional series. Previously written by various LBC faculty and staff, we pray these timeless truths of Christmas are a gift to you this season.
Week 1: December 1-7 | Week 2: December 8-14 |Week 3: December 15-21
Week 4: December 22-28 | Conclusion: December 29-31
Advent devotionals will begin Sunday, December 1, 2024, and released one week at a time each Friday. Please check back regularly to view and share new content. Lancaster Bible College wishes you a blessed Christmas season!
‘For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder, and His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.’ Isaiah 9:6, ESV
Week 2: December 8-14
Dec. 8 -
ESTHER L. ZIMMERMAN, MEd,
Assistant Professor, Church & Ministry Leadership
“But his mother treasured all these things in her heart” (Luke 2:51).
Every new mother wonders what the future will hold for her child, but Mary had more reasons to wonder than most. The words concerning her newborn son were at the same time glorious and terrifying. Glorious was the realization that He would be the Son of the Most High and that He would save His people and reign over an everlasting Kingdom. Less glorious were Simeon’s warnings of opposition, stumbling and swords and the long shadow of Isaiah’s portrait of the suffering servant.
Surely, she wondered when she gathered their belongings to flee in the middle of the night, when she scoured Jerusalem frantically in search of her son and when she struggled to see Jesus because of the admiring crowds. Most of all, she must have wondered the day she watched her son from the foot of His cross.
It’s hard to trust God when there are far more questions than answers, but Mary does just that. As her list of unanswered questions grows, she stores them up, she ponders the mystery and she continues to wait on her God.
At the beginning of Acts, we find her in the Upper Room, still waiting. Waiting for the promise, waiting for answers, waiting for God to bring meaning and order to her world. And He does. With the coming of God’s Spirit there is finally an understanding of God’s purposes and the realization that none of her tears had been wasted. Together with the rest of the disciples, she comes to realize each question, circumstance and confusing detail had been part of “God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge” (Acts 2:23).
REFLECTION
Are there questions you are waiting on God to answer this Christmas season? How are you responding during this time of waiting? Choose to trust God today that each circumstance you face as His treasured child is part of His “deliberate plan and foreknowledge.”
PRAYER
Lord Jesus, you are the Prince of Peace, and I choose to trust you today with my unanswered questions, with my confusing circumstances and for tomorrow. Fill me with an assurance of your sovereignty in the midst of my world today. Amen.