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- Herausgeber: IVP Formatio
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
Nurture a Heart that Waits with Joyful, Expectant Faith Step into the Advent season with The Art of Living in Advent, a beautifully crafted daily devotional by Sylvie Vanhoozer, who blends Scripture, history, art, and reflection to enrich your spiritual preparation for Christmas. Centered around the traditional French santons, or "little saints," this book invites you to imagine Christ's presence in your daily life—right where you are. Through thoughtful devotions, original artwork, and prompts for prayer and reflection, this devotional offers a creative and meaningful way to deepen your faith this Advent. With her exquisite illustrations and daily devotions, Vanhoozer encourages readers to recognize themselves as part of the nativity, welcoming Christ into the everyday. This Advent, discover how to nurture a heart that watches and waits with joyful, expectant faith. This devotional offers a pathway to quiet reflection, spiritual growth, and attentiveness to Christ. Key Features: - Creative Engagements: Scripture, prayers, reflection prompts, and daily activities designed to inspire. - Aesthetic Beauty: Original botanical artwork by the author and illustrations of Provençal santons. - Rich Tradition: Explore the story behind French santons and their connection to faith in the everyday. - Daily Devotions: Each day includes a passage, devotional content, and practical applications focused on Christ's presence. Begin Your Advent Journey Discover a new way to welcome Christ this season by ordering your copy of The Art of Living in Advent today. Each day of Advent, take a step toward becoming a person who knows how to watch and wait joyfully with expectant faith in Christ's presence and activity in your own person and place.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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TO TOM AND GAY HARRIS,
the shepherds who accompanied me in my first
Advent Walk and showed me the entry to the manger.
CONTENTS
IntroductionAN ADVENT PARABLE FROM PROVENCE
The best thing you can do for your fellow, next to rousing his conscience, is—not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for himself.
This book introduces you to a place where, for centuries, the people have sited the manger in their own land in a way that suggests Jesus has come, is coming, and will come to their own place and time. I invite you to enter into their nineteenth-century story, a parable of the kingdom of God, and make it your own. But there is no need to travel to southern France, much less to Bethlehem. You can meet the central character of Advent in your own time and place. In fact, doing so is what Advent is all about.
This story in that other land will transport you to a world of possibilities and, as George MacDonald says, awaken you to things in your own place. This is a book for disciples who want, watch for, and wait for Christ to come into their own life stories. It is an invitation to see Advent happening not only there and then, but here and now.
It all started for me when I was very young, through my childhood Christmases in Provence. I watched the crèche come into its own year after year, with each new Advent. I remember my mother, herself a Provençal villager, taking the santons out of their box, calling each figure by name, lovingly. Placing these santons (“little saints” in the original language of Provence where this custom originated), colorfully painted three-inch-high little clay figurines, was second nature (or nurture) to her. She seemed to know them, and their stories, as well as those of her own family. The baby Jesus, of whom I knew next to nothing at the time, was there too, in a manger that looked just like the typical stables of Provence with which I was familiar.
As Maman hummed the noëls (Provençal carols) that told stories about Jesus, and the little clay figurines, I supposed they were all simply characters from folklore and legend. Yet, I also had a vague sense, and hope, that maybe something might very well have happened, that this baby Jesus, the center of attention in the manger, really might have come to Provence and, in so doing, somehow made us and our land extraordinary, even holy. Did Jesus come to us, or did we come to him? Was Provence special because its people had made room for the baby in the manger?
Such thoughts lingered in my imagination through the years of my tender childhood. I often found myself thinking of that baby, and of the stories about these villagers—the little saints—supposedly undertaking a nightlong search for him. I was not “churched.” I had never opened, or even seen, a Bible, or listened to Bible stories. Nevertheless, the crèche was sowing seeds in my mind and heart, as it still does each Advent in every home where the scenes prior to Jesus’ birth are set up and played out.
This is why I am still telling the stories that I first heard one Advent, a long time ago, in a faraway place: “the land of my ancestors.” People may wonder: Is Provence truly special, or is she embellishing or romanticizing it? And if it is special, should I move there and live among its people? I am not inviting readers to leave their place and go to some distant land in a distant past. The invitation is rather to transpose this Provençal scene into one’s own place, to live the same story in a different context. The invitation is to learn the art of watchful waiting for Christ anywhere and anytime: “One might have to invent a new art de vivre (art of living),1 one that is not a copy of the past but, in a new context, a return to the values behind it, that made this past worthy.” Précisément! The question is not “Did Jesus really come to Provence?” but rather “Could Jesus really come here, to me?” Could my home, my neighborhood, my church, become a crèche scene, with Christ right here beside me, in me? Come and see!
I invite you to slow down as you read this book, to reimagine the Christmas holidays as Advent holy-days. Think of Advent not as a door one passes through to something more exciting but as a tableau vivant or “living picture,” into which one enters, a series of scenes from another time and place, where people live at a gentler pace. These scenes of santons, and of the botanical world that God gives us, invite both attention and reflection. The tableau is composed of four scenes, one for each week, in which you will watchfully wait for God’s presence and activity—in your place, in your stories, in solitude, and in company, respectively. The seven days of each week have prayers, questions, and projects that encourage you to practice the art of living in Advent. Think of them as spiritual exercises for becoming adventish: the quality of a person who knows how to watch and wait with joy, with expectant faith in Jesus’ presence and activity, regardless of the circumstances. As you read, then, “Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him” (Psalm 37:7).
My hope and prayer is that by the time you finish reflecting on these scenes, you will step into a world that has been not simply re-enchanted, but charged with the grandeur of God, a world in which you do not simply observe the manger scene and its characters at a distance, but see yourself as part of that same story, not a static figure but a live character. I hope you will come to see yourself as not a little but an everyday saint, embarked on a pilgrimage through spaces and times made holy thanks to the advent of Christ in you. The art of joyful waiting involves learning not to bide one’s time until something exciting happens but, rather, to stand by, alert for opportunities to welcome and join the one who is always/already there to welcome us, even when his presence and activity are not visibly obvious. This book may start in Provence, but it ends in your own neighborhood.
So step into this Advent parable and join with other saints as, together, we learn the art of living in Advent, perchance to awaken a world of possibilities for joyfully welcoming Christ into our midst!
Day OneGOD SETS the STAGE
O Bethlehem . . . from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel.
During the four hundred years of what we could call Israel’s long Advent season, the people of God waited for their Messiah, Immanuel (Isaiah 7:14), to come to a very specific location: “O Bethlehem . . . from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel.” To Bethlehem we must then look!
Seasonal local vegetation
This is why my ancestors called their nativity scenes lou Belèn: “the Bethlehem,” in Provençal.2 But this “Bethlehem” looks strangely like home, not just because of its name but, even more conspicuously, because of its architecture and landscaping. With its red-tiled roofs (les tuiles romaines) and plants such as thyme, juniper, and rosemary, it practically shouts out its Provençal roots. Another hint as to its southern French location are the clothes worn by the little clay figures who fill out the scene. These santons (“little saints”) bear a striking resemblance to the people who lived in the scattered villages of Provence in the early nineteenth century, when these unique manger scenes first appeared.
In a garden far, far away from the Mediterranean—my present home a few miles from Lake Michigan—I look for seasonal vegetation, in my local place, with which to decorate my own crèche. This is what I would be doing to welcome him if I still lived in Provence. However, as one of the stepping stones in my garden proclaims: I am here. And here is the place where I am weaving my new homeland, with its distinct plants, onto an old tradition, itself woven onto the greater story of what first happened in Bethlehem, when the long-awaited Messiah came to us, in the flesh (John 1:14). From wild vine leaves slowly changing into dark umber tones, to delicate hydrangea flowers, I seek treasures. It is but one of the many gardens God has created—not the first (Eden), nor the one I knew as a child in Provence. Rather, it belongs to the place where I now am. Here is where I am learning the art of watchful joyful waiting. Here, too, is where the Lord continues to come.
Pray
Lord, thank you for all the gardens I have known, and for the garden you give me now, one more place where I can welcome you. Thank you for your Son, who came as second Adam to a particular place on earth, Bethlehem, to dwell among us in a new way and show us the way back to you. Help me to watch patiently and faithfully for your presence and activity wherever I am. Even in this pre-winter season, when nature seems to be dying, help me see glimpses of life in your garden!
Day TwoThe CRÈCHE’S TERROIR
“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”
In the beginning of Advent the sons and daughters of Adam in Provence busy themselves around the cradle, not of civilization, West of Eden, but of the child Christ. In the land of my ancestors, the tradition is to relocate the hallowed manger, the place where the Son of God came to earth, in their own land, their terroir. The word terroir is more poetic than territory; it refers to the peculiar soil of a particular locale that grows a specific vegetation and, eventually, a distinctive people. Le terroir, c’est nous (“The land, it’s us”). Their place is tied up with their identity and sense of belonging.
The tradition of rooting Jesus’ manger in Provence is legendary but nevertheless symbolic, an expression of faith: Jesus has come to our land, along the shores of a vast blue sea and the banks of the Rhône river. Jesus has come to us. The crèche grafts their story onto Jesus’ story, not by replicating a first-century Palestinian stable in present-day Provence, but by transforming the first-century Palestinian manger into a nineteenth-century Provençal crèche. Why the anachronism? Because “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”—or, as The Message puts it, “moved into the neighborhood” (John 1:14, emphasis mine). What the crèche lacks in historical accuracy it more than makes up for in theological correctness: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9:6, emphasis mine)!
To the crèche makers of Provence, this anachronism relocates the greater story, and the baby Jesus himself, into the midst of their own land and traditions. From intimate living rooms to marketplaces, museums, and city halls, the scene represents in miniature the beginning of the story of Jesus—here. Whether or not they believe in him as Lord and Savior, he is part of their land, and their land is part of his story! Surely this is something to ponder in one’s heart, as I did when I was very young, even though I, like other children from a nonreligious home, never quite knew what happened to the baby Jesus when he grew up!
