Preparing Our Hearts for Advent

As a Christian university, Baylor embraces the seasons of preparation and celebration surrounding the birth of Christ. Along with Baylor's Christmas traditions, the observance of Advent has become another Baylor practice that enhances the spiritual significance of the season for the Baylor Family. This Advent, we will once again celebrate together through daily devotionals that lead us to the nativity.

In his book, God is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas, Dietrich Bonhoeffer emphasizes the significance of Advent to the Christian faith as it centers around remembering Christ's birth and renewing our sense of excitement for the coming Messiah. Bonhoeffer reminds us that, "The Advent season is a season of waiting, but our whole life is an Advent season, that is, a season of waiting for the last Advent, for the time when there will be a new heaven and a new earth."

Beginning Sunday, November 28, we will embark together on an Advent devotional journey in celebration of our faith and the anticipation of the coming of Jesus into the World. Each of the four Sundays in Advent will begin with an email sent to the Baylor Family that shares the week's daily devotionals penned by members of the Baylor Community and dedicated to the Advent themes of hope, love, joy and peace.

"My prayer for the Baylor Family during Advent is that we each experience the promise of our Savior as a tie that binds us together in Christian love. Through these Advent devotionals, let us look to scripture with a renewed sense of hope and anticipation of God's good and perfect gift — Jesus Christ," Baylor President Linda A. Livingstone, Ph.D., said.