Christmas will be here before long and with it the opportunity to focus deliberately on the birth of Jesus Christ. I know that many individuals and families will be looking for some kind of special reading to carry them through the holiday season and for that reason I thought I’d provide a roundup of recommended advent devotionals. For the most part these devotionals offer 24 or 25 readings, though some offer a few more than that. Take a look and see if there’s something here for you! (Okay, yes, Christmas is still a ways off, but it can take some time to make a decision, have the books shipped, and so on…)

The Good Book Company is the undisputed leader in this area and has published quite a number of advent devotionals that are suitable for individuals or families and that each follow a similar structure. The Dawn of Redeeming Grace and Love Came Down at Christmas by Sinclair Ferguson are collections of daily readings for advent. In each of them, Ferguson offers 24 devotionals. The Dawn of Redeeming Grace draws from Matthew 1-2 while Love Came Down at Christmas draws from 1 Corinthians 13. Repeat the Sounding Joy by Christopher Ash is similar in format and focuses on the first two chapters of Luke; David Mathis’ The Christmas We Didn’t Expect draws broadly from the Christmas narrative. New this year is Jared Wilson’s Gifts of Grace and Lizzie Lafferton’s The God of Amazing Gifts.
From Tim Chester you’ll find a trio of options: One True Light, One True Gift, and One True Story. Each offers 24 devotional meditations along with ideas for reflection, prayer, and application.
Specifically for children, you can consider Barbara Reaoch’s A Better Than Anything Christmas and A Jesus Christmas. For the whole family, consider The Light Before Christmas or Prepare Him Room by Marty Machowski or The Adventure of Christmas by Ed Drew.
John Piper has written a couple of advent devotional works: Good News of Great Joy and The Dawning of Indestructible Joy each containing 25 readings of about 1.5 pages each. Paul David Tripp’s Come, Let Us Adore Him is oriented toward family use and has slightly longer devotionals of a few pages each. Ronnie Martin’s The God Who Is with Us releases in a few days.
Hosanna in Excelsis: Hymns and Devotions for the Christmas Season by David and Barbara Leeman offers devotionals based on hymns that begin on November 25 and continue all the way through to January 6. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth’s The First Songs of Christmas also focuses on songs, though in this case the songs of Elizabeth, Mary, Zechariah, the angels, and Simeon. Philippa Ruth Wilson’s Brightest and Best is structured around the words of the best-loved Christmas carols.
That should give you plenty to choose from, and I hope there’s something that stands out to you.

I had quite a number of opportunities this week to think and speak about death. And as I did so, I found myself drawn to these precious and poetic words from F.B. Meyer in which he reflects on the abolishment of death in the death of Christ. What hope we have in the gospel!

Death is abolished! The wasp struck its sting into the cross of the dying Lord, and lost it there, and is now stingless forever. The poison fang of the viper has been extracted, Goliath beheaded by his own sword. The teeth of the lion have been drawn. And for this reason the apostles always speak of a believer’s death as being but a sleep.
Death is not to be more dreaded than sleep, its twin. In all likelihood we shall be quite surprised when we have passed through the dark portal, that was so slight and easy an experience. We dread it now, because we do not really believe that Christ’s death has made it all so different. If we believed this, it would give us great confidence. But whether we believed or not, we shall find it so.
A step; a moment; a passage across the Bridge of Sighs; a transition from darkness to light; a birth — that is all. Absent from the body, present with the Lord. No moment of unconsciousness or oblivion! The veil rent, the shell broken, the iron gateway passed whilst the light and air of the eternal morning break on the emancipated spirit!

In former days Christians spoke often of duty. Though they most certainly delighted in God and were eager to foster and increase that delight, they tended to do so by way of duty. They examined their lives to determine what duties God was calling them to and audited their lives to determine if they were fulfilling them. They longed to be dutiful in devotion, dutiful in obedience, dutiful in every responsibility and every role. They believed that from their duty would grow a deepening delight.

From these forebears you and I should learn the importance of living with care, living with consideration for every moment, every day, every season—with prayerful attentiveness to every duty. Therefore…
… Take care before you waste a moment, for every moment is sacred, given to you by God to be used for his purposes. Moments have often been sanctified to accomplish great things. It was in a moment that Rahab offered sanctuary to the Jewish spies, in a moment that Jesus gave sight to a man born blind, in a moment that Peter made the decision to visit Cornelius—and through him to take the gospel to all the Gentiles.
… Take care before you waste a day, for every day is sacred, given as a gift to be used to do good to others and bring glory to God. God sanctified days when he carried out his work of creation in six of them, when he set aside one of them to rest, when Jesus committed 40 of them to praying and fasting in the wilderness. Little do we know the value of a day and all that can be accomplished in it.
… Take care before you waste a season, for every season of life is sacred, a precious gift from God. Jesus sanctified seasons, for it was in the season of youthfulness that he diligently grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man and in the season of his public ministry that he fulfilled the law and was obedient unto death. It was in the season of his captivity that Paul penned his greatest epistles and in the season of his exile that John gave us his great revelation of Jesus Christ.
If you wish to live according to their example, you must be dutiful—dutiful in the small things as much as the big. Never leave undone for a moment the duty of that moment. Never leave undone for a day the duty of that day, or for a season the duty of that season. To do so is to risk wasting your entire life, for a lifetime is made up of seasons and seasons of days and days of moments. They ebb away like the tide that flows back from the beach, like the sun that sinks beyond the horizon until its last rays fade from the sky and all goes dark.
It is wise and good each morning to ask “What is my God-given duty in this day?” It is wise and good at each juncture to pray “God, help me to be dutiful in all that you call me to.” The one who thinks in this way, the one who prays in this way, the one who lives in this way, will live a life of duty, a life of significance, a life of great delight. The one who lives according to duty will most certainly hear the master’s commendation of “Well done, good and faithful—good and dutiful—servant.”