Advent: Begin Again

Everything Happens with Kate Bowler

Kate Bowler

Society & Culture, Religion & Spirituality, Health & Fitness

4.8 • 5.1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 December 2025

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Well, here we are. December has arrived (shudder). And with it, the great cultural sprint: decorations, office parties, and the annual anxiety dream about whether you will accidentally forget someone on your gift list (spoiler: you will). Some of you already finished your shopping over Thanksgiving and have a freezer full of perfectly labeled Christmas cookies. (Who are you?! Come to my house and fix my life!) The rest of us are still trying to remember where we put last year’s wrapping paper. It’s easy, this time of year, to let December carry us away. The shopping carts, the streaming playlists, the endless events. Advent, though, asks us to live by a different rhythm. The early church saw this season as one of watching and waiting—not just for Christmas morning, but for the whole story of God’s redemption. They began the year not by rushing, but by slowing down. The prophet Isaiah describes this posture well: “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength” (Isaiah 30:15). The church fathers loved this verse because it sounded like Advent: strength found not in frantic activity, but in patient trust. So maybe the invitation this December is not to do more, but to intend more. To decide, amid the cookie dough and to-do lists, that this month won’t only be measured in packages mailed or tables set, but in moments of return. Little pauses of prayer. A fat candle lit on the dining room table that makes you take a breath. A quiet reminder that God is coming, and we don’t have to hold the season—or our lives—together by ourselves. So welcome to December, friends. Whether you’re ahead of the game or already behind, you are exactly where you need to be: at the beginning. Subscribe to Kate’s Substack for blessings, essays, and reflections that hold what’s hard and beautiful. Join us for Advent over there, too! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode is brought to you by Lilly Endowment as part of our series on Christian spirituality,
0:05.7	which is really our chance to just have a minute to reflect on life and faith in the service of
0:11.0	knowing and loving God. So here we are again, standing at the edge of Christmas. Advent is the season the church considers the beginning of the year, which I think is very
0:27.5	countercultural to our typical New Year, New Me marketing schemes that happen every January
0:34.6	like clockwork.
0:36.6	But nope, the church starts with a season of waiting. Tired, hopeful,
0:43.5	skeptical waiting for a savior who shows up as a baby. Yeah, that's right. Probably not the action
0:52.0	hero we had on Layaway. Advent runs for about four weeks and it ends
0:56.3	on Christmas Eve. Now while Christmas is very like joy-filled and fal-la-la-la-la, Advent is more like
1:03.8	standing in the dark, holding a flickering candle and really hoping something good happens soon.
1:14.4	But that's just it. Advent is the season that a lot of us know too well already. Our whole life sometimes just feels like it's an entire
1:21.6	season of waiting, waiting for good news, for the medicine to work, for people to love us the way we need them to,
1:29.7	for the person that we care about to kick their addiction, for this grief not to feel so
1:34.6	overwhelming, for any of this pain to stop. But Advent asks us to be the kind of people
1:41.4	who wait with hope, with peace even, with joy, and with love.
1:48.7	So every year, Advent becomes like the place where I reset. And I just want to invite you all to
1:55.0	practice Advent with me. I'm sharing a daily Advent devotional over on Substack,
2:03.8	and you are so welcome to come on in.
2:05.1	It's completely free.
2:08.0	It's Katebowler.substack.com.
2:13.8	And even if you aren't a very devotional kind of person, I just want you to know you are so welcome.
2:20.1	I'll just share a short blessing and a reflection and just something to orient our hearts and our minds in the madness that is December. So think 15 minutes tops unless life is particularly
	...

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