{"id":2418,"date":"2008-11-26T12:01:18","date_gmt":"2008-11-26T12:01:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2008\/11\/my-favorite-advent-reads.html"},"modified":"2008-11-26T12:01:18","modified_gmt":"2008-11-26T12:01:18","slug":"my-favorite-advent-reads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/11\/my-favorite-advent-reads.html","title":{"rendered":"Best Advent Reads"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The first Sunday of the advent season comes a little early this year, right on the heels of Thanksgiving, and if you are looking for some inspiration to usher in this time of expectation and hope, I have some great books for you to try. For the last few years I have made a point of doing more than putting a wreath on the table and lighting a candle. Instead, I have chosen one book every year to use as a guide to learning more about this church tradition. Here are my favorites.<br \/>\n<strong>God with Us:<\/strong> The publishers of Image Journal  released a coffee table style book last year that is probably the most comprehensive and beautiful book for Advent that I have found. It contains artwork, poetry, and devotions from some of the best post-modern evangelical minds<br \/>\n<strong>Poems of the Incarnation:<\/strong> If you haven&#8217;t read any poetry by Luci Shaw, this is a good place to start. She wrote an entire collection of poems about the season with her usual flair for smart turns of phrase that create unorthodox yet profound images.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n<strong>Prayers for Advent :<\/strong> Even if you  are not familiar with the Book of Common Prayer, this devotional is an excellent, yet condensed, version of the Advent readings from that classic missal as well as some other sources such as St. Augustine.<br \/>\n<strong>Watch for the Light:<\/strong> Christian martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others write about the theme of expectation in a group of readings.<br \/>\n<strong>Advent and Christmas Wisdom:<\/strong>  Henri J.M. Nouwen has influenced  me in a way few  religious minds have, and I love  all of his books for their combination of depth and simplicity<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first Sunday of the advent season comes a little early this year, right on the heels of Thanksgiving, and if you are looking for some inspiration to usher in this time of expectation and hope, I have some great books for you to try. For the last few years I have made a point&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":108,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Best Advent Reads<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/11\/my-favorite-advent-reads.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Best Advent Reads\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The first Sunday of the advent season comes a little early this year, right on the heels of Thanksgiving, and if you are looking for some inspiration to usher in this time of expectation and hope, I have some great books for you to try. For the last few years I have made a point&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/11\/my-favorite-advent-reads.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Idol Chatter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-11-26T12:01:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kris Rasmussen\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Best Advent Reads","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/11\/my-favorite-advent-reads.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Best Advent Reads","og_description":"The first Sunday of the advent season comes a little early this year, right on the heels of Thanksgiving, and if you are looking for some inspiration to usher in this time of expectation and hope, I have some great books for you to try. For the last few years I have made a point&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/11\/my-favorite-advent-reads.html","og_site_name":"Idol Chatter","article_published_time":"2008-11-26T12:01:18+00:00","author":"Kris Rasmussen","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/11\/my-favorite-advent-reads.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/11\/my-favorite-advent-reads.html","name":"Best Advent Reads","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-11-26T12:01:18+00:00","dateModified":"2008-11-26T12:01:18+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/667195b00ac2263e0f6700056170bbf8"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/11\/my-favorite-advent-reads.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/11\/my-favorite-advent-reads.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/11\/my-favorite-advent-reads.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Best Advent Reads"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/","name":"Idol Chatter","description":"Beliefnet Entertainment blog, TV blog, Movie blog, Religion in entertainment blog","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/667195b00ac2263e0f6700056170bbf8","name":"Kris Rasmussen","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2e7\/2e7278d93dd11c6aad2c82da37f0d657x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2e7\/2e7278d93dd11c6aad2c82da37f0d657x96.jpg","caption":"Kris Rasmussen"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/author\/krasmussen"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/108"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2418\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}