Advent – 15 Inspirational Quotes about this Season of Anticipation

Advent is a time to wait, listen and ponder the awesome wonder of God who sent his only son as a baby to save us. Pause and spend some time this season reflecting on God’s gift of love.

Looking for some more information about Advent: Download my free Advent Resource Guide here.

Perhaps one of the following inspirational quotes will help:

“Advent, like its cousin Lent, is a season for prayer and reformation of our hearts. Since it comes at winter time, fire is a fitting sign to help us celebrate Advent…If Christ is to come more fully into our lives this Christmas, if God is to become really incarnate for us, then fire will have to be present in our prayer. Our worship and devotion will have to stoke the kind of fire in our souls that can truly change our hearts. Ours is a great responsibility not to waste this Advent time.” Edward Hays, A Pilgrim’s Almanac

“The season of Advent means there is something on the horizon the likes of which we have never seen before… .What is possible is to not see it, to miss it, to turn just as it brushes past you. And you begin to grasp what it was you missed, like Moses in the cleft of the rock, watching God’s [back] fade in the distance. So stay. Sit. Linger. Tarry. Ponder. Wait. Behold. Wonder. There will be time enough for running. For rushing. For worrying. For pushing. For now, stay. Wait. Something is on the horizon.”
Jan L. Richardson, Night Visions: Searching the Shadows of Advent and Christmas

“You keep us waiting. You, the God of all time, Want us to wait. For the right time in which to discover Who we are, where we are to go, Who will be with us, and what we must do. So thank you … for the waiting time.”
John Bell, quoted in The Westminster Collection of Christian Prayers, compiled by Dorothy M. Stewart

“Christmas is fast approaching. And now that Christ has aroused our seasonal expectations, he’ll soon fulfill them all!” St. Augustine, Sermon 51

“God is coming! God is coming! All the element we swim in, this existence, Echoes ahead the advent. God is coming! Can’t you feel it?”
Walter Wangerin, Jr., from “The Signs of the Times,” in The Manger Is Empty

“How can God stoop lower than to come and dwell with a poor humble soul? Which is more than if he had said, such a one should dwell with him; for a beggar to live at court is not so much as the king to dwell with him in his cottage.”—William Gurnall

“Advent: the time to listen for footsteps – you can’t hear footsteps when
you’re running yourself.” Bill McKibben

“A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes…and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1943

“Take time to be aware that in the very midst of our busy preparations for the celebration of Christ’s birth in ancient Bethlehem, Christ is reborn in the Bethlehems of our homes and daily lives. Take time, slow down, be still, be awake to the Divine Mystery that looks so common and so ordinary yet is wondrously present.
“An old abbot was fond of saying, ‘The devil is always the most active on the highest feast days.’
“The supreme trick of Old Scratch is to have us so busy decorating, preparing food, practicing music and cleaning in preparation for the feast of Christmas that we actually miss the coming of Christ. Hurt feelings, anger, impatience, injured egos—the list of clouds that busyness creates to blind us to the birth can be long, but it is familiar to us all.” Edward Hays, A Pilgrim’s Almanac

“This Advent we look to the Wise Men to teach us where to focus our attention. We set our sights on things above, where God is. We draw closer to Jesus… When our Advent journey ends, and we reach the place where Jesus resides in Bethlehem, may we, like the Wise Men, fall on our knees and adore him as our true and only King.” Mark Zimmermann in Our Advent Journey

“Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this life, in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; So that, at the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal.” The Book of Common Prayer, published in 1662

“One of the essential paradoxes of Advent: that while we wait for God, we are with God all along ,that while we need to be reassured of God’s arrival, or the arrival of our homecoming, we are already at home. While we wait, we have to trust, to have faith, but it is God’s grace that gives us that faith. As with all spiritual knowledge, two things are true, and equally true, at once. The mind can’t grasp paradox; it is the knowledge of the soul.” Michelle Blake, The Tentmaker

“Christmas has lost its meaning for us because we have lost the spirit of expectancy. We cannot prepare for an observance. We must prepare for an experience.” Handel Brown

“Sometimes it seems as though we spend our lives waiting. Daydreaming about an upcoming vacation, worrying over a medical test, preparing for the birth of grandchild-our days are filled with anticipation and anxiety over what the future holds. As Christians, we too spend our lives waiting. But we are waiting for something much bigger than a trip, bigger even than retirement or a wedding: We are waiting for the return of Jesus in glory. Advent heightens this sense of waiting, because it marks not only our anticipation of Jesus’ final coming, but also our remembrance of his arrival into our world more than 2,000 years ago.” Anonymous

“Let’s approach Christmas with an expectant hush, rather than a last-minute rush.” Anonymous

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Don’t forget to download your free Advent Resource Guide here.

Christmas Crossroads – 30 Devotionals for the Holiday Season is now available on Amazon as an e-book and a print book.

Christmas Crossroads – 30 Devotionals for the Holiday Season will enrich your time before Christmas, prepare your heart for celebrating the birth of Christ, and lead you to a clearer understanding of discernment in the crossroads of life.

The crazy chaos of the holiday season descends upon our souls quickly, complicating our journey. We crave the peace, joy, and hope during Advent, but often we only experience uproar and mayhem.  The intersection of uncertain choices merged with the holidays compounds our decisions.

Christmas Crossroads – 30 Devotionals for the Holiday Season will help you to:

• Approach Christmas with an open and receiving heart.
• Explore making the best choices at the crossroads encounter in life.
• Listen to people of the Bible and gather inspiration and guidance from their crossroad experience.
• Apply new ways to make the right decisions on our life journey.
• Grow closer to God in quiet reflections as you seek God’s guidance during the holidays.

For the next several weeks, the e-book version is only 99 cents. Perfect daily readings for the Advent season. May daily devotions bless your life and bring you closer to God. I would be honored to walk with you during Advent.  And if you would have time, leave a review on Amazon too – that is always a blessing for an author. Thank you!!

Also in 2014 I wrote an Advent devotional that has reflections and quotes. It’s called Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room. It’s available at amazon and other outlets.  May it bless your Advent season.

In 2016 I released Christmas Seasonings, 101 Quotes and Prayers to Flavor the Holiday.  Check it out on amazon: