For my birthday a few years back, my concert-going dream became a reality when Ryan surprised me with tickets to a Harry Connick Jr. show at an outdoor amphitheater just south of Nashville. We looked forward to it for months, but when the day finally arrived, a sudden-onset thunderstorm threatened to cancel the event altogether. We sat in our car outside the venue that night, waiting and hoping as the lightning crashed and the rain poured. More than an hour later, after the worst of the threat had passed and most of the concert goers had given up and headed home, we heard the update: “Harry wants to sing!” Braving the still-pouring rain, we ran from the car and found our seat among the remaining guests scattered sparsely throughout the amphitheater.

The opening number was spectacular, but it couldn’t prepare us for what happened next. “Assigned seating is out the window tonight, folks!” Harry announced. “Come on down, and let’s have a good time—I’m going to give you everything I’ve got!” Through the rain the remnant came, filing into seats we didn’t pay for at a show we didn’t think would happen, greeting each other with the same kindness we’d been shown by our generous host. In the middle of the storm, Harry beckoned us to “come and see” the good thing that was even better than we’d hoped it could be.

Friends, the book of John is your invitation to come and see Jesus—up close! John’s Gospel tells the story of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, showing Him to be the divine Son of God and compelling us to respond by putting our faith in Him. This reading plan will walk you through all twenty-one chapters over the course of five weeks, along with supplemental passages connecting your reading in John with the rest of Scripture.

John’s Gospel is an open door into the life-changing ministry and message of Jesus. We’ve all got seats we couldn’t pay for if we tried—all the more reason to make room for strangers and friends to join us! So invite a friend, and settle in. Let’s read the true story of the Son of God, and let’s be different because of it.

Well, convenient is a fantastic word to describe what happened. Not only was it convenient for our son to pay for his covered expenses with his own card, it was also surprisingly convenient to produce that card any time an expense popped up that he assumed should also be covered. This I did not see coming. Opening the next credit card statement, I was greeted by a large number of unexpected, additional charges with his initials next to them. I grabbed a highlighter and calculator, marking the charges and adding them up. This kid was in deep.

With approximately $17 to his name, my child had no way to pay me back. Of course, all I wanted was to forgive his debt and for him to learn a valuable lesson. But in order for him to truly learn, he needed to understand. So when he got home that night, I had the pages of the credit card statement on the kitchen counter with his charges highlighted in yellow. He was apologetic but also extremely overwhelmed by the reality of what he’d done and how it had all added up. I asked some important questions and clarified some important rules, and then sitting with my son at the kitchen counter that night, I had the honor of forgiving his debt. And he was grateful—more grateful than he would have been if he hadn’t understood the cost. 

I wonder if, in a small way, this is what reading Isaiah for Lent does for us. The prophet took the time to show the people of Judah the destructiveness of their sin and its consequences. Line by line, he showed them the severity of their debt. But he also prophesied: someone is coming to forgive it all.

The season of Lent encourages us to look back before we look forward. It’s about holding our eyes open, looking fully at our sin, and then keeping them open wide to fully comprehend the hope of Jesus that is coming. In this season we’re invited to walk toward our hope, but we must remind ourselves of the beginning. We review our charges and repent of all we cannot begin to pay. And thus, we approach the cross with the gratitude of a sinner forgiven. No longer debtors, but by the grace of God, sons and daughters—coheirs of an eternal inheritance. 

I’m so grateful to take this journey with you for another year, friends—to read the book of Isaiah and the Holy Week passages and acknowledge our mortality. We need Jesus. And as we approach the cross and the resurrection that will surely follow, we have this assurance: God will save His people. 

To be honest, this saying has always bugged me. I’m not trying to be difficult or a know-it-all, but it’s just not scientifically true. Step outside on any given night, and you’ll find that darkness throughout the night changes depending on cloud movement or the moon. In the winter months can be affected if something like snow is reflecting the light. So why do we use this not-exactly-true saying to comfort one another? 

I suppose the breathtaking break of the morning sun across the horizon does make everything in the hours before seem much darker. So maybe that’s why? Or maybe it just feels really good and hopeful? But what I’ve learned is that the almost-true things are never nearly as comforting as the absolutely-true things. 

When I learned that this year’s Advent reading plan was titled The Dawn of Redeeming Grace, my soul gave a sigh of relief at the thought. I imagine the world did seem darker than ever before that dawn—the birth of the Messiah. It probably seemed like hope, peace, joy, and love were growing dimmer by the day. But the truer truth is this: God was always at work. His promises to the prophets, priests, kings, and everyday people were still true, even though they couldn’t see the Light waiting to be revealed at the perfect time.

Of all of the things I love about our Advent journey this year, what I hope you connect with deeply is the Old Testament scriptures and the eager anticipation of knowing that the Light has, in fact, dawned. As for this Christmas season, when things may seem dark and we need to be reminded of why we have peace and hope and joy, why we love and rejoice in the good news, let us read God’s promises together, anchored by the joy of celebrating the coming dawn. Even though we can’t see Him, we know He is at work. “Look, I am coming soon!” (Revelation 22:7).  

Friends, don’t miss this Advent season. I want to personally invite you to make time to open these Advent scriptures every single day. Let God’s Word be a lamp to your feet and a light to your path (Psalm 119:105). This way, whether things seem dark now or even when they inevitably will, you will know that the Light, who came into the world at the first advent, will most certainly return once and for all. Together, let’s let our souls sigh with sweet relief.

Written by Raechel Myers

I’m not always comfortable with group events, and nine times out of ten I’ll choose a quiet evening at home over a social gathering, especially on a weeknight. But this time I went. Mostly compelled by an opportunity to catch up with some friends and the possibility of a slice of cheesecake, I reassured myself that the tender-hearted time wouldn’t last too long.

Several months later I couldn’t recall how the food tasted or what shoes I wore or how awkward I felt. But I clearly remembered how the Lord used that gathering to soften my heart in a very specific way. That night, in the quiet of the solo prayer time, the Holy Spirit impressed upon my heart just two words: make room.

In the days that followed, I considered the different ways I could make room: in my heart, on my calendar, in my home. I thought about who I could make room for: the new women moving to our burgeoning city, the people I know who need more than they have to offer, and the guy who definitely eased his way in front of me in line at the concession stand last weekend. But even before any of that, I can make room for my Lord, who promises me His presence whether I take time to be present with Him or not (John 14:16–17).

As I penciled down a list, I realized all the ways people had already made room for me:

Here is my time—it’s yours now.
Here is this meal—I want you to be nourished.
Here is my forgiveness—I know what a gift it is to be forgiven.
Here is this space to sit—I’d rather you have rest than me.
Here I am entering into your sorrow—I was comfortable, but you need comfort more than me.

Even more extravagant than the hospitality offered to me by others is that offered by the Father Himself:

I was an orphan; He calls me His daughter (John 1:12).
I was a foreigner; He made me a citizen (Ephesians 2:19).
My sin separated me from God; He brought me near (Ephesians 2:13).

Hospitality, I am learning, is often untidy and almost always inconvenient. But making room is not about my own comfort. It’s about taking something I presume is mine and offering it to someone else.

Jesus made room for everyone, for all types of people—neighbors, the poor, His betrayers, strangers, children, and so many more. It was a mark of His ministry: giving Himself and offering Himself to others and to the Father. Jesus made room because His is a gospel for all people. The apostle Paul wrote, “For those of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ. There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; since you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:27–28). In the gospel, there is no “other”—there is only “us.”

By His grace, God makes us living testimonies of Christ’s life by this truth: “We love because He first loved us” (1John 4:19). In being inconvenienced and uncomfortable and messy, we find a nearness with God because Jesus was these things and more on our behalf. We are learning to make room for others because while we were still sinners, room was made for us.

Thanks be to God.

It was a shout of adoration but it was also a plea, because the word hosanna literally means, “Come save us now!” And this is exactly what He would do.

The next day, Jesus walked into the temple, flipping over tables and tossing money to the floor. The hosanna-shouters must have been shocked to see the man on the donkey driving the sellers out of the temple with such authority. “My house will be called a house of prayer,” Jesus said to them. “But you are making it a den of thieves!” (Matthew 21:13).

But it’s what He did next that was truly radical: He invited the least inside.

The blind, the lame, the children all came in and Jesus welcomed them, healed them, confirmed their place among Him (vv.14–15). He cleared out those who had profaned the temple and ushered in those who humbly sought after God.

When I picture the scene I can see myself in the wings, on the outside looking in. I am nervous, I am afraid, but I am drawn to this house of God. So I watch and wait. Those inside seem to have it together, bringing riches rather than sacrifice, doing religion like a business. All I have is this humble offering in my hands, carried the long journey from my home, over rocky roads and mistake-laden miles.

Then I see Him. And right before my eyes I watch Him turn it on its side, all the pretension and injustice and darkness that kept me at bay. He sends out those who’ve come not for God but for gods.

And then? He looks me in the eye. Me. Frightened, filthy from days of travel. He looks at me and sees me. He motions for me to come in and then He tells me I belong.

I had cried out “Hosanna! Save me!” not knowing what I was really asking. And He rode on through the streets and into the city, knowing exactly what was coming. He would soon die but not before He cleansed His house of prayer and invited me in.

This is our Christ! “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone” (v.42). He welcomes in the defenseless, becoming their defense. He brings the weak to Himself and makes them strong. He desires not the shiny sacrifices our pride wishes to bring but only a heart that is stayed on Him. He saves us when we call out to Him.

Only He knows what our hearts truly need as we cry out, “Hosanna!” He knew it even then.

I remember the summer I was seventeen—old enough to have a driver’s license and a job; young enough to have no real expenses or responsibilities. My friends and I spent those months before senior year on the lakes (Michigan has 11,000 of them!), creating scavenger hunts around town, swimming in the downtown fountain, and buying half-price Chinese food at closing time. They were glory days for sure.

I now have a son who will be seventeen next month. He’s tall enough to give me big bear hugs, he drives his sister to school, and he meets his friends at Chile Burrito almost every day before lacrosse practice because his metabolism demands five square meals a day. These may be his glory days, but they somehow feel like mine too. 

We love how things were. Sometimes we even love how things are. And, boy, does time have a way of softening our memories. When things are good, we want them to stay this way forever. And when things are bad, we long for the good old days. 

But if I had stayed seventeen forever, I’d have missed out on having a seventeen-year-old of my own. And if I insist now that these are the best days of my life, I’d be doubting that God has new good for me still ahead. 

In the book of Ezra, the returning exiles recalled the glory days of Jerusalem, some having firsthand memories. God’s presence was with them in the temple, the city was protected, and the favor of the Lord was on them and against their enemies. As they returned to the city, they found themselves caught in the tension of looking backwards to what used to be—even relearning the law they had forgotten—while believing God would carry them into a new future. There’s a wonderful moment when they reestablish Passover and confess their sin. But that would also mean continuing to trust God with their future as they walked forward in obedience. 

Friends, not unlike the Israelites in the fifth and sixth centuries BC, by opening this book you are doing the important work of looking back to learn and remember what God has done. I’m so glad you’re here! My encouragement to you in this reading plan is to also keep your eyes up—at the yet-unfulfilled promises God has made in His Word. No matter what the seasons of your life have looked like or look like even now, know this for certain: Christ is indeed doing a new thing!

The Bible offers words of comfort about what happens to believers when they die—promises of eternal life secured by Jesus’s own life, death, and resurrection. I know these words are true in every season, but standing at my grandpa’s graveside that day, the significance of the timing brought a special kind of solace. At the church I reminded Grandpa’s family and friends of Paul’s words from 1 Corinthians 15: Our earthly bodies are but seeds of what our heavenly bodies will become. “What you sow does not come to life unless it dies,” and we “are not sowing the body that will be, but only a seed” (vv. 36–37).

Grandpa died in winter, and we were burying his body at the beginning of spring, like a seed of promise planted in the ground. The act of placing a body in the ground was an act of faith and defiance, declaring, “This is not the end. This is only the beginning.” Because of Jesus, the resting place of every believer is the site of a future resurrection. 

Jesus, the firstfruits from among the dead, invites us to share in His resurrected life (1Corinthians 15:20). His resurrection both shapes and secures our hope—not only in death, but also right now, in this life! “Because of his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you” (1Peter 1:3–4). Christ’s resurrection changes how we understand death, but it also changes how we view life in Christ even now. 

Over the next three weeks, we’ll take a closer look at Jesus’s life from the time of His resurrection to His ascension, reading about the encounters He had with His disciples and others after He was raised from the dead. We’ll look to Scripture to learn how Christ’s resurrection changes everything for those who put their faith in Him. May the truth of God’s Word capture your heart with the reality of the resurrected Jesus. He is our living hope.

But Christmastime was when all of that accumulation really worked to our advantage. We enjoyed snowy Christmas Eve walks down the middle of unplowed streets, snow forts big enough to gather friends inside, and meeting up with classmates at the best sledding hill in town. 

Then we moved to Tennessee. And in the sixteen winters we have lived here, we’ve yet to see a white Christmas. Every year, my longing for the beauty of big flakes of falling snow begins the moment the dessert plates are cleared after Thanksgiving dinner and lasts until we finally see the first snowfall of winter, usually when we’re back in Michigan visiting family.

When our She Reads Truth team started dreaming about Advent 2022, we turned to the lyrics of the hymn “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus,” (which happens to be both Amanda’s and my all-time favorite Christmas carol). The line, “joy of ev’ry longing heart!” connected with us deeply. We thought about all the longing hearts across the world and through time, and about every man, woman, and child who will read Scripture with us this Advent season. Every one of us, without exception, knows what it means to long for someone or something. But like snow at Christmastime, the earthly things we long for eventually fade away, fail to satisfy, or possibly never come to fruition at all. That’s because the deep-rooted longing of every human heart can only be satisfied by the God who created us and came to us. He is the One we’re longing for. 

Advent is a season for preparing our hearts to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Alongside the women and men of the Old Testament who looked forward to the promised Messiah and those in the early Church who lived on alert for His promised return, we look to the only One who will never change, never fail us, never fade away. 

I encourage you, in this season marked by a longing for material things, to begin your Advent journey by examining exactly what it is you’re longing for. Ask yourself what your heart truly desires. And as you journey with us through the lyrics of this old hymn and the ancient, timeless words of Scripture, ask the God who came to dwell with us to align your longings with His and satisfy your heart in Him. 

This reading plan was made with you in mind, and our team has prayed for you all along the way as we have curated it. May you anticipate and be satisfied by the God who came to us as a baby and will one day return in glory—Jesus, the joy of every longing heart. 

Boaz wants this to be legal—for the agreement to be made in plain sight, in the presence of elders. When Boaz fairly and legally takes Ruth as his wife, the ten elders and those at the gate invoke this incredible, ancient blessing for fruitfulness on their union: “May the LORD make [Ruth]…like Rachel and Leah, who together built the house of Israel. May you be powerful in Ephrathah and your name well known in Bethlehem” (Ruth 4:11).

God reveals a peek at His awesome tapestry when we look at the bigger picture of Boaz and Ruth’s love story. We pull back the curtain and see that Ruth’s decision to follow Naomi was so much more than an address change; it is a tiny piece of God’s grand plan. 

That blessing of fruitfulness would soon bring forth a son, Obed, who would be the father of Jesse. And one of Jesse’s sons was David. (The guy who slayed Goliath, was anointed king, and wrote many of the psalms.) David also happens to be the direct ancestor of a baby whose parents returned to their hometown, Bethlehem, to deliver Him in a manger. Jesus. Renowned in Bethlehem, indeed!

Ruth and Boaz have a remarkable family history of redemption. Even better, through this family tree, the Redeemer—our Redeemer—would come to buy back the world.

Christ has redeemed us like Boaz redeemed Ruth. In the most public way possible, Jesus redeemed us once and for all, a people for His possession. May we go forward today knowing we are loved so genuinely and incredibly by the One who redeemed us to be His. We are loved, indeed. And we are His.

Scripture Reading: Luke 2:1-20, Galatians 4:4-5 

As I sit down to write this Christmas day devotional, it is not lost on me where you might be reading it. Whether it’s Christmas morning or evening, whether you’re home or traveling, with the ones you love or apart from them, whether it looks the way you hoped or not, Christmas came, didn’t it? 

The day we remember the birth of our lowly baby-King, the day we worship with wonder the God who can form bones in a virgin’s womb, and the day we contemplate all that it means that our Creator would choose to be Creator-with-us, is finally here! Friend, whatever the circumstances, whatever the obstacles, you are here, too. You chose to open your Bible today—to anchor the festivities in Truth. In the midst of a day that lauds the new, you paused to return to the ancient. I’m so glad you’re here.

Today’s reading is another year older, and yet somehow it can sit on our laps or in our hands or in our ears and mouths as fresh as the day it occurred. God kept His two-millennia-old promise to Abram. He chose righteous Joseph and Mary to appear unrighteous in order to be the parents of His only Son. He invited the uninvited shepherds to hear the news first by sending an actual crowd of angels to proclaim literal “peace on earth” to their weary ears (Luke 2:14). God came in the least and most spectacular way, to be with us. 

I’ve been meditating on this truth over this season of Advent, and it has met me in a fresh way this year. Maybe it’s because being with people isn’t always easy, and this only becomes magnified in a season of togetherness. As I have been with folks this December, I have felt all the feelings that happen when people spend time with people. Joy, fullness, irritation, impatience…the whole range! And it hit me that God chooses to be with me. He doesn’t feel about me the way I feel when I’m with people I don’t enjoy or understand. From what I know about the love He has for me, and because the blood of His Son covers me, I believe He does understand me and even enjoys my company. “God with us” has taken on a new meaning for me this year and it has only increased my desire for “Raechel with God.”

I hope you know that He left His comfort in order to be your comfort. I hope you know this is true about you, too. 

Because of the truth of what we read today, “God with” not only happened in Bethlehem then. It extends beyond Galilee and Jerusalem. Because of Christmas, “God with” is even bigger than the pillar of fire at night and cloud by day. It’s not only in tents or temples or burning bushes. Because of Bethlehem, and because Jesus left us His Spirit, “God with” reaches from Nazareth to Nairobi to New Hampshire, from Capernaum to Charlottetown to Colorado Springs. It extends from then to now to eternity because God intends to dwell with His people again in a way mankind hasn’t known since the garden.

As you sit with these passages from Luke and Galatians today, consider as clearly as you possibly can the reality of “God with you.” And on this day that we remember and celebrate God becoming like us—God being with us—my prayer is that the most remarkable part of your day (more than gifts or food or fellowship or lack of any of these things) will be that you met with the One who came as a baby in a manger, that you know Him personally and sensed His Spirit’s presence with you today. That you had the opportunity to worship Him and you took it. 

My prayer for you—for all of us—is that our preparations for the Christmas season would dim in comparison to our preparations for the return of our King. That “God with us” would be both our comfort and our aim. And, whether I’m the first or the fortieth to say it to you today, Merry Christmas, beloved one. Jesus came for you, and that is worth celebrating today!

Written by Raechel Myers