The 2023 Advent Calendar Is Here

You can download the calendar at the bottom of this post.

Merry Watters and I are pleased to present this year’s Advent calendar. Each year, Merry chooses scripture lessons for each day of the season and connects them with a suggested devotion for the day. I design the graphics for the calendar and write a poem than can also be sung as an Advent hymn.

Merry’s scripture selections this year are based on the theme of “hope.” As I worked on the calendar, I found myself struggling to compose a new poem. The tragic events in Israel/Palestine shaped my thinking, and then with the more recent mass shootings in Lewiston, Maine, I wondered even more about what I could write that would express hope in the season ahead.

For only the second time in over 30 years, I found myself returning to an earlier poem, this time from the calendar for 2019. Though the words from Isaiah (ch. 2:1-5) on which the poem is based are not a part of the lectionary readings for this Advent season, I found that I could look forward to the promise of a day to come when we will beat swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks.

You can download the calendar below, and as always, we are happy to have you reproduce and distribute it as you wish. You also have permission to use the poem in Advent liturgies or publications, as long as the copyright is acknowledged. If setting the poem to a hymn tune, the text will work in CMD for a two stanza hymn and CM for a four stanza hymn.

I send out a daily email devotion based on each day of the calendar. If you do not yet receive that and wish to do so, you can subscribe here.

As always, we are grateful to Susan Kochinskas of Flocksholm Design for preparing the calendar for distribution. on the web.

May you have a blessed Advent.

Download the calendar below: