Advent is here!

To celebrate, we’ve compiled 16 Advent quotes to help you center your heart and mind on Jesus this holiday season. As you make room for Jesus in your life, rest assured – he has already prepared a place for you.

“The word advent means “expectation.” What advent can do for us is create a sense of hope.”

– Louie Giglio

“The Lord is coming, always coming. When you have ears to hear and eyes to see, you will recognize him at any moment of your life. Life is Advent; life is recognizing the coming of the Lord.”

– Henri Nouwen

“It is the beautiful task of Advent to awaken in all of us memories of goodness and thus to open doors of hope.”

– Pope Benedict XVI

“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, God is in the Manger

“At this Christmas when Christ comes, will He find a warm heart? Mark the season of Advent by loving and serving the others with God’s own love and concern.”

– Mother Teresa, Love: A Fruit Always in Season

“During Advent, we occupy our greatest longings.”

– Ruth Haley Barton

“Optimism and hope are radically different attitudes. Optimism is the expectation that things—the weather, human relationship, the economy, the political situation, and so on—will get better. Hope is trust that God will fulfill God’s promises to us in a way that leads us to true freedom. The optimist speaks about concrete changes in the future. The person of hope lives in the moment with the knowledge and trust that all of life is in good hands.”

– Henri Nouwen

“Look up, you whose gaze is fixed on this earth, who are spellbound by the little events and changes on the face of the earth. Look up to these words, you who have turned away from heaven disappointed. Look up, you whose eyes are heavy with tears and who are heavy and who are crying over the fact that the earth has gracelessly torn us away. Look up, you who, burdened with guilt, cannot lift your eyes. Look up, your redemption is drawing near. something different from what you see daily will happen. Just be aware, be watchful, wait just another short moment. Wait and something quite new will break over you: God will come.”

– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is In the Manger

“One who has hope lives differently.”

– Pope Benedict XVI

“I want a Christmas that whispers ‘Jesus’.”

– Ann Voskamp

“You could more easily catch a hurricane in a shrimp net that you can understand the wild, relentless, passionate, uncompromising, pursuing love of God made present in the manger.”

– Brennan Manning

“Into this world, this demented inn in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ comes uninvited.”

– Thomas Merton

“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

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

– Bill McKibben

“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

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

– Anonymous

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