Advent reading

Huw Williams | 21:48, Saturday 06 December 2014 | Turin, Italy

It's that time of year when I dust down my favourite advent music and advent reading and enjoy the anticipation of Christmas.

I haven't quite finished this book yet (almost there) but I couldn't wait to finish it in order to recommend it, in case you're like me and enjoy finding something to help you to meditate on the true meaning of Christmas in the middle of all the nonsense that gets thrown at us at this time of year.

Peter Mead's "Pleased to Dwell" is proving to be a gem of a book. Twenty-four short chapters, each of which even I – a terribly slow reader – get through in under ten minutes forming a wonderful daily meditation for advent. (If you started on December 1st you'd be done by Christmas Eve, if you started next week you will easily catch up.)

This book is an easy read, in simple attractive language, but don't let that make you think its theology is light – anyone who has heard Peter Mead teach knows he has the teacher's gift of making rich theology easy to understand, and delightful to digest. There are many profound biblical insights here as he takes us on a powerful thematic overview of promise and fulfillment in terms of God's promised Messiah from Genesis, through the rest of the Old Testament, zooming in on the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke and into the rest of the New Testament.

This would be a lovely book to read at any time of year, but I'd recommend you pick up a copy for the rest of advent. It's a blessing of a book. Heartily recommended!

[Full disclosure – Peter Mead is a good friend of mine, and while that surely made me more disposed to pick this book up in the first place, I don't think it made me any more enthusiastic than I would have been about its content. I paid for my own copy.]