The First Light of Hope
Dr Justine Toh opens our Advent 2025 series with a reflection on the way love breaks through, just as light breaks through the darkness.
This is a series of daily email devotionals for Advent 2025, crafted by a diverse group of contributors reflecting on the love we see breaking through in the birth of Jesus.
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About this Advent series
As another year draws to a close, many of us are feeling the weight of a world in turmoil. We’ve witnessed devastating natural disasters, rising inequality, deepening political unrest, and the persistence of racism and injustice. At times, it can feel overwhelming - like the foundations we’ve relied on are being shaken, and peace is increasingly hard to find.
Yet, step back into first-century Palestine, and the world was no less fractured. The Roman Empire ruled with ruthless force - oppressing the poor, crushing dissent, enforcing a violent ‘peace.’ Corrupt leaders exploited the vulnerable, while the religious elite clung to power instead of standing with the people. The Israelites lived under occupation, longing for liberation, crying out for justice, waiting for God to act.
And then - love breaks through.
Not in the way anyone expected. Not with force or fanfare. But in the fragile form of a newborn baby - God incarnate, born into poverty, under the shadow of empire. A quiet, subversive act of radical love. A love that would go onto challenge injustice, lift the weary, and turn the world upside down - not with power, but with grace, mercy, and kindness.
Sign up to receive this 2025 Advent series delivered to your inbox from 1 - 25 December 2025.
This year’s Advent series will feature 25 devotionals from a diverse group of contributors across the Common Grace movement: reflecting on the realities of our broken world along with the unshakable hope that love still breaks through; exploring how God’s love disrupts, heals, and transforms - breaking through darkness, despair, and injustice to bring light, joy, and renewal; and reminding us that even in the darkest times, love is not absent. It pushes through cracks, defies despair, and insists on hope.
Our Advent contributors for this year are: Nathan Campbell, Rev Tim Costello, Lynda Dunstan, Steff Fenton, Aunty Prof Dr Doseena Fergie, Rev Jason Forbes, Pastor Darren Garlett, Rev Belinda Groves, Deni Harden, Eric & Carolyn Hatfield, Jono Ingram, Eliza Johnson, Hsu-Ann Khoury, Charles Louwrens, Dr Phillipa McCormack, Gershon Nimbalker, Dr Mick Pope, Jessica Carroll Smith, Rev Glen Spencer, Safina Stewart, Danielle Terceiro, Dr Justine Toh, Guan Un, Luke Vassella and Jasmine Wrangles.
As we journey together this Advent, may we hold onto this: no matter how deep the darkness, love will always break through.
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Share this opportunity to celebrate and reflect together through this season of Advent with your networks and communities. Explore our range of social media graphics for Facebook and Instagram, as well as a presentation slide to share with your church community.
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Our 2025 Advent series will be shared with our movement as a daily email series, across Common Grace's social media and published on this page from 1 - 25 December 2025.
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Common Grace is a diverse movement of individuals, churches and communities passionate about Jesus and justice. We have come together as those from different Christian traditions who stand in the continuity of the historic Christian faith, centred on the life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ as witnessed to in holy scripture. This series highlights the diversity of followers of Jesus across these lands. These voices may not agree with one another (or with you), but they are each an expression of longing for the God whose love we see break through in Jesus.
