The 2011 adult Advent study, "From Longing to Receiving," is now available! Writer Patricia Tull leads participants through the Old Testament and the Gospel lectionary texts for four weeks, tracing important Advent themes of longing for God's help, anticipating God's presence among us, recognizing God's work among us, and receiving God's new gifts to us.

Each week's handout is filled with important information about the texts, yet written for personal devotional use for group discussion. The Leader's Guides will assist a volunteer leader in organizing a forty-five-minute group session, filled with activities and discussion.

Excerpt: "Each of the Old Testament lessons in the Revised Common Lectionary is thematically related to the Gospel text with which it is paired. The passages from the Old Testament were originally written for circumstances and times very different from those of Jesus' story, and each is an amazing bit of theological poetry in its own right. Though the Christian church has not traditionally acquainted itself with the Old Testament as thoughtfully as it has the Gospel stories, our earliest Christian leaders chose to retain Jewish Scriptures as part of the Christian collection (or canon), and to use them liberally in the New Testament and early church writings, because they perceived that the God portrayed there is the God Jesus worshiped, the same God Christians serve. Exploring these passages in their own scriptural contexts and in their relation to the Gospel passages will broaden and deepen the theological riches available to us."