December for me has been rather crazy, as per usual, so my Advent plans have completely fallen through. Join me as I take a moment for some Illustrated Faith advent journaling with some printables I purchased over Black Friday. Enjoy!
Illustrated Faith Advent printables – “Oh Little Town” set
Illustrated Faith, the company that basically invented Bible journaling as we know it today, releases tons of colorful and inspiring printable sets just about every week. I picked up a TON of these digital files during their Black Friday sale, including the “Oh Little Town” set that I used in this process. Although I wasn’t able to buy the Illustrated Faith Advent 2021 kit, this printable set was enjoyable and inspiring to use as I reflect on the coming of the Lord.
Here’s a link to the set – not sponsored, just love their products : )
Process
The “Oh Little Town” set comes with several pages of lovely graphics. For this pages, I chose some labels with verse quotes in pink, antique gold, turquoise, and dark green, a wreath and Christmas tree, and several house illustrations. For each verse box, I created a cluster of paper pieces to separate the page into segments and give me space to journal each verse.
Verse Reflection
Next, I started reflecting on each verse in turn, starting with the pink one in the top left. I did a word study on the phrase “men with whom [God] is well pleased” and found that the phrase “well pleased” doesn’t necessarily refer only to a specific class of people, but more broadly to “the whole human race, contemplated as blessed in Christ’s birth,” as Thayer’s Greek Lexicon says. I loved this insight that the word study gave me; it reminded me of the “All nations will be blessed through you” verse — Genesis 12:3.
Here’s some more Advent journaling inspiration:
The second verse highlighted on this page is Isaiah 9:6. I did another word study, this time coming up with a definition of the Hebrew word translated as “wonderful” — marvel, wonder, something hard to understand; God’s acts of judgement and redemption. I thought about how God’s wonder that defies comprehension, His vastness and greatness, somehow coexists with the nearness of fatherhood.
This theme of reflecting on greatness-and-nearness continued through the other two verses on this page, ending with me thinking about the fact that Jesus was a human who cried and laughed and maybe cracked jokes and was tired and got injured and felt annoyed at life and was just generally a human, in addition to being the Son of God and Savior of the world. So yeah, really good time of reflection today.
Finishing Touches
To fill the space in the middle of the page, I took my hard-tipped Tombow fudenosuke brush pen and wrote “Our God will always come through for us” with some little doodle hearts. I then added some cute stickers around the page for a little extra sparkle, and some coordinating washi tape.
Photos
I hope you’ve enjoyed this simple Illustrated Faith Advent journaling process with the “Oh Little Town” printable set. Stay tuned for more holiday magic!
Happy blogmas!
