Blogging for Advent. Again.

This year I've had no time for blogging - when academic study prescribes the writing of 20,000 words in a year and work includes producing regular content for a website there's not much head room left for writing for fun! Well, not for me anyway!

But I've always found Advent a useful time to come back to blogging; it's time-bound and contains themes and ideas that are ripe for pondering, and since it's appearing on the horizon once again I'm wondering about using this as a space to explore some of the themes of my MA dissertation, not least because many of those themes are intrinsically linked with Advent and Christmas.

Although I don't yet have a dissertation question, I do have some broad themes that I'm exploring. From a biblical perspective, the key theme is Jesus' identity as the Messiah and at this early stage I'm considering a number of questions:

• What did Jesus understand the concept of Messiah to mean?
• What was the prevailing Jewish understanding of 'the Messiah' during the period of Jesus' earthly ministry?
• What were the points of connection and difference between these two understandings of the Messiah? 
• Who and what do twenty-first century Christians understand the Messiah to be?

So there are some obvious points of connection between Advent and my dissertation, since the purpose of this season of preparation is precisely to reflect on what the Bible has to say about who Jesus is, why he came and what the long-term implications of that coming are.

Therefore, alongside some more academic reading, I've decided to work my way through several different Advent studies in order to reflect more deeply, and from a variety of perspectives, on how this season might shape my academic thinking, and I've started now in order to give myself a little bit of extra time!

I've also taken this decision in part to try and avoid the major pitfall inherent in any kind of theological study, the very real danger that reflection on the nature of who God is becomes an exclusively academic exercise with little or no spiritual or practical value.

But my decision to share this process is a reflection of some of the frustration I've felt over the last few months at not really having a space in which I can explore my thoughts and ideas with others. I'd like to think that this time of year might create space in which others would be interested in exploring this theme of Jesus the Messiah with me.

If that's the case, you might like to try and get hold of one of the Advent studies I'm going to work my way through. They are:

Jeremy Brooks: A Long Way Off: A daily walk from Advent to Christmas ISBN 9781848677265

Stephen Cottrell: Walking Backwards to Christmas ISBN 9780281071470

Maggi Dawn: Beginnings and Endings (and what happens in between): Daily Bible readings from Advent to Epiphany ISBN 9781841015668

Paula Gooder: Journey to the Manger: Exploring the Birth of Jesus ISBN 978848257948

David Thomson: Christmas by Candlelight: Readings and reflections from Advent to Epiphany ISBN 987185078993

(Can I encourage you, where possible, to get hold of these books from your friendly local bookshop - Christian or otherwise - rather than from the Interweb?!)

The Maggi Dawn, Jeremy Brooks and David Thomson books are made up of daily readings and reflections while the other two take up key themes over a number of chapters and contain suggestions for personal and group study.

I'm not entirely sure what shape my blogging will take over the next few weeks; as ever I caveat this entire post with the warning that this may in reality be the last thing I write for another year!!

If you would like to go through this process with me - whatever it ends up looking like! - do leave a comment here or, if you access my blog via Facebook, on the post in which you found this link. Do be forthcoming with ideas, questions, book suggestions or anything else this or future posts (assuming there are some!!) brings to mind.

Thank you!