Advent for Exiles is a book I have been looking forward to since I first heard Caroline Cobb was writing it! Her advent album A Seed, A Sunrise is one of my favorites to listen to all winter long (really, until it’s time to switch to Andrew Peterson’s Resurrection Letters album leading up to Easter). I was captivated by the way the music brings you through the longing for the promised Messiah that was prophesied, the joy at his arrival, and the hope of his return.

Advent for Exiles is a kind of companion to this album (although you definitely don’t have to have listened to the music), tracing the similar themes from Isaiah of the feelings of exile in a world that’s not as it should be, the hope that Christ is the only one who can save, and the longing for his second coming and restoration of all things.

The readings were beautiful and seeped in scripture, just like her music. I’m planning to read it again slowly during Advent and take the opportunities for response included with each day’s reading. While I had a digital ARC from being on the launch team, my pre-order arrived so early that I had time to read it in hard copy and it is a beautifully designed little book! Each of the 25 days includes quotes from the songs, a scripture reference to read, the reading, and different ways to respond.

I also was able to attend a house concert with Caroline a few weeks ago and it was a beautiful, worshipful night—and it was so nice meeting Caroline! If you don’t have a book for Advent this year, I highly recommend Advent for Exiles!

Thanks to @netgalley and @bhpub for the opportunity to read and honestly review this book.

A lyrical book, Advent for Exiles guidess the reader through twenty-five devotions that address everything from the pain of loss experienced in the garden to our current longing for the Lord to shine His light in a world wrought with strife, injustice, illness, and aging.

Caroline Cobb writes, "In Advent, we remember our identity as exiles and ask, 'How long, Oh Lord?...As we wait for that day, we link arms with Adam and Eve, the prophets, and the Old Testament exiles in Bablyon and Assyria. Like them, we cling to God's promise of salvation and ache to see it fully realized. But we do so with a more vivid, concrete hope: a radiant,living, unchanging, imperishable, unconquerable hope anchored in the life, death, resurrection, and imminent return of our King and Savior, Jesus Christ (1 Pet. 1:3-5)

Even now the dawn is breaking through, the firstfruits of that everlasting love."

Beyond the beautiful writing and Biblical insight, each chapter includes a quote from Cobb's music and concludes with a prompt in the short section, "Respond in Practice". Ideas range from crafting a poem to purchasing a plant or reciting a prayer.

A contemplative Advent resource, this book will add richness and depth to the days leading up to Christmas.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read Advent for Exiles in exchange for my honest review.

Caroline Cobb is a singer and songwriter, but in my estimation, she is also a storyteller, and in her showing and telling, she has captured the fragrance of lament that is the essence of Advent. Jesus is “the joy of every longing heart” because we wait for him to end our exile once and for all. In Advent for Exiles, Cobb traces the biblical theme of exile from our banishment from Eden to the ashes and ruin of Jerusalem and on to the hunger for home that you might be feeling today. Digging into the rich biblical imagery of a sunrise, a seed, a king, a highway, and a city she encourages readers to put their hope in God’s bright promise of rescue as we wait for all things to be made new. Each reading comprises a song lyric, a scripture reading, a reflection, and a prompt to respond. The message is strong and true: “We do not despair in the darkness of our exile or our longing for home because the hope of Christ is as sure as the sunrise.”

Realistic yet imaginative, poetic yet literal. I have grown to appreciate Caroline Cobb's writing in a whole new light as well as my exilic journey this side of Eternity. This is truly a Christ-centered, Advent read that displays the true "aesthetic" Christians should desire. I cannot wait to own a hard copy of this treasure!

I truly love this book. It's such a different take on advent from what I am used to, but still points clearly to the gospel throughout. I had never heard of Caroline Cobb before reading this book, but it also gave me a great connection to her music, which is great to listen to while reading. Advent for Exiles reminds the reader that this world is not our home and that God is with us as we await Jesus' second coming. This book is perfectly written for this post-2020 climate. If you enjoy reading books by CS Lewis, you would likely enjoy Caroline's writing style. I think it's more suited for an individual or a small group read, but not as a family devotional. Each day has a prayer and a song accompanying it and I highly recommend singing aloud if you enjoy doing so. It's a nice way to end your read.

A good devotional that I will be recommending to students for advent. It is a bit of a pity that the book does not take the opportunity to be more historically rooted (eg. by splitting the days of advent into the 4 weeks corresponding with the four advent candles of hope, peace, joy, and love), but I think this makes this book a good introduction for someone from a 'low-church' background to Advent and spiritual disciplines accompanying Advent.

I know, it’s too early for Advent. But, she’s one of my favorite song-writers and the title of the book felt perfect for us: “Advent for Exiles: 25 Devotions to Awaken Gospel Hope in Every Longing Heart.”

This advent devotional accompanies Caroline Cobb’s album “A Seed, A Sunrise.” Each day’s reading has an accompanying song, a prayer or a practice, a way to meditate and integrate the Word into the day.

We long and look for Jesus to come again, and to come into our everyday of changing places, people, seasons, jobs, roles, where to get groceries, which gate is open and how to spend our time. We are here trusting Jesus will take this set-apart time, this exile, and make it holy.

That’s the Gospel-Good-News of Advent and Christmas isn’t it? That Jesus enters into our time and space and makes it, makes us holy. If you’re feeling a similar sense of wandering, of aching and needing comfort, consider this devotional as a guidebook during Advent.

5 Stars

“Stop. Feel the weight. Imagine again the midnight of exile, the dark before the dawn. As the darkness of night stirs our longing for the sunrise, our sorrow over our own sin and the brokenness around us heightens our desire for the Saviour. The black cloud draped over this period of judgment; the helplessness God’s people felt to get back home to him—these shadows throw the bright beauty of Jesus’s arrival into sharp relief” (Cobb 47).

Caroline Cobb's music has been one of my companions this year. Well, to be very specific, there were a few months where I found myself listening to "Find Me In This Cave" on loop for days. Her music has a stillness, a humility, and a simple poetry to it that touched my heart deeply when it most needed that song, which was in its own way a prayer that uttered what was unutterable in my own prayers. So when I heard that she was working on a devotional for Advent, I was incredibly excited to read it, knowing her gift with words, and the observations that had come from the still, watchful eye of someone who can hear the song in voicelessness. And as I read the advance copy in a mostly-empty coffee shop, I was moved to joy and to tears in the same quiet, still way as her music had moved me.

Cobb’s craft as a storyteller shines through vividly and transparently in her prose. The very first entry in the devotional succinctly reveals her intention of guiding your imagination through Advent: “Can you imagine Eden?” Her purpose in writing this devotional is not to impart something merely cerebral, but to draw us deeper into relational understanding of our relational God; to stir our imaginations and let the familiarity of these old stories fall away like old skins, revealing the hidden fire within, the wonder that is so easily forgotten in the jargon of the season we easily grow numb to.

“My hope is the use of biblical imagery, music and lyrics, storytelling, and physical or visual exercises might stoke the ember of your imagination into flame, even as the Bible readings and biblical principles within the reflections anchor you, giving boundaries for that fire” (Cobb 8).

Just like her songwriting, Cobb's writing here is deceptively simple. The precision and beauty of her writing conveys the simple truth of the Gospel, and presents the beauty of it with honesty and an unflinching receptive posture of the astonishing joy of it. And yet she tells you in her introduction that “in these pages, you will not find “the most wonderful time of the year” but thorns, ashes, and deep gloom. You’ll meet Adam and Eve homesick for Eden and the weeping exiles in Babylong hanging up their harps in the polar trees... But as the darkness of a long night augments our longing for the sunrise, I hope these images of exile will expand your desire for the promised Messiah and amplify your joy at his coming” (Cobb 2-3).

Cobb invites you to "let the ache of your own exile, the dark shroud of your helplessness and sin, make Jesus's first advent, and his promised final advent, all the more glorious to you", through the practices of lament and repentance, and the intentional contemplation of our state as exiles (Cobb 43). One of the aspects of this devotional that I found particularly beautiful is her exhortation to be be still and feel the tension between Jesus's first coming and his promised return; not to dwell in the discomfort for the sake of doing so, but to better understand the magnitude of grace, and to allow a renewed and refreshed understanding of how miraculous a gift it is to seep through our everyday rhythms of life.

“Just wait a moment here. Resist the temptation to fast-forward to the happy ending. Let yourself feel the homesickness, the weight of sin on your shoulders, the hunger pangs. Let yourself see the cherubim barring your way to God. When we allow ourselves to linger in the dissonance and ache of exile, we amplify the glory of what God has done in the advent of Jesus” (Cobb 26).

This devotional is an invitation into stillness, contemplation, and understanding. Though not all of the practical tips she recommended were things that I connected with, I found some of the prayers she wrote as responses particularly moving and thoughtful. Cobb's final purpose in this devotional is to spur us to joyful action, as a response to the joy given to us in this season of hope - that we would embody and live out the eternal hope we carry (coming from a liturgical tradition, this was something that I resonated with strongly!).

While she does not flinch from the sorrow and pain in this world that is worth mourning and lamenting over, Cobb does not sit and stay in valleys of despair. Cobb, whose music swells with an unrelenting and quietly persevering hope, urges the reader to walk in both the heights and the depths of life, holding to the same hope that the exiles from Eden and the exiles from Jerusalem found themselves irresistibly drawn to; to "take comfort, because it is precisely in these impossibly dry, desert places that God delights to make a garden grow" (Cobb 72).

It was a real blessing to read this devotional. I hope it will be a blessing to those who read it this Advent, too.

"Jesus is the seed of the new creation, planted right in the middle of your exile and mine. He arrives not to seek out the best soil or sow into only the most suitable plots of land. No, he arrives to bring beauty from the ashes and rivers in the wilderness!" (Cobb 72)

“Advent invites you to remember and rehearse your pilgrim identity. Today, it bids you to practice the discipline of journeying with anticipation, eyes focused on an unseen, eternal destination beyond compare, and—even more!—on the glorious God who makes his home there. Surely, he is worth it all” (Cobb 88).

I was offered an advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review, and am glad to be a part of the launch team for this devotional :-)

[I anticipate also posting this on Amazon on Tuesday]

For about a dozen years, Caroline Cobb has been writing and releasing rich, Biblically-saturated songs. Her skill as a wordsmith has earned her comparisons to Michael Card. Expect those comparisons to only grow from here, because - much like Card - she is now writing accessible devotional books. If you've read one of Card's books and liked it, this is definitely for you.

But even if you have no clue who Card or Cobb are, this might still be for you. It's an Advent devotional that walks through the whole span of redemption, from Eden to the New Jerusalem. Fresh insights are interwoven with lyrics from her songs and calls to engage all five senses in application.

In “Advent for Exiles” Caroline beautifully weaves the exhilic theme throughout the Bible from Jesus’s first coming to anticipating His second coming. With passages each day from Isaiah, the New Testament, as well as various other Bible readings to go along with each day, there is a prayer and a meditation based off of a reflective thought, activity, or her own song lyrics. This beautifully and articulately shows just how special and intentional Jesus is not just was with His people in the very beginning, but how specially and intentionally seeks out the lost today. I highly recommend this book for your advent reading! It would be great to incorporate into a family advent devotionals as the activities and reflections can easily be tailored to people of all ages. Plus her song lyrics and musicality is gospel saturated! Highly recommend for advent preparations or any time of year to prepare your heart!

Ms. Cobb's songwriter side shows in these 25 advent devotions, full of rich prose, painting the narrative of a groaning creation longing for a Saviour.
Great for readers who appreciate prose and poetry, each day's readings roll smoothly through reminding us the reason why we celebrate the hope that Jesus brings.

While a well done devotion, it wasn't quite my personal style, but I know many others will enjoy it.

First sentence: The Old Testament tells the story of two tragic exiles.

Devotional books are not my first go-to, usually. However, I wanted to read this one because I love, love, love, love, LOVE Caroline Cobb's music. One of the things I love most about her music is that it is saturated in Scripture. Every song, every verse and chorus--all can be drawn back to Scripture. There is something edifying about listening to her music. I think she is under-appreciated. Just my opinion. But if you haven't given her music a try, do so.

There is a playlist that goes with this advent devotional. I HIGHLY recommend it. In fact, I'm not sure the devotional would be as impactful as it is without listening to the music. The music should not be seen as "an extra" but as the main attraction. Again, just my opinion. The playlist is on Spotify.

The devotional is written "for those who have felt--or at least feel ready to acknowledge--the long groan of exile."

Caroline Cobb has used seven essential threads to weave together this advent devotional. The seven essential threads are: the season of Advent, the book of Isaiah, the theme of exile, biblical imagery and metaphor, music and lyrics, narrative storytelling, and responsive exercises.

There are eight "parts" to this advent devotional:
The First Exile
In the Darkness of Exile, a Sunrise
In the Wilderness of Exile, a Seed and a Highway
For the Lost Sheep in Exile, a Shepherd-King
In the Silence of Exile, God Speaks
In the Ashes and Ruin of Exile, a New Home for God
In our Present Exile, a Future Hope
Emmanuel
Readers do get to explore the big picture of Scripture which isn't always the case with advent devotional books.

I personally did not always "enjoy" the responsive suggestions. The suggestions--to me, again this is subjective--seemed unlikely activities for me to actually do. However, perhaps for others it's a better fit. Not every devotional reading has a physical activity to do.