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Christmas in July: Candles in the Darkness Release

Christmas in July: Candles in the Darkness Release

Last updated on: July 7, 2026 at 2:00 am by Lynneth Renberg

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Christmas in July: Candles in the Darkness Release 2026-07-03T14:50:50-04:00 Lynneth Renberg

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It’s book release month for the Advent devotional that my husband and colleague Adam and I co-wrote– a sort of Christmas in July, as it were. We’re so excited that this book is now out in the world to be shared with you all.

Now, as an Advent and Christmastide devotional, you may be wondering why it is releasing now, months before Advent begins. Some of the timing is practical: people have to hear about the book in time to buy or borrow a copy for Advent, and that means the book itself needs to be out well before Advent begins. But as I’ll argue today, there are also good reasons to read an Advent or Christmas book out of season: in the heat and brightness of the summer, as well as in the darkness and cold of the winter. Read on for a few reasons that we feel this devotional might be of interest in July as well as in December.

Learning to look rightly.

Part of the emphasis of Advent is looking towards Christ and forming our habits and traditions accordingly. In this book, we (and the believers from church history we engage with) seek to learn to center Christ in our perspectives, prayers, and actions. Historically, many of the themes of Advent and Christmastide writings were heavily theological in nature, reflecting on the nature of God, of the Trinity, and of Christ, as well as on soteriology and eschatology. These important theological frameworks do not have a specific season but should matter to us throughout the whole year.

Christ’s past, present, and future comings.

While today, we often think just about Christ’s coming as a baby when we observe Advent and Christmastide, historically, the season was for reflecting on each of Christ’s comings. The authors in this devotional encourage us to reflect on Christ’s coming in its tripartite form: not just as an incarnate baby, but also amidst us now in the church, sacraments, and Scriptures, and Christ’s future coming in glory. Particularly in thinking about Christ’s coming in Scriptures and sacrament, we have much to learn and reflect on throughout the entire year.

Finding new teachers and conversation partners.

One of our goals in this book was to introduce new teachers and conversation partners from church history in ways that made them accessible outside of this specific devotional. We wanted to be sure that when you read a passage from a historical author, you could go find that exact passage in their larger works! To that end, at the end of the devotional, we have a section titled “Historical Figures and Sources.” Here, you can read a brief biography of each of the believers we engage in the devotional and find a citation (or several) to their writings. A good reason to start looking at this devotional now would be to start learning from these sisters and brothers in Christ – you can go read from their writings more fully, while waiting for Advent to start reading this specific devotional.

It’s not only dark in the winter.

One of the themes threading through this devotional is hope. First and foremost, the devotional points towards hope in Christ. Through Christ, it also points towards hope in the eventual healing and restoration of broken things, and hope in the global Body of Christ, which points us beyond the fractures and failings of Christianity in our current moment. In writing the reflections for this devotional, I needed those reminders of hope; I wrote one of the weeks of this devotional while grappling with the news of friends’ cancer diagnoses, and several other days in the devotional while grieving my grandfather’s failing health. The darkness and pain we face in our lives does not neatly align with seasons, or with the darkness of the winter. If, despite the summer sun, you are in a season where you are struggling to see the light, now might be a good time to take up and read these past believers.

Over the next few months on Anxious Bench, occasionally Adam and I will tell you a bit more about some of the people whose voices you can hear in this book: some you’ve already met through our posts here (whether Adam’s Mothers of the Church series or our past Advent and Christmastide posts), but some may be new to you. Those posts will be focused on these figures more broadly, but we’ll still mention when someone we write about is featured in the book. Whether you wait to read the devotional as Advent begins in November or start reading it now, we do hope you’ll read it and come along with us. We learned so much from the sisters and brothers in Christ that are in this book, and we hope that you will listen to their voices.

Candles in the Darkness: Experiencing Advent with the Early and Medieval Church is available for purchase at InterVarsity Press, Bookshop.org, Amazon, or wherever else you buy your books; it’s also available as an audiobook and in the Bible study platform Logos. A free chapter is available on IVP’s website too.

History and Religion

Lynneth Miller Renberg

medieval Christianity

Advent

Christmas

devotional. early church

Global Church

medieval church

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