Season’s Greetings!
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!
📌 In This Edition…
- Advent Reflection: A short one
- Writing Update: BOOK COVER REVEALED
- A-Frame Update: She’s a thing of beauty
- Marriage Milestone: How has it already been ten years?!
🕯 LOVE and LIGHT
(Yes, Advent 2025 is over—so I will keep this brief for ya.)
The people walking in darkness
have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of deep darkness
a light has dawned.
Isaiah 9:2
Advent is the story of God shining into places that feel too dark for hope. It is waiting—anticipation—of God’s light to break through in the land of deep darkness.
Oh how our souls long for this promised Light.
God sees the darkness and His intention is to pierce through it. “Your Kingdom come…” (Matthew 6:10). He moves toward His people and promises hope. Not only that, but God puts on flesh and steps into our shadows. “And they will call him Immanuel, God with us.” (Matthew 1:23, Isaiah 7:9)
We are not mere receivers of this light, we are reflectors of the light. “You are the light of the world…” (Matthew 5:14).
The Apostle John gives us two defining declarations about the very nature of God: God is love and God is light.
These aren’t just poetic attributes, they are powerful statements about who God is at His core“—His very essence. “God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” (1 John 4:7-21) and “God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all.” (1 John 1:5) John isn’t simply describing what God does—he’s describing what is essentially the marrow of God—that reality from which everything God does flows.
God is love. God is light.
Advent light is meant to be shared, not hoarded. We are to reflect and imitate the light and love of God.
Ephesians 5:1-2 says, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.”
We are His beloved children, made to shine with all the radiance of the One who came to dwell among us—to walk in love, just as Christ also loved us. As we step forward into a new year, may we move as people of love and light—quiet, steady, and unafraid.
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!
(I love a good use of the word ‘yonder,’ don’t you?!)
Reflection Question:
What small act of light could you offer someone this week—an encouragement, a presence, a generosity that reflects the heart of Christ?
✒ Writing Update
Speaking of beloved children…
It is here! Behold, my book cover! (Thanks to those who voted!)
A few months ago, I was helping the girls with their Bible Study Fellowship (BSF) homework. We were in Daniel 9, and one of the questions read: “Confession means to admit that something is true. What did Daniel confess was true of God’s people?”
I realized I had mostly thought of confession as an admittance of wrongdoing or guilt. But this question reframed it for me. Confession as a declaration of what is true—that idea grabbed me. And later, I learned that “confession,” in a literary sense, often signals a collection of personal stories. I couldn’t let go of that word, it fit too well.
If you remember, the name David means “beloved”—a word that repulsed me for most of my childhood. I realized in May that I wanted my book to trace my journey—of learning what it actually means to be “a beloved child of God.”
In college, I found myself in a kind of wilderness after losing almost everything (dramatic foreshadowing). I had been pushed to the edges of my faith—not because of Christ, but because of the noise surrounding Him. But it was there, in the wilderness, that God met me. What I thought was ruin slowly revealed itself as rescue—as grace—as Jesus.
I came to a sudden realization that I had it all wrong. I had been shaping my view of God around the scraps of faith I saw in cultural Christianity around me, which had left me disillusioned and embittered. But through the process of being led into the wilderness, I encountered the real God.
Bonhoeffer was frustrated by a similar cultural Christianity in the German church of the early 20th century. He famously said, “The religion of Christ is not a tidbit after one’s bread; on the contrary, it is the bread or it is nothing.” I began to see how easy it is to slip into a culturally comfortable version of Christianity—Jesus as an accessory rather than the center—a tidbit after one’s bread. And when faith becomes an accessory, it loses its power to transform and is therefore worthless. This is why Jesus so often blasted the Pharisees (dirty cups, whitewashed tombs)—who cared more about their external behavior and outward appearance than on actually following the heart of God. He routinely called out performative righteousness. “These people honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.” (Jesus quoting Isaiah in Matthew 15:7-9).
Confessions of the Beloved offers more than a record of experiences. It is a story of breaking and rebuilding, of being fully known and fiercely loved—and of discovering the unshakable peace that comes when we finally know and understand the love that surpasses knowledge (Eph. 3:19). The love that is wider, longer, higher, and deeper than all our doubts, failures, and striving. The love that covers us, steadies us, and reclaims us. The love that calls every wanderer by the same name: Beloved.
I look forward to sharing this story with you all in 2026.
🔨 A-Frame
The weather this month has been unkind. (It also didn’t help that we lost our nurse at the end of November—so TIME has been particularly hard to come by). However, I DID manage to get my custom triangle window installed! (special thanks to this cutie ladder holder).
👩❤💋👨 Our TIN Anniversary
Lastly, Katie and I celebrated 10 years of blissful, harmonious matrimony a few weeks ago. (We also went to counseling TWICE in December…[Do those count as date nights??]) For the record, we’ve had to cancel or dramatically alter three of our last four anniversary plans due to illness—whether Izzie’s, a planned babysitter’s, or some sad combination of the two. So actually getting away this year felt like a genuine Christmas miracle indeed.
Even more miraculous—Katie finally agreed to play chess with me over brunch!♟️What a Gal!
A big shout-out to those who helped make it possible this year!
With gratitude,
David
P.S.
I was published this month as the cover story in the magazine CMDA Today!
👉 CLICK HERE to see a digital copy of this issue. Thanks to the good folks at CMDA who are helping to spread the Life Narrative! Speak to my agent if you want a signed copy! 😉
DAVID SCOT MUSSER 