Advent with Novi

Welcome to Novi’s Advent Reflections

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December has a way of sweeping us up in lists, errands, and expectations. Before we know it, the season that is meant to slow us down has us running faster than ever. Advent, however, invites us to do the opposite: to pause, to breathe, and to pay attention. Traditionally, it marks the four Sundays leading up to Christmas, each one centered around a simple, grounding theme: hope, peace, joy, and love.
This year at Novi, we wanted to join that quiet invitation.

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We’ve created 25 short Advent reflections, little windows into our world and the people we serve, but also gentle nudges for your own heart during these busy December days. Some will make you think. Some may make you smile. Others might challenge you, because the work we do often holds both beauty and pain. But each one is an invitation to slow down for a moment and reconnect with what truly matters.

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You’ll find a new reflection on our social media every day between now and Christmas.
And if you would rather step away from the scroll, we’ve gathered all the reflections here on the blog as well. Read them whenever you want, at your own pace—one a day, all at once, or as a quiet companion to your morning coffee.
Our hope is simple:
That these small stories and thoughts will bring a spark of hope into your December, and maybe even remind you that love is still possible in this world.

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We’re glad you’re here.

Welcome to Advent with Novi.

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December 1

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There are places in the world where the power goes out long before the sun sets.
And yet, hope still flickers.
Today, as December begins, I’m thinking of a mother in northern Myanmar who lit a candle for her child in a Kachin IDP camp. At Novi, we exist to protect that light.
What gives you hope today?

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“So let us enter Advent in hope, even hope against hope. Let us see visions of love and peace and justice. Let us affirm with humility, with joy, with faith, with courage: Jesus Christ — the life of the world.”

‍Daniel Berrigan,
Testimony, The World Made Fresh (2004)

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December 2

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‍Sometimes change looks like crayons. Sometimes like a blanket. Sometimes like a bowl of warm soup.
This girl got to come to a warm church, supported by Novi, to eat, draw and get warm.
Small things matter. Especially in winter.
Your kindness today might be the warmth someone else needs.

“The Christian challenge of Christmas is this:
Justice is what happens when all receive a fair share of God's world and only such distributive justice can establish peace on earth.”

John Dominic Crossan

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December 3

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This is your friendly reminder that Novi is mostly run on coffee, Slack messages, and stubborn love. On this day in northern Iraq, Jon cut out 133 green hands for an activity we would do with Yazedi children.
Humanitarian work: glamorous? No.
Worth every moment? Yes.

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“Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.”

Howard Zinn

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December 4

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‍Children are not just victims of war. They are survivors, protectors, storytellers, leaders.
At Novi, the children show us the way.

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Read Seryozha’s story:

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Seryozha is only 12, yet he has already endured hardships no child should face. His first and deepest wound came from his own parents, who abandoned him and took away the safety every child deserves.
Thankfully, others later welcomed him as their own, giving him a new sense of belonging.
But this chapter was not easy either. He began struggling with severe leg pain and even faced a frightening suspicion of cancer. The diagnosis was ruled out, yet the pain and need for constant medical care remained.
He now lives with other foster children in a small apartment on the tenth floor, where power outages make it hard for him to get home. We worried about inviting him to the Novi summer camp because the path to the river was steep, but he simply smiled and said, “On the way there, I hardly feel the road, and on the way back I just find a stick in the forest.”

Despite everything, Seryozha’s resilience shines. He has endured loss and pain, yet he still finds joy, and inspires everyone around him.

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December 5

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We talk a lot about hope as if it’s a feeling. But hope is also a decision.
Every time you give, care, show up, pray, or simply refuse to look away, you choose hope.
Today, may hope be something you do.

“Arise, your light has come!
Fling wide the prison door;
proclaim the captive’s liberty,
good tidings to the poor.  
Arise, your light has come!
All you in sorrow born,
bind up the brokenhearted ones
and comfort those who mourn.”

Ruth Duck

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(The photo: Children in Iraq where Novi supports a local NGO)

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December 6

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Education in war zones doesn’t just build a future. It protects children today.
Kids in school are less vulnerable to exploitation, recruitment, and trafficking.
A classroom is more than a place to learn. It’s a shield. One of Novi’s main goals is to support education in war zones.

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“The manger is not only a reminder that God is with us, but a challenge to live in a way that brings God more fully and radically into our world.
The Christmas story is a subversive story. It erases the lines we draw between ourselves and others. It turns our values and our ways of thinking upside-down.”

‍Joe Kay,
Resistance in a manger (2016)

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December 7

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Novi is powered by people you may never meet: teachers, nurses, drivers, community leaders, volunteers.
They are the quiet heroes of humanitarian work.
Today, we honor them.
If you could thank one person who helped you this year, who would it be?

“I would (if wishing could make it so)
have for you the gift of community,
a nucleus of love and challenge,
to convince you in your soul
that you (yes, you!) are a source of light
in a world too long believing in the dark.”

Rev. Maureen Killoran
A Christmas Prayer

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December 8

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This is one of my favorite photos. I met this girl in Kherson, an area that was under Russian occupation. Many villages are in ruins. People are poor. But this little girl still saw beauty. She picked these flowers in the yard of a bombed house and gave them to her mother. She became a symbol of hope for me.

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‍“This is the irrational season when love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason, there’d have been no room for the child.”

Madeleine L’Engle

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December 9

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Myth:
Humanitarian aid is a bottomless pit where money disappears.

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Reality:
With Novi, every blanket, every meal, every school kit is tracked, audited, and accounted for.

Aid is not chaos. It is care, multiplied.

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“The masses of men live with their backs constantly against the wall. … It is to the desperate, the disinherited, the dispossessed that the Christian message is sent.”

‍Howard Thurman
Jesus and the Disinherited (1949)

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December 10

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People are stronger than they know.
Kindness is louder than hate.
And even in war, there is always someone choosing compassion first.
This year taught us that goodness is stubborn.
Thank God.

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“It’s tempting to turn Christmas into a safe holiday that asks little of us.
But that would ignore the prophetic, subversive life of Jesus.
Christians honor him on this holiday — and the rest of the year — only if we risk the scorn of the powerful to stand with the undocumented immigrant, the Muslim family viewed with suspicion, the refugee fleeing injustice."

John Gehring

(Pictured: Luke, a former staff member comforts a woman in a village outside Kyiv who has lost everythig she owns when her house was bombed.)
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December 11

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Their country, Myanmar, is a military dictatorship. They live in unimaginable poverty.
For these days, doing a “Healing Camp,” they got to laugh, play and be children.
To be seen is a form of rescue.

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“Let us all see people clearly, and love them fully.
The very location and circumstance of Christ’s birth was a symbol and sign of God’s solidarity with the socially oppressed and outcast.”
Drew G.I. Hart

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December 12

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You may not realize it, but every time you donate, share a post, tell a friend, or speak up about injustice, you become part of someone’s survival story.

You are part of the Novi community.

Thank you for showing up with love.

(Pictured: Annie and Donald from Chicago. Annie runs a thrift store, and all the proceeds go to several charities, including Novi.)

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“To work for a just world where there is not servitude, oppression, or alienation is to work for the advent of the Messiah.”
Gustavo Gutiérrez

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December 13

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Today I am grateful for:

Children’s laughter
People who refuse to give up
Blankets that arrive on time
Teachers who show up in impossible places
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And you who is reading this; caring, hoping, and loving.
What are you grateful for today?

‍“The Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child.
The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets.
Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as this truth of the Incarnation.”

J.I. Packer

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December 14

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In some places, winter means skiing, candles, and wool socks.

Elsewhere, winter means a fight for survival.

This month, we’re distributing blankets, mattresses, and warm clothes.

Because warmth shouldn’t be a privilege. It’s a human right.

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“To honor and celebrate God’s birth we must open our doors to God when God knocks, seeking shelter.
We must never view Christmas as if it were simply about Jesus’ birth 2,000 years ago.
If we do, then Christmas becomes a mere historic relic.”‍

Rev. Benjamin Perry

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December 15

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“You can break our school, but you cannot break our desire to learn.”
The photo on the previous slide is from a school that was bombed by Russia in Ukraine.
Schools are targeted in armed conflict because they are perceived as easy "soft targets" for propaganda, or can be used as military facilities.
They are also attacked to disrupt education, particularly, or to abduct children for use as soldiers or human shields.

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“We need Christmas more than ever this year — not in spite of injustice but because of it. We need the incarnation of Love in our midst. We need the Prince of Peace to arrive in our world, in our country, in our justice system, in our hearts.”

Sarah Thebarge

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December 16

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Peace isn’t passive. It’s not quiet or neat.
Peace is people choosing compassion over retaliation.
It’s parents teaching children not to hate.
It’s you caring about people you will never meet.
Peace is a verb. Let’s live it.

(Pictured: Shan youth who have fled violence in Myanmar doing art with a team of volunteers from Norway)

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“Jesus knows well the pain of not being welcomed and how hard it is not to have a place to lay one’s head. May our hearts not be closed as they were in the homes of Bethlehem."
Pope Francis

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December 17

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Sometimes I cry during our team meetings. Sometimes I laugh for no reason other than relief. Sometimes the work feels impossible.
But every time I see a message from one of you, or a story from the field, I remember: We’re in this together.
Community is everything.

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"When I find myself rendered distraught by the world around me, as I imagine Mary must have been, I remind myself that God works in and through chaos.”
Valerie Bridgeman

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December 18

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A child drew this for our Novi art competition.
One world divided in two: war on one side, childhood on the other.
Even children understand what war steals.
At Novi, we work so more kids can live on the side of the rainbow, not the flames.

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“Christ’s birth in Bethlehem makes it possible for us to co-labor with God in yanking pieces of heaven and bringing them closer to Earth.”
Rev. Adam Russell Taylor

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December 19

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War forces choices on people — leave home, leave belongings, leave memories.
But compassion is also a choice.
Today, choose to see, choose to care, choose to act.
Love is a daily decision.

(On the photo: A young Rohingya mother who gave birth to her baby while she fled soldiers in the jungle)

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“Let us not reject redemption! Let us not be darkness! Let our hearts be open like a cradle so that Christ can be born in each soul tonight and from there flood every heart with light.”
Oscar Romero

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December 20

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On this day, last year, we spent the day with refugee children from Myanmar, living in Thailand. They live with Arthur and Clasper, our partners for 25 years. Next year, we will be doing even more  in Myanmar, because your compassion keeps growing.
Thank you for helping to live love in the hardest places.

#LiveLove

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“And then, just when everything is bearing down on us to such an extent that we can scarcely withstand it, the Christmas message comes to tell us that all our ideas are wrong, and that what we take to be evil and dark is really good and light because it comes from God.
Our eyes are at fault, that is all. God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succor in abandonment. No evil can befall us; whatever men may do to us, they cannot but serve the God who is secretly revealed as love and rules the world and our lives."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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December 21

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To me, peace means a child sleeping through the night without fear.
It means parents planning for the future, not just the next hour.
What does peace look like for you?
(Pictured: A Rohingya mother living in a makeshift camp in Bangladesh. She and her baby have never know real peace.)

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“I would (if I could)
have for you the gift of courage,
the strength to face the gauntlets
only you can name,
and the firmness in your heart to know
that you (yes, you!) can be a bearer of the quiet dignity
that is the human glorified.”
Maureen Killoran

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December 22

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This lady and her husband provide a hot meal to the children in their village in Kherson, Ukraine, every week. For many of the children, it is the only hot meal they get that day.
Beauty is not luxury.
It is generosity.
It is shared bread in a broken world.

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“We are called to give our lives to others so that they can experience the love of God. When we give, we see the face of God in the brokenness of our world.”
Henri Nouwen

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December 23

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When the world feels overwhelming, remember: showing up is enough.
Showing up in your neighborhood, your family, your community, your prayers, and yes, for people far away.

(On the photo: Our daughter, Elise, with a Karen woman in a village in Myanmar)

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“The world changes every time love shows up.
When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks,
the work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people,
to make music in the heart.”
Howard Thurman

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December 24

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It was dark in the village, but volunteer Sarah held up her mobile phone as if it were the sun itself.
The children were in awe. They had never seen anything like it.
This is why Novi exists: to be a light where darkness tries to settle.
Tonight, may you feel that light, too.

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“Spread love everywhere you go.
Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier.”
Mother Teresa

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December 25

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On this last day of our Advent calendar, here is my prayer:
May you be surprised by goodness.
May you find peace in unexpected places.
May you see beauty where others see brokenness.
May your heart stay soft, brave, and full of love.
Thank you for walking with Novi.
Thank you for choosing hope.
Merry Christmas, and let’s continue to Live Love together.

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“The world is full of dark shadows. But the real, lasting truth is that in the end, the light always wins.”
Frederick Buechner

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Merry Christmas

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