For centuries the church has been celebrating Advent both with thankfulness for the first coming of Christ as a child, and anticipation for His return. We believe that too often we forget to do either of those well. We repeatedly hand the Christmas season over to busyness, cultural tradition, and nostalgia. But the celebration of Jesus’ incarnation should be a beautiful and spiritually powerful thing.
We stepped into creating this collection of art (music, illustration, video, and writing) because the Lord called us to it. We feel the more we can do to help ourselves focus on Jesus during Advent the better. So we used the common and familiar tradition of Advent’s weekly themes as our guide, but tried to embrace its beauty in not-so-common ways. Firstborn begins by looking at Jesus long before his birth, then focuses on the prophetic fulfillment, miraculous encounters, and often utter mystery that surrounds his incarnation. Hopefully, Firstborn can be an avenue for the people of God to encounter, appreciate, and meditate on who He truly is during an often oversaturated and overextended time.
The Bible speaks of Jesus as the ‘Firstborn’ of many things. Colossians says He is the firstborn of creation. Romans calls him the firstborn of the church. Revelation says He is the firstborn of the dead. In this season, our prayer is that Jesus would again be made first in our lives. Our hope is that you would see and experience the well known story of Jesus’ birth in new ways. By taking a moment to focus on both what preceded the Messiah and the few individuals who were extraordinarily involved in his birth, we hope God’s story of love and redemption would be further revealed to you.
- Jesse and Leah Roberts
P.S. We would like to thank Jeremy Luther and Lauren Stevens for their stunning visual work on this project. We would also like to thank Levi Frees, Jim Barnes, Ryan Carr, and Cutter Gage for their time and talents that helped make this project a reality.