From Prophetic Hope to Resistance: Advent to Easter

Each year, the church walks a familiar path from Advent’s longing to Easter’s joy. But what if we saw this journey not as a straight line of triumph, but as a living cycle of grief, resistance, and imagination?

Introducing The Will to Dream and The Work of Imagination.

Illustrated cover art for “The Will to Dream,” featuring overlapping colorful silhouettes of people in blue, green, and purple tones with the title in white text.

Illustrated cover art for “The Work of Imagination,” showing a blue dove breaking a golden crown over a soft purple background with the title in bold blue text.

The Power of Prophetic Imagination

These resources invite communities to move through Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, and Easter with a shared commitment to justice, transformation, and hope.

They call us to practice prophetic imagination. They invite us to see beyond the way things are and dream with God about what could be. But before we can dream new worlds into being, we must name the systems that harm and the stories that numb us.

Critiquing Empire

As theologian Walter Brueggemann reminds us, prophetic imagination is the capacity to envision and articulate an alternative reality to the dominant social order—especially one shaped by injustice, oppression, and empire.

Flat lay photo featuring Walter Brueggemann’s “The Prophetic Imagination” alongside Illustrated Ministry’s “The Will to Dream” Advent resource pages, a candle, and a small plant on a wooden surface.

Both Advent and Lent are seasons that disrupt the status quo. They critique the numbness of empire and invite us to participate in God’s alternative vision of compassion, justice, and covenantal love.

Advent: The Will to Dream

Advent begins with a holy ache—a longing for a world made new. It’s the season of prophetic hope, of watching and waiting for transformation. Isaiah’s dream of peace, where swords are beaten into plowshares, reminds us that hope is not naïve optimism. It’s defiant imagination. It’s the courage to believe that God’s kin(g)dom is already breaking in, even when the world feels dark.

Imagining New Ways

In Advent, we practice hope through expectation and preparation. We listen to prophets who tell hard truths and dare to dream of something better. But the story doesn’t end in waiting—it bursts into the world as revolutionary love. The Christ child arrives not in a palace but among the poor, the marginalized, the ordinary. Epiphany shines light on that love made visible in action, spreading across boundaries and nations. Together, these seasons remind us that love itself is a form of holy resistance. It is a refusal to accept a world defined by domination and despair.

The Will to Dream invites everyone in your church to draw wisdom from the prophets and practice prophetic imagination in their own lives.

Flat lay image of Illustrated Ministry’s Advent resource “The Will to Dream” sample packet with watercolor paints, brushes, and greenery arranged on a wooden table.

Lent: The Work of Imagination

If Advent invites us to dream, Lent calls us to act. This is the season of prophetic resistance—lamenting what is broken and moving toward liberation. The Lenten journey asks us to face the powers that harm, repent from complicity, and participate in God’s work of renewal.

From Jesus’ wildness confrontation with temptation to Mary Magdalene’s witness at the tomb, Lent and Easter reveal that resurrection comes through courage, not comfort. In the face of empire and despair, hope is embodied through small, faithful acts of love and resistance.

Embodying Hope

This is the pattern of faith: lament, resistance, rebirth. We live it each year as we follow Jesus through Holy Week: through the palms and protest, the table and the cross, the tomb and the dawn.

Quote from Walter Brueggemann’s book “The Prophetic Imagination” over a soft, cloudy background. The text describes prophetic imagination as a concrete practice of believers grounded in grief and hope.

The Work of Imagination honors this pattern through the Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter liturgies. Accompanied by our scripture commentaries and preaching guide, these resources guide congregants and church leaders through the pattern and practice of prophetic imagination.

Living the Cycle

Across these seasons, we encounter prophets, disciples, and women who speak truth to empire and embody God’s alternative way. Through worship, study, and community engagement, participants are invited to:

Critique empire and lament its harm.
Imagine new ways of being rooted in grace and love.
Embody hope through advocacy, creativity, and care.

Using the Advent and Lent resources together, church leaders and congregants will be able not only to imagine a new way but begin to shape its existence. This journey from holy longing to revolutionary love to rebirth is not a single movement. It is a sacred rhythm of disruption and renewal that shapes our collective imagination.

Together, we learn to see the world not as it is, but as it could be. We can dream of a world full of imagination, grace, and love.

Close-up photo of Illustrated Ministry’s Advent resource pages from “The Will to Dream,” showing spiritual practices for embodiment, advocacy, and joy on a wooden desk with a pen, sticky note, and candle.

Explore Our Resources for Advent and Lent

Join us, and many other churches, in the prophetic work of ushering God’s kin(g)dom to earth—valuing every voice, story, and dream. Together we can create a world full of hope, not hate, love, not lies, and peace, not prejudice. From coloring pages for the littles to intergenerational curriculum to devotionals for adults, these products prepare and equip everyone, churchwide, to engage in this important work.

To learn more and purchase The Will to Dream, click here.

To continue the journey and to learn more about The Work of Imagination, click here.