Infant Holy, Infant Lowly

The Next Step Podcast
Season 3: Light in the Darkness
Episode 10: Infant Holy, Infant Lowly
Date: 23 December 2021
Guest: Pat Maier, Visual Faith™ Ministry and Amy Meyer, Neighboring Life

Also available on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, Vurbl, and Amazon Music.

Pat Maier, cofounder of Visual Faith™ Ministry, and Amy Meyer, cofounder of Neighboring Life, join Justin Rossow, founder of Next Step Press, to talk about Chapter 10: Infant Holy, Infant Lowly in the resource Light in the Darkness: A Hymn Journal for Advent & Christmas.

John 1 is the traditional reading for Christmas Day, and after a brief intro and opening prayer, we’ll hear about the Word becoming flesh as Pat reads from the English Standard Version. Then Amy will read the same verses from The Message paraphrase. You can find that reading on page 97 of the hymn journal.

After discussing those verses, we’ll hear from Pat Maier about her artwork on page 95 that keeps Jesus at the center of our Christmas celebrations, and about the mission of Visual Faith™ Ministry to provide resources that help you slow down and experience time in prayer and in Bible study more intentionally.

Once we’ve looked briefly at the corner art on page 98, you’ll hear Justin read the devotion on that same page. You can share that reflection with your friends by posting or emailing a link to the blog version of this chapter’s devotion, “For His Bed a Cattle Stall.”

After we hear Brooke and Brendan sing their version of “Infant Holy, Infant Lowly,” we’ll turn to the Prayer Experiment on pages 100-101 and hear from Amy Meyer about the soon-to-be-launched online community called Neighboring Life.

Founded by Amy and her husband, Jeff, Neighboring Life invites you and your household to imagine neighborhoods where every person belongs, where every person knows they matter and have a contribution to make, a story to share. We’ll make sure to let the Next Step Community know when Neighboring Life goes live sometime in 2022.

Before we are done, we’ll get an update on the Pat’s neighborhood sketch on page 101 and Amy’s experiments to build community in her new apartment living. You can follow Pat’s lead with this recipe for her Fresh Orange Muffins (links to other Visual Faith resources are included in the article).

As you can probably tell just by reading their names, Amy Meyer and Pat Maier are not related, although we did discover that Pat lives on Meyer Avenue, a happy coincidence. The two will team up again next year, September 23-25, 2022, for one of Camp Arcadia’s women’s retreats. Make sure to check it out!

This podcast is designed especially to go with the Light in the Darkness Facebook learning community sponsored by Next Step Press. Join us at https://www.facebook.com/groups/AdventHymnJournal.

This episode of the Next Step Podcast was supported in part by the generosity of Next Step Patrons. Please consider becoming a Next Step Patron before the end 2021. To see different options for support, including monthly and annual options, visit https://www.patreon.com/findmynextstep, or email justin@findmynextstep.org to make a one-time gift.

Thank you to all of our Patrons! Patrons make it possible.

The intro and outro music for Season 3: Light in the Darkness was arranged and performed by Brendan Knorp. The music included in the podcast was written and performed by Brooke and Brendan. All rights reserved.

The A Light in the Darkness CD from Brooke and Brendan is now available on your favorite streaming services as well as on YouTube.