Advent Prayer

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Advent Prayer

In our secret yearnings

we wait for your coming,

and in our grinding despair

we doubt that you will.

And in this privileged place

we are surrounded by witnesses who yearn more than do we

and by those who despair more deeply than do we.

Look upon your church and its pastors

in this season of hope

which runs so quickly to fatigue

and in this season of yearning

which becomes so easily quarrelsome.

Give us the grace and the impatience

to wait for your coming to the bottom of our toes,

to the edges of our fingertips.

We do not want our several worlds to end.

Come in your power

and come in your weakness

in any case

and make all things new.

Amen.”

Walter Brueggemann, Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth

 

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We may feel tried

And depleted

 

And in our hunger yearn for God to come in power

To change it all.  Now!

To cast down the sun and moon,

To take the twinkle out of the stars

 

Genesis reversed

Creation cast back in darkness and chaos

We want God to rescue us, and punish them

Embrace us, and empty the world of all

WE

do not embrace

 

But this God of our hearts desire

This deity of domination and retribution

Tho yearned for has not come

 

Generations after generation trods through history

Waiting, pleading for the eschaton

The time

 

For we do not need God to come

Four ghastly horsemen

All blood and desolation

 

What we need is for God to come in powerful weakness

To come ready to love

Forgive

Ready to be born in a stable

And walk the dusty roads of life

 

And be with us

And talk to us

And love us

 

To advent with us

To come and keep coming

Like wind and fire to cleanse and fill our souls

 

And teach us to love

 

Yes

That is what we really need