Today is the first Sunday in the season of Advent. It is a time of preparing our hearts to receive once more God’s promise of healing for our broken world. Advent is a season of waiting and hoping for what is already but not yet. It is a time of living in between – between promise and fulfillment, between hope for and receiving.
This Advent it is harder than usual to be people of hope. The skies over the Holy Land are full of rockets and bombs instead of an angel chorus. We live between Christmas carols on the airways and horrific images of war on our news feeds.
But here, even in this time between hope and despair, we gather to reaffirm our faith in the eternal light that cannot be extinguished by any amount of human sin and suffering. As people of faith have done for hundreds of years we claim the gift of hope once more by lighting the first candle of Advent.
[Light Candle]
Please pray with me as I share this Advent prayer from Kate Bowler and Jessica Ritchie, from their book, “The Lives We Actually Have:”
“God, these are darkening days, with little hope in sight.
Help us in our fear and exhaustion. Anchor us in hope. Bless us who cry out: ‘Oh God, why does the bad always seem to win?
When will good prevail?
We know you are good, but we see so little goodness.’
God, show us your heart, how you seek out the broken.
Lift us on your shoulders and carry us home—no matter how strong we think we are.
God, seek us out, and find us, we your tired people, and lead us out to where hope lies. where your kingdom will come and your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Fill us with your courage. Calm us with your love. Fortify us with your hope.”
We pray in the name of the One we Hope for who already walks with us every day. Amen
Northwest UMC, Columbus, Ohio, December 3, 2023
Peacefully Harsh 