A Prayer for the Fourth Sunday of Advent

December 19, 2021

 

God of love, we huddle around these 4 candles not only for their kiss of winter warmth, but because of their flicker of light in the lengthening night.  The darkness is still in its ascendency, and on the evidence we might begin to believe that the night will eventually extinguish the day altogether. 

 

It seems that way in more ways than one.  Surely by now the virus should have burned itself out, but the numbers grow wearyingly higher, the variants smarter.  Surely by now we should have wearied of the public acrimony and found ways to work together again, but still our partisan flags fly higher than our shared one, our ideological rigidities poisoning our cultural coherence.  Surely by now we should have learned that our greed consumes rather than feeds, that our fascination with shiny objects doesn’t move us but merely distracts us, that our relentless drive for bigger/faster/cheaper/more is not sustainable.  But our bottom lines and closet capacities continue to define us. 

 

Still lengthening, these winter nights, “the darkness (as the old hymn observes it) deepens; Lord, with me abide.”

 

And then this steadily building bank of flames reminds us that you have not left us comfortless.  The light of hope still refuses to be extinguished; the flicker of peace yet pierces our warring ways; the flash of joy still interrupts the gloom; and incandescent love still conquers all.  The night may seem to be winning, but though yet getting longer for a little while to come, it does not grow stronger.  It, too, is subject to your light which, quite often just beyond our particular horizon, is building in intensity.  It is our faith in you, after all:  that whether we are aware of it or not, your light has come into the world, and shines in this darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

 

With every candle we light, O God, remind us of your presence.  With every hope expressed, every peace made, with every joy both experienced and occasioned, with every loving act, may we know your light.

 

We pray in the name of the light of the world, who lived his life in you, and in order that we might do the same, taught us to pray. 

(Prayed with the Disciples of Runnells Christian Church)