A Prayer for the Second Sunday of Advent

 

God of hope and peace – two precious lights that seem so fragile – we give you thanks for their flickering reminder of your intent among us.  As powerfully as our hearts savor the sanded and varnished memories of what was and who were, you nudge us not to live there; illuminating the path toward what might be, what you will to be, and here and now beckon us to embody it.  

O God of hope and peace, manifested in every baby born among us, draw us more fiercely into your work – the construction of your way on earth as it is in heaven – for their sake along with our own.  By your light may we...

• rebuff the evil, 
• resist the demeaning, 
• refuse the self-serving, 
• reclaim the forsaken, 
• re-member the fragmented, 
• revive the forlorn, 
• rekindle in us the passion for this world and its intrinsic loveliness that you demonstrated when Creation was, itself, an infant.

So let us hold each other as though we were soft and new.  

So let us feed each other as though we were crying and nuzzling for the milk of life.  

So let us shelter each other as though we were fragile and in need of the strong grace of another.  

Because though we are loathe to admit it out loud and to each other, we are all those things.

 

In every baby born among us, help us to see ourselves, our neighbor, and you.  And in the light of such holy recognition, teach again to pray...

 

Prayed with the disciples at Runnells Christian Church, December 5, 2021