Advent Posts

A most beautiful and sweet song of devotion and love. The Creator of the Universe has the moon and the stars in his eyes. Can you imagine Mary holding her first born son and knowing she holds God with us, born through God’s and her own faithfulness.

When did you first know God has come to be with you? Whose face did you first recognize the love of God in?

Know also that God loves your face from your first breath to this very moment.

It was God who took me from the womb;
you kept me safe on my mother’s breast.
On you I was cast from my birth,
and since my mother bore me you have been my God.
Do not be far from me,
for trouble is near
and there is no one to help.

Psalm 22:9-11

The fullness of God has come to dwell on Earth, in flesh and blood, to live and die as we do that we might know the fullness of God’s love for us, with us, within us, here and now.

Heaven has sent him. Creation has forever changed as the Creator becomes a part of it for us to know what we were made for, the love we were made from, and the Kingdom our King comes from and prepares us for.

My favourite Christmas Song is actually Stevie Wonder’s “Someday at Christmas” where he imagines what the world will be like when we finally know fully the gift of God’s life with us, a life of peace.

In someways I feel that this is a companion song. The day of the Lord’s coming in scripture is known both as a terrible day, when the order of this world ends and as a joyful day, when the bridegroom finally arrives and the true celebration can begin.

What would a Christmas look like where we allow Joy to take over, a delight in our part in God’s Kingdom and work of love on earth?

A Prayer

This was a prayer written in 2020 by Canadian author, Sarah Bessey. It is a prayer for life in the midst of all the difficulties that surround us. For light that begins to return, imperceptible at first, after the longest night. You can hear the echoes of 2020 in it, and also the continued prayer that we choose life and joy, knowing the pain and the grief that also exists alongside.

A Prayer for Advent

I pray that God would be near to you, a strength to you. I pray for comfort. I pray for a friend who knows, a friend who sits with you, a friend who doesn’t try to jolly you up.

I pray for endurance in your heart and in your mind and in your soul and in your strength, I pray for perseverance beyond what you think you can bear. I pray that you would be someone who does not give up but continues to take up the space you need. I pray you will know how to ask for what you want. I pray for a community that meets you where you are at.

I pray for comfort. I pray for warmth in your home. I pray for candles and for lamplight, for good books and for movies, for long walks in the darkness lit only by street lights or stars. May your voice crack with tears when you sing anyway how there is a thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices because you are longing for a bit of rejoicing. May you fall asleep humming good songs of hope. I see you trying to sing in your sorrow and I think it’s one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen.

I pray for courage. No one ever told us how much courage it takes to have a broken-heart, did they? No one told us how brave we would have to be to simply carry on. And yet here you are. I pray for courage to rise up in you so that you can get up out of bed for another day and do what you need to do to carry on. I pray for an appetite to eat good food and I pray you’ll go to bed on time and sleep well, I pray you’ll be good to your own self in the midst of all this. I pray for your hands to find work you enjoy doing and for creativity to give you a respite.

I pray for you to find the intimacy of the Holy Spirit. I have often found that it is in the wilderness and in the darkness and in the loneliness that the Spirit draws near. I pray for the active and intimate presence of the mystery of God to be close to you in ways you couldn’t name or explain or understand. I pray for dreams that will comfort the hours of sleep you are given.

I pray for peace in you and through you and about you. I pray for glimmers of reconciliation. I pray for bad jokes and for the kind of laughter that makes you want to whoop and pound the table a time or two. I pray for friends who become family and I pray for family to become friends.

I pray for God to be near to you in ways you never could have expected. I pray that this will give birth to a great compassion in you, a love for our suffering world like you’ve never known.

After all, now you’re in the company of the people of the unanswered prayers: we can hold both hope and grief together.

I know there is something for which you cannot even pray, there is no faith left in you: I pray for that unnamed thing, too, I have a bit of faith and you can have it. I don’t know what it is in you but I know you carry it and the better thing is that God knows.

I have always been so thankful that Jesus is described in Isaiah as a man of sorrows, a man acquainted with grief. This is a man I can let into that inner chamber of grief: he is acquainted with my sorrow and he will deal so gently, like a good mother, with our broken-hearts.

I pray for hope to rise, unbidden and unforced and surprising, like a flower breaking through the cement in a parking lot. I pray for you to tend that tendril of hope like a gardener, protect it, let it grow wild and unexpected into the places you least anticipated.

I pray for opportunities to serve others in your life. I pray for Jesus to bring you people into whom you can sow your inexhaustible love and your flagging energy. I pray for eyes to see the company of the broken-hearted around you and that you will become a place of rest for each other.

I pray you will find something or someone to love in these days.

I pray for real reciprocity of relationship – that for everything you receive, you are able to give someday. I pray for the prayers of children to be spoken over you. I pray for the love and joy and the peace and the hope of Advent to be yours. Maybe this isn’t your season for celebration but the good news is that Advent and even Christmas isn’t just for the ones who feel happiness; it’s also for the ones who are afraid and wondering, who are refugees and who are broken-hearted. You, as you are right now, were written into the Story from the beginning and you have a place here, you belong at this Christmas table.

And I dare to pray for joy for you. I pray that everything you are sowing in grief, you will reap in joy. It will be a different sort of joy, we both know that. There is the uncomplicated joy of those who haven’t suffered and then there is the joy that is born of suffering, the joy that is deeper for the loss that preceded, the joy that is in seeing redemption and yet knowing the scars you bear from the wounds are beautiful to those with eyes to see.

And may the Light break through the darkness to warm you and guide you somehow.

We have turned towards the sun now. The days will imperceptibly grow longer again. We won’t be able to notice the moment it changes over but now we know what we’re spinning towards, one day at a time, one morning probably sooner than we know, we will wake up to the long day of light.

Written by Sarah Bessey

A Blessing for Traveling in the Dark

Go slow
if you can.
Slower.
More slowly still.
Friendly dark
or fearsome,
this is no place
to break your neck
by rushing,
by running,
by crashing into
what you cannot see.

Then again,
it is true:
different darks
have different tasks,
and if you
have arrived here unawares,
if you have come
in peril
or in pain,
this might be no place
you should dawdle.

I do not know
what these shadows
ask of you,
what they might hold
that means you good
or ill.
It is not for me
to reckon
whether you should linger
or you should leave.

But this is what
I can ask for you:

That in the darkness
there be a blessing.
That in the shadows
there be a welcome.
That in the night
you be encompassed
by the Love that knows
your name.

—Jan Richardson

We hear the words of prophets, of friends who tell us the truth about ourselves and our world, and it isn’t always the easiest message to hear. But sometimes, we need to hear the words, and hear the freedom that comes with facing the truth. And the forgiveness that accompanies the message as well.

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler^* of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler^* of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler^* of Abilene, during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,
‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
   make his paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled,
   and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
   and the rough ways made smooth;
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”  Luke 3

The angels will come and proclaim. And Mary and Elizabeth heard the beating hearts. And new life leapt for joy. And our hearts will beat to the same rhythm. And it will be too much, and too scary and it will be the good news of God at work in ways we couldn’t imagine. And we will ring bells to celebrate our joy.

In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be^* a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.’

And Mary^* said,
‘My soul magnifies the Lord,
   and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,
for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.
   Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
   and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him
   from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
   he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
   and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
   and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
   in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
   to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’

And Mary remained with her for about three months and then returned to her home.

And Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Jesus is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in Christ all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the cross.

We know that this will all end so why not spend our days in love and joy, peace and hope. If we are waiting for the life of God amongst us. If we are waiting for a new day. If we are waiting for the end. Whatever we are waiting for, doesn’t it make the most sense to spend that waiting in seeing in each other the beauty of creation and the gift that is life.

One of my greatest sadnesses is when I recognize how religion has been used to create fear and hate and exclusion. Its been used that way too many times to count, almost enough to make it seem inevitable. But to witness the welcome, the love of another, the change that is possible and made as result of the love of God- that is incredible. To say I will look at something differently, because Jesus has taught me to create space and to see the value in someone that others have actively hurt, that is good news. In this season of waiting, and this season of increased violence against LGBTQ2S+ people, may our faith in God make us people who actively choose love and welcome.