Eternal God, you are lovingly leading us into the season of Advent, a season filled with a life-giving kind of waiting: an expectant, audacious, hope-filled waiting that looks forward to the coming of the one who brings love, joy, justice, peace and the promise of life with God forever. As we turn our hearts and minds to waiting for Jesus, fill us with confidence in all your Advent promises. This we pray in the name of Jesus, the coming Emmanuel, God with us.
Advent Calendar – by Rowan Williams
He will come like last leaf’s fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to the bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud’s folding.
He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.
He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.
He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.