Advent (Day 22)
A prayer for the fourth Sunday of Advent. Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming may find in us a mansion prepared for himself; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. from The Book of Common Prayer...
Advent (Day 21)
O come, Thou Key of David, come, And open wide our heavenly home; Make safe the way that leads on high, And close the path to misery. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel. O come, O come, Thou Lord of might, Who to Thy tribes, on Sinai's height, In ancient times did'st give the Law, In cloud, and majesty and awe....
Advent (Day 20)
“Waiting is open-ended. Open-ended waiting is hard for us because we tend to wait for something very concrete, for something that we wish to have. Much of our waiting is filled with wishes: ‘I wish that I would have a job. I wish that the weather would be better. I wish that the pain would go.’ We are full of wishes, and our waiting easily...
Advent (Day 19)
When my life is in waiting mode, I sometimes wish I could go to bed and just sleep for a few months. Oblivion seems so much more appealing than the hard, day-to-day of waiting. Waiting is painful, and it often feels pointless too. So much so, that I fantasize about hitting some kind of cosmic fast-forward button. The firstborn feels it too....
Advent (Day 18)
I can’t say with certainty what kind of Messiah the Jewish people were waiting for two thousand years ago. However, I’m fairly sure that Jesus was not it. I imagine that many were waiting for a powerful king. A revolutionary. A fiery-tongued savior with a sword in his hand. What they got was a carpenter from Nazareth who spent his time with...
Advent (Day 17)
It is St. Lucia’s Day, the day the poet John Donne called “the year’s midnight.” It is a short, dark day even here in Florida, thanks to a windy, rainy nor’easter. The firstborn and I are determined to mark the day as they would in Sweden. Whether this is because of our drop of shared Swedish blood, or because we are firstborn girls, I’m not...