Advent: a season of prayer, fasting, and hope to prepare for the coming of Christ Jesus (from the Latin adventus, meaning “arrival, appearance”)
Birds cry, sunshine shouts, the wind whistles exuberance;
but I, dredged down from sin,
shame, scorn, guilt,
cannot raise my weary head.
Morning brings joy, again and again, but I have no room;
instead it’s a daily reminder of my pain,
insufficiency, heartbreak, failures,
1,000 reasons over not to try again.
And when I thought that all was lost, and the tunnel had no end;
suddenly, with most inconvenient clangor—
light in the darkness, shouts in the hills, cries of a mother—
Something more appears.
Something foreign:
constant, holy, kind.
And it seems He just might be
the answer to all our pain.
It seems He just might bring
hope.
But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days. . . . And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth.
And he shall be their peace.