At Year's Turning

Father, your Son did not stay in Bethlehem, and neither can we.
Of course, we’d rather linger in the fields near David’s city
waiting for more angel choirs and dazzling stars
to chase the dark and silence from our souls,
here in the land where death’s shadow casts its pall.

We’d rather hunker near the place where the family from Nazareth
received the homage of burly shepherds and travel-weary kings,
and bask with all who long for rest in the presence of this Prince of Peace.

But you had other plans.
Your will took him to Jerusalem, and if we’re serious about Christmas,
we need to follow him.
Follow him, with the heavenly strains of the “Gloria” ringing in our ears,
till we reach the Via Dolorosa, where groans and curses fill the air.

The journey is not an easy one, we know;
and we hesitate as we take down the Christmas tree.
But the Master‘s words come to us as surely as they did
to Peter, James, and John: “Come, follow me.

Follow me through the tempter’s wilderness
till angels take the devil’s place and give you what you truly need.
Follow me among the crowds who hunger for daily bread
and feed them with the basketsful of those who share,
but who hunger also for the nourishment of good news,
and tell them that they are blessed when they are meek and merciful,
when they make peace and do what’s pure,
when they show love to those who hate
and forgive when they’ve been  sinned against,
for of such is the kingdom of heaven.

Follow me when I heal the sick and resurrect the dead
through the power that the Father gives, and learn
that neither sickness nor death separates you from the Father’s love.

Follow me when I flee the crowds and find a solitary place
where I can meet the Father,
sometimes in transfiguring glory on a mountain top,
sometimes under the silent stars of a Judean night,
wrestling through blood and tears with my Father’s will.

Follow me to Jerusalem, where only faith and love can follow,
and truth and grace meet in a broken body on the bloody cross.”

Father, that’s our prayer at the dawn of this new year:
to walk where Jesus walked, in faith that knows no fear.

                                                                           [from Talking with God: Prayers, meditations & conversations for God-seekers]

Hope at Christmastime

Note: Advent is a time to ponder.  To ponder the world's needs and our own expectations.  It forces us back to God's appearance in a manger.  In that appearance lies our hope for all the years to come.  They may be long, they may be violent, they may be dark.  They always have been.  But God has come among us.  To comfort us.  To walk with us.  To help us walk in step with him. To carry us when we collapse.  To lead us to the light.  To save us.  To keep our hope alive.

Emily Dickinson's poem (in italics) has reminded me of the astonishing quality of hope and how inextricably a believer's hope is connected to faith.
Our Advent prayer in 2012 is for faith-fulness and unswerving hope.

 

We live by hope.

It’s the song deep within that is never silent,

the song of “the promised land.”

 “Hope is the thing with feathers

that perches in the soul.

It sings the tune without the words

And never stops at all.”

Hope is audacious and is constant.

It does not fade but brightens when
storms flatten the farmer’s fields of grain, when
recessions wipe out one’s savings for old age, or when
one’s prayed-for child becomes untracked.

 “And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.”

Hope lived among the stumps and shacks

of those who, more than a hundred-fifty years ago,
sailed across a treacherous ocean to “the promised land”
of hunger, hardship, and disease.

 

Hope lived among the starving in the Warsaw Ghetto,
where one left this inscription on the Wall:
“I believe in the sun, even if it does not shine.
I believe in love, even if I do not feel it.
I believe in God, even if I do not see him.”

Hope lived on Robben Island within Mandela’s heart.

Hope lives among the Tutsis and the Hutu,
it lives among the exiled families of Syria,
it lives within the ghettos of our own land,

and even among the laments of Newtown, Connecticut?

“I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.”

Hope never wavers, but is steadfast like a star.

It looks beyond what is, toward what is to come.
The ancient hope of Abraham, Isaiah, and Simeon.
The ancient Advent hope of all at Christmastime:
when the hopes - and fears - of all our years
are met in God’s gift of love, his Son,
our Hope for all the years to come,
into the perfect promised land.


                                                                          -emily dickinson

In the Beginning

God made.
And He called it good.

How He made
We do not know,
But he called  it good.

What He made
We know only in part;
But it was good.

The moon, the sun, the stars,
The wind-swept haunted places,
Proud peaks and gentle valleys,
The waves and sands and trees;

And images of God walked everywhere.

All this was good
For a short season.

Then all things fell apart.

Hate hardened,
Cruelty coarsened,
Sickness, hunger, and terror
Bent divine images in groteque shapes,
While death darkened all the good.

Again God made.
And Christ was born,
And it was good.

How He made
We do not understand.

What He made
We know only in part.

Why He made
He has clearly told us;
And it is good.

For what was lost
Can now be found again,
What was apart made whole,
What was doomed redeemed;
And that is good.

Now Creative Word was flesh.

Light pierced a great darkness;
Then we saw an infinite, astonishing Love,
For God is good.

Still God makes.
Love is born in human hearts,
Trembling and frail,
Reaching out beyond the self,
Touching comfort, healing, grace,
Changed through faith and hope and love;
God calls that good.

It's Christmas time!
Behold, all things are and will be new!
Behold, how He loves us!

Let us love one another.
God calls that good.