Today is the first of the four Sundays of Advent. The word Advent, from Latin, means “Coming.” In this season of the year we prepare once again for the coming into the world of Jesus, whom Christians recognize as the Christ, God’s Messiah. Having survived what retailers and newscasters call Black Friday, we look forward to Christmas, the celebration of the greatest of gifts. As we begin this annual process, may we join together in the worship of the God of Israel, who once again ignites the light of the world.
Pastoral Prayer
We praise Thee, Lord God, for bringing us to yet another Advent, during which Thou dost bid us to prepare once again for the coming of Jesus Christ into the world. We thank Thee for the courage and commitment of Jesus, and how, despite the antipathy he knew he engendered, he confidently moved forward, preaching Thy kingdom and Thy dominion in the world, even at the cost of many enemies. We marvel at his constancy, and how he never deviated from proclaiming Thee and Thy ways and wonders. We thank Thee for Thy spirit working within him, and how, because of him, we now know Thee. Help us to be effective witnesses to both Jesus Christ and Thy kingdom.
Comparing ourselves to Jesus, we ask for Thy forgiveness for failing to live as fully for Thee as he did. We know what we should do, but we do not always do it. Sometimes we are uncertain of Thy will, and we become stymied by inaction, doing nothing. We seek to implement Thy will, but find for a variety of reasons that we are unable to accomplish it. Keep us from being sidelined by uncertainty or headlined by wrong choices.
We pray for those who most need Thy grace in their lives at this particular moment: for the poor who face Christmas with shredded hopes and enormous fears; for the homeless for whom there has never been any room in any inn anywhere; for the ill who are too depleted to rekindle the joy of Christmas which they once knew; for the spiritually adrift, whose connections to faith have been severed but who still cry out to Thee from the darkness they feel, and for the grieving, who enter the season og joy over a birth have recently become confronted by great sadness over the death of one much loved. Help all of us to be little Christs to one another, so that together we may make our pilgrimage to Bethlehem. These things we ask in the name of Jesus, who died physically that we might become alive spiritually. Now we join together in the prayer he taught his first disciples, saying, Our Father….