Friday of the First Week of Advent
December 4, 2020
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 27 with its glorious opening salvo:
The Lord is my light and my salvation.
Of whom should I be afraid?
Psalm 27 reminds us that, amidst all the fluster of life, there is only one thing that matters:
One thing I ask of the LORD;
Psalm 27:4
this I seek:
To dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
That I may gaze on the loveliness of the LORD
and contemplate his temple.
The hard part, as the psalmist tells us, is to wait – not just to wait for heaven at the end of it all – but to wait to discover God in each moment.
I find waiting to be pretty challenging, especially when I’m waiting for something over which I have no control.
Sometimes God seems pretty buried in our lives and in the clamor of the world. It’s tough to wait with hope when we just can’t see the Beloved.
But our psalm charges us to practice hopeful waiting for the grace that comes to us in every moment.
May we wait with courage, hope, and confidence for the gift God eternally gives us.
Poem: from Awed to Heaven, Rooted to Earth by Walter Brueggemann
In our secret yearnings we wait for your coming, and in our grinding despair we doubt that you will. And in this privileged place we are surrounded by witnesses who yearn more than do we and by those who despair more deeply than do we. Look upon your church and its pastors in this season of hope which runs so quickly to fatigue and this season of yearning which becomes so easily quarrelsome. Give us the grace and the impatience to wait for your coming to the bottom of our toes, to the edge of our finger tips. We do not want our several worlds to end. Come in your power and come in your weakness in any case and make all things new. Amen.
Music: Waiting – by Isisip
Lavish Mercy 