December 9, 2021
Thursday of the Second Week in Advent
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with inspired Isaiah who must have had such a beautiful mind – a mind to imagine God making a tired world new!
In our first reading, Isaiah shows us what our radiant and nourishing God can do for those who live in darkness, destitution and fear. (Once we get past the unfortunate metaphor of being called a worm!)
I will open up rivers on the bare heights,
Isaiah 41:18-20
and fountains in the broad valleys;
I will turn the desert into a marshland,
and the dry ground into springs of water.
I will plant in the desert the cedar,
acacia, myrtle, and olive;
I will set in the wasteland the cypress,
together with the plane tree and the pine,
That all may see and know,
observe and understand,
That the hand of the LORD has done this,
the Holy One of Israel has created it.
Psalm 145 reminds that God is with us – on our side – in both Advent and our Life Journey.

As the year moves closer to its time of deepest darkness, may we know God’s bright Presence in our hearts. May we sense God lighting, once again, the dark places in our lives and in our world.
We all have parched and painful situations, unanswered hopes, lingering fears. Let us bring them out of the shadows today and open them to the refreshing grace of God who made the stars to give us hope.

Poetry:

Music: Fiona Joy Hawkins – Blue Dream