I wanted to offer something extra to celebrate the Summer/Winter Solstice. Here are two reflections I recorded last year for our Mercy Associates during their retreat. I hope you enjoy whichever video works for you.
For our Northern Hemisphere readers:
Summer
For our Southern Hemisphere readers:
Winter
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our Advent readings increase in joyously expectant tone. They offer us wonderful images for our hope!
These passages are filled with an exuberant expectation, much like children feel as they discover an amazing gift. I remember with delight how my toddler nieces, nephew, and grands responded to their first snow! It’s a wonder that makes us want to be young again and eager for what may seem otherwise incredible.
May we open our hearts
with innocent hope toward God’s promise
that we are loved beyond our wildest dreams
– by a God Who will redeem us!
If you can, take the time today to read these passages slowly, listening for the particular word that will fall upon your heart like a blossom of hope in the desert – (or icy white magic from the sky!)
Poetry: Snow by Gillian Clarke
The dreamed Christmas,
flakes shaken out of silences so far
and starry we can’t sleep for listening
for papery rustles out there in the night
and wake to find our ceiling glimmering,
the day a psaltery of light.So we’re out over the snow fields
before it’s all seen off with a salt-lick
of Atlantic air, then home at dusk, snow-blind
from following chains of fox and crow and hare,
to a fire, a roasting bird, a ringing phone,
and voices wondering where we are.A day foretold by images
of glassy pond, peasant and snowy roof
over the holy child iconed in gold.
Or women shawled against the goosedown air
pleading with soldiers at a shifting frontier
in the snows of television,while in the secret dark a fresh snow falls
filling our tracks with stars.
Music: Winter Snow Song – Audrey Assad
[Verse 1]
Could’ve come like a mighty storm
With all the strength of a hurricane
You could’ve come like a forest fire
With the power of Heaven in Your flame
[Chorus]
(But) You came like a winter snow
Quiet and soft and slow
Falling from the sky in the night
To the earth below
[Verse 2]
Oh You could’ve swept in like a tidal wave
Or an ocean to ravish our hearts
You could have come through like a roaring flood
To wipe away the things that we’ve scarred
[Chorus]
(But) You came like a winter snow
Quiet and soft and slow
Falling from the sky in the night
To the earth below
[Bridge]
Ooh no, Your voice wasn’t in a bush burning
No, Your voice wasn’t in a rushing wind
It was still, it was small, it was hidden
[Chorus]
(But) You came like a winter snow
Quiet and soft and slow
Falling from the sky in the night
To the earth below
[Outro]
Falling, oh yeah, to the earth below
You came falling from the sky in the night
To the earth below
Lavish Mercy 