An Honest Christmas Prayer
from one who imperfectly longs for justice.
...a thrill of hope,
the weary world rejoices...
Are we ever ready Lord,
to welcome you as you've chosen to come?
A powerless child,
seeing
learning
redeeming
the world from the bottom up?
We might not be ready for that, but we are ready for hope.
We are weary in our souls of our own selves - our own limitations, hypocrisies, painful shame,
ways we do not live up to our own best ideas.
We are weary in our souls of one another - the impatience, the judgement, the millstones we tie around one another's neck.
We are weary of how hard it is to work this hard in a world's systems not shaped by you.
And yet you are still here.
And hope...even now you speak hope.
You speak a hope, even in your speechless, Christ-child word,
a hope that there is one who can make it right,
a hope that there will be a time when we will see clearly
a hope that we will one day know as we are known,
a hope that we will stop hurting each other, even in your name.
We pray for this hope,
to bury deep in our weariness, deep in our disillusionment,
deep in our wounds and our grief.
rooting
so as to bloom into a fruit that feeds the world instead of condemning it.
We pray for hope,
to keep choosing to treat the world the way you treat us - that is, with a grace unimaginable.
We need you to speak hope to our weary souls.
We pray in Jesus' name
Amen
A Christmas Prayer
Lord, we cannot imagine how a baby born in the least auspicious of places, times, peoples, could redeem all the pain we see. We cannot imagine it, even though we know the stories inside and out.
So Lord, we need your spirit to breathe into our imaginations this Christmas. Not for our own idealism but for your grace to be what shapes our hopes, longings and actions.
Justice seems far away
Peace seems far away
Joy seems far away
And yet, we get glimpses.
Glimpses of kindness
Glimpses of reconciliation
Glimpses of swords being turned into plowshares.
And behind each glimpse is the truest reality of our world -
that your word of grace is the final one.
Feed our souls your hope, Jesus who comes as a child,
Because we need it this Christmas.
Amen
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