Tuesday, December 5, 2006

Today’s reading

Philippians 3:20-21

“But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation so that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that enables him to make all things subject to himself” (Phil. 3:20-21).

Prayer

Come, Lord Jesus. Advent comes again, stirring our longing for a beauty and grace not fully born. Our music assumes a minor key melancholy, the best of it written in the key of yearning. Darkness descends. Earth cools. Snow lately shimmering bright as life now lies a leaden sludge in the gutters. We scurry from door to door before bitter chill chafes our cheeks raw. From task half done, we dash to the next, racing to finish that last paper, prepare for that test, to get this paper off our desks before the holy days, for the most part forgetting that all days are holy.

Come, Lord Jesus. The world is too much with us: death haunts Darfur, murder stalks Baghdad, the way of peace escapes the wisdom of the learned and powerful, the homeless freeze on our streets, disease hunts down our families and e-mail refuses even a moment’s respite from life’s demands and tragedies. The digital highway hurries in with news of friends. Their eagerly awaited child, loved with full hearts before drawing a breath of life’s sweet air, dies in utero. Hopes dash. Darkness descends. Earth cools.

But we hope, and we hope in you. So come Lord Jesus. We do not await your blessed appearance as those who do not know you. You once came, revealing as finite fact the face of the Infinite Wonder who draws us ever to you. You made it clear: this death-haunted Earth and we are loved with an everlasting love by the One who is Everlasting Love. You will subject all that is to the love you are are. We hunger for that.

So come, Lord Jesus. We hope as those who know you. For the hope that animates our hearts, the love bubbling in us for your word and world, the great “no” that speaks in our souls at the sight of all that destroys and disfigures earth and all you love, these tell us that you come even now, already subjecting our lives to your love. May we so live today. Come, Lord Jesus, finish what have started. Amen.