I loved this prayer from our worship service this past Sunday. Wanted to share it with you. I can’t find its source. (I’m guessing from a Presbyterian prayer book?)
O promised Christ:
We are a world at war.
Our peace depends on your coming.
We are a sinful people.
Our pardon depends on your coming.
We are full of good intentions but weak at keeping promises;
our only hope of doing God’s will is that you should come and help us do it.
Lord Christ, Word made flesh,
our world waits for your peace, for your pardon, and for your grace.
Even so: Come, Lord Jesus. Amen.
* If you’d like to read something more substantial about Advent and the necessity and opportunity of/for waiting (longing), read what my pastor, Fred Harrell, has to say in this post, “How Long O Lord?”
I love this. Sometimes it can be so hard to wait, especially on the days when for one reason or another the sin that is crushing us becomes particularly evident and there’s nothing I can do to alleviate it, for myself or anyone else. I work in an agency where I am with people who unintentionally open my eyes regularly to how ‘advantaged’ I am. The struggles they face are often so huge, systemic thru their culture or community or economic level and it’s overwhelming to even begin to know how to help. This past week we were at a point in our discussion where the people I work with (clients) needed to hear why they could have hope that things in their life could be different, despite what they see around them. They needed to be able to tap into supernatural hope to be able to offer their kids hope that they themselves had never experienced, but it’s a secular agency and I had to stop short of telling them about the hope that is available to them. I was crushed. I guess I still am. So I pray for them, and hope for them, and wait for them, and wait for Him. But sometimes waiting is hard.
Come Lord Jesus, come.
andrea
Thanks so much for sharing, Andrea. I’ve really been pondering in the past few days how desperately we need a season for “waiting,” if only to remind us that there’s hope in that waiting. I’m thankful for the hope you’re giving the people you work with, even when it feels like you’re not saying anything beneficial. I pray this season will be a time when God shows up in the waiting…
Thanks for sharing. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Peter Gomes, the minister of the Memorial Church at Harvard, but his 1998 book of sermons has four of the most significant Advent sermons I’ve read. It’s not regarding peace, but this thought on hope has been with me all week:
“Freedom is not enough, especially freedom as simply the absence of restraint. The paradox of the Christian hope is that it is truly a freedom, a freedom for the things that are to be, a freedom that binds us in confidence to the future of God wherein God’s will will truly become our own. This is a freedom not of action, but of being, the freedom to fulfill our destiny as an essential, holy, complete part of God’s creation.”
And so we wait, yet hopeful.
No, I’m not familiar with Peter Gomes but I love what you shared. “…the freedom to fulfill our destiny as an essential, holy, complete part of God’s creation.” So good on so many different levels. Thanks for posting it, Steve.
I love that prayer… so beautiful!