To see the explanation for this Advent series, please click here.
Opening Verse
If in your heart you make a manger for his birth
Then God will once again become a child on earth.
Opening Prayer
O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Something to Ponder
On this Christmas Eve, as we begin to celebrate the First Advent and anticipate the Second Advent, I want to share one of my favorite poems from the Welsh poet R. S. Thomas.
It's titled "The Coming," and If you would like to know where I found the poem, please click here:
And God held in his hand
A small globe. Look, he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows; a bright
Serpent, a river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.
On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. Many people
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.
Closing Prayer
O God, make the door of my heart wide enough to receive all who need human love and fellowship, and a heavenly Father's care; and narrow enough to shut out all envy, pride, and hate. Make its threshold smooth enough to be no stumbling block to children, nor to straying feet, but rugged enough to turn back the tempter's power. Make it a gateway to your eternal kingdom. Amen.
Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells, 1637-1711
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