a mother's advent prayer.

Heavenly Father, we gather in this room, on this gray and cloudy Advent day, to proclaim that you are light, and that in you is no darkness at all. Even as clouds obscure the crystal blue of your heavens and as sin and doubt and confusion and anxiety obscure our vision of your face, we know that the true light, which gives light to everyone, has come into the world, and will come into the world again.

Lord, bring to our minds and to our hearts the deep, groaning longing for a Savior, felt by the nation of Israel two thousand years ago. In 400 years of silence, in a garden guarded by flaming sword, in a temple veiled against human eyes, let us perceive our own individual sins: jealousy, apathy, doubt, conceit, idolatry, anger, hate, and more.

In those bitter memories of your people, let us also perceive the sins of our whole world: countrymen battering each other with hateful words; brethren of different colors and beliefs and genders and races tearing at and destroying one another; refugees and the homeless and the widows and the orphans left to the wind and the waves; economies set up to exploit the disadvantaged; innocent children stolen from the womb; the dignity of elders cast aside—Lord, we see these and a thousand other sins, and we acknowledge that we all bear the stain of Eden’s apple on our lips. We desperately need light in this darkness.

We wait. Oh, Lord, how we wait, and as mothers, we know the feeling well, having waited for our children.

We have felt the unbelievable force of contractions, feeling that the intense pains of labor might never end. We have lain on the operating table, waiting breathlessly for the knife to drop—an instrument that could take a life being used to bring it forth—waiting to hear that desperately loveable first cry being pulled from within us. We have waited for the phone call, the text message, the beckoning wave from a social worker that the moment has come.

Lord, you know that we know what is to wait…how much more must you as our heavenly Father wait on the final coming of your kingdom! And yet in your glory and your power you already know what is and is to come. As sweet Mary waited in holy expectancy of Immanuel to be born, let us wait in this pregnant pause of the world to see the glorious kingdom that will come forth with your Second Coming. Lord, as we see our own children sparkling and overflowing with life now, let us proclaim that life has come forth in the person of your Son, who has overcome death so that all men may live.

Lord, we sit humbly at your feet, a waiting people.

As we wait, give us the fruits of your Spirit. Give us patience rather than hurriedness, peace rather than anxiety, and kindness rather than resentment and anger. Give us love rather than indifference. Give us hope rather than despair. Give us faith rather than doubt. Lord, teach us today through the words of our sisters in Christ, especially Janet. In this holy season of Advent, open our ears and our eyes and our hearts and our minds to the glories of your righteousness and the wonders of your love. Surprise us with sprigs of new life in these days, cutting through the darkness like a cardinal against the snow, an evergreen amongst dead branches, the cry of a healthy baby shattering a silent, holy night. Amen.