The theme for this last week of Advent is LOVE. The Bible Project explores a biblical understanding of this much used word here.
Here’s a prayer to accompany you through this day:
Let my eyes see as You see, with compassion and love for others.
Let my ears hear as You hear, with a soft heart and love for others.
Let my feet dare to walk with Your purpose for this world.
Let my hands ache to work with Your direction in this world.
How is your Advent Prayer Calendar going?
Bishop Steven Charleston writes,
Sometimes, in this troubled world of ours, we can forget that love is all around us. … But try this simple test: stand still in any crowded place and watch the people around you. Within a very short time you will begin to see love, and see it over and over and over. A young mother talking to her child, a couple laughing together as they walk by, an older man taking time to hold the door for a stranger. Small signs of love everywhere. The more you look, the more you will see. Love is, literally, everywhere. We are surrounded by love. The instinct to care is still within us, all of us, so much so that you can see it, clearly, by just standing still.
Look for love in all the unexpected places today. Offer love in all the unexpected places today.
Australian Cartoonist Michael Leunig has written this poem:
Love is born
With a dark and troubled face
When hope is dead
And in the most unlikely place
Love is born:
Love is always born.
What love is waiting to be born within you?
As this Advent season comes to an end, Lynn Ungar’s poem ‘Pandemic’ is as pertinent now as when she wrote it earlier in 2020.
… Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
… Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.
Promise this world your love–
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.