A Prayer for the First Sunday of Advent

Dear Jesus,

Here we are again: counting down, lighting your birthday candles in slow motion, and watching as they burn to different heights. And, at least in this, we’re a little like the prophets who foretold your coming, though for them Advent lasted ages. Their hope, too, was the relay of a flame. They, too, were waiting in the waxing dark. They, too, could hardly imagine a world where no one went hungry, where the powerful humbled themselves, where violence wasn’t an instinct. They couldn’t imagine you, even as they testified that you would save us.

In that, of course, we’re unlike the prophets. We have more to go on: the voices of the Old Testament and the witnesses of the New. We, unlike Isaiah and Jeremiah, can use the past tense, can say you saved us. But that, too, is a gift we have sometimes squandered, waiting for the Incarnation as if it were a foregone conclusion. Indeed, if we’re honest, some years we have managed Christmas within an inch of its life, as if there were such a thing as a traditional miracle. As if our hope were a quaint reprise of the prophets’. As if the world were not still desperate for you.

So, Jesus, return us to awe. Give us back the hope of the prophets in all its urgency. Anoint us, so that we, like them, are out of their depth in expectation. Change our anticipation from a countdown to watching for the light in unstructured time. Remind us that we are waiting, yes, to celebrate that you’ve already come for us, but, even more, that we are waiting for you to come again. Remind us to live toward your coming again: to fill our small lamps with oil, to watch and pray, to heal what we can. Remind us because you know how easily our vigils unravel, how readily our wants crowd out our hopes, how reflexively we choose distraction. 

And if we need more than reminding, then startle us with the miracle again. Surprise us, so that we find ourselves singing “O come, O come, Emmanuel” not to summon you retroactively, but to clamor for your coming again. Let what we mean be “Marantha.” Let what we mean be “thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.” 

O come, O come, Emmanuel. Amen.