Most merciful God, as I walk the path of Advent, struggling to put my spirit right for the remembrance of your entry into my life as the Christ, I anxiously pray that I will not again be led astray from your path by the powers that beckon me this day.
For the temptation is great to skip right to Christmas – with its excitement and glitter and dazzling light displays – and to declare it good, thinking that this is what the approaching celebration is all about.
The enticement is ever there, to indulge myself in the religion of commercialism, humbling myself before the altar of endless buying, with bright paper and ribbons and bows, with the choirs of recorded holiday music blaring overhead.
The lights and trees and holiday festivities are a invocational call, threatening to draw me further from the very heart of Christmas itself; your incarnation into the messiness of the world, which offers the real gift - that ray of light that lights the real path to the joy and fulfillment which I seek.
And so I pray for your presence with me this new Advent; leading me just as you did those starry-eyed astronomers of old; waiting with me in the darkness of my life, as you waited with the shepherds who had watched for generations for the promise of your breaking into our world. Point me to that place where I may humble myself before your true desire for Creation, which comes not in fancy paper or bows, but as the gift of mercy, compassion and love for all peoples everywhere. The true salvation for all of us.
Fill my anxious soul with patience, as I expectantly await your in-breaking into my life; into your world, again.
Amen.
Rev Michael Kirchhoff
inspired by: Matthew 24:23-28
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