AN ADVENT BENEDICTION: ON HOPE
May the Lord bless you with the holy longing of Advent.
May the hope that you hold move you deeper into the pain and the darkness of our world, and into the pain of your own soul, so that you feel within your bones that it is not supposed to be this way.
But may this hope keep you from being paralyzed with despair.
May you be filled with a holy desire that sparks within you a new imagination of what can be, and may that desire give birth to a determination that will not settle until what can be, finally is.
May the Spirit of God that moved upon Simeon to see the coming of Christ, move upon you so that you may also have the eyes to see Christ’s coming in our day, in our time.
May you join Martin on the mountaintop, being privileged to glimpse God’s promised land that is to come, and may that glimpse motivate you to keep laboring down in the valley until God’s promised land comes on earth as it is in heaven.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.