An Advent Prayer

Pray with longing for a better world and the arrival of the Kingdom of God.

In our secret yearnings
we wait for your coming,
and in our grinding despair
we doubt that you will.

And in this privileged place
we are surrounded by witnesses who yearn more than do we
and by those who despair more deeply than do we.

Look upon your church and its pastors
in this season of hope
which runs so quickly to fatigue
and in this season of yearning
which becomes so easily quarrelsome.

Give us the grace and the impatience
to wait for your coming to the bottom of our toes,
to the edges of our fingertips.

We do not want our several worlds to end.

Come in your power
and come in your weakness
in any case
and make all things new.

Amen.

Walter Brueggeman
Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann