Recently I have been using the Anabaptist prayer book, Take Our Moments and Our Days, to pray with the Scriptures regularly. As I began the Advent prayers, I was struck by one of the morning prayers:
Incarnate God,
holding tenderly all things human,
you became one of us.
Lighten our hearts
with Mary's vision of your just mercy,
that we may be gentled into joining you
in the hard and holy work
of releasing peace on earth.
Advent, I am learning, is a season of paradox. God becomes one of us. Justice becomes mercy. Hope is unknown without vulnerability. Light can only be seen through the darkness. Peace does not exist without struggle. And God holds all of these, inviting us to join in the work of releasing, birthing. God invites us to be present to the struggle and darkness just as much as to the hope and light, because it is only through the struggle that we are transformed. And it. is. hard. work. And it is holy work. Through it all, Christ is born. God is incarnate. Salvation comes. The promise is fulfilled.
Perhaps the deepest witness we can give this season is to step into both the work and the promise, as Mary did; to allow God to become incarnate in us and through us.
