Psalm 79 • Micah 4:1-5 • Revelation 15:1-8
“When things return to normal…” This has been our collective meditation and prayer since March. We yearn for a return to life before COVID-19 stripped us of life as we knew it. When loved ones were not potential threats to health and life, when we could forget life is fragile, when death was individual and impersonal instead of on a mass, global scale. We want to go back to a time before a pandemic highlighted and exacerbated the deep divisions and inequities among us.
Yet, Advent and Micah remind us that as people of God we do not live for a return to anything, rather we are called to look for and proclaim the days to
come. The days when God’s justice will have the final word and we will melt the weapons we’ve used to strike, protect, silence, and kill one another into
tools for turning the earth over to plant new life. And a new world will take shape.
At such an uncertain and grief filled time, when we our bodies are under attack by an unseen invader and our communities are at war with one
another, Micah’s prophesy of the days to come seems laughable and little cruel. Advent invites us to remember that even as the world physically dies
around us, new life and new light is coming. Indeed it has come.
Holy God, grant us courage to live for the days to come even in the midst of uncertainty and darkness. Amen.
Ryan Hawthorne
Diocese of Texas
Class of 2021
Seminary of the Southwest
Listen to Ryan read her meditation and prayer:
The Advent Meditations and Prayers are a gift to our seminary community and are made possible through gifts to our Annual Fund. Seminary of the Southwest appreciates the support of its friends, alumni, and the communities around the world that its graduates serve for the glory of God. This support ensures that Southwest, as an institution made of individuals dedicated to service to God and their fellow members of the body of Christ, can continue doing its part to build the body of Christ.
