Advent: Hope on My Knees

prayer-on-my-knees4Some days it is hard to hope. I say “Come Lord Jesus” in our Advent prayers as a desperate cry, not a uniform response. I need Advent right now, not the Christmas season. I am not ready. I am waiting.

Some days I wait in anger. Anger at the way life is treated… when children are put in dangerous situations, when young lives are cut short because of ignorance of non accidental trauma… when I read in the news about another black life cut short, when I talk to a friend about the talk he has to give his son about how to ‘get along’ in our racist society, when I read responses to recent tragedy that are hateful or aren’t even trying to listen.

Some days I wait in sadness. Sadness when families leave the hospital with empty hands, when lives are cut short by SIDS or cancer, when I read about the death count from Ebola or the treatment of brothers and sisters around the world… when it seems like the world is so far from the Kingdom of God, when I feel helpless to enact change.

And then I’m on my knees, it’s more than I can bear… Come Lord Jesus…

I hope on my knees this Advent. That I can change, that we can change, that systems can change. That there is redemption for a world with so much darkness, where sometimes the here of the Kingdom seems so small in the face of the not yet. My hope come from the fact that Advent has always been for hoping on one’s knees, for praying for a savior to come into a world of oppression and darkness. We need Advent.

It is a reckless sort of hope to be Advent people in this world, but no more reckless than it was back then. To bring life into a world with so much hurt under the oppression of an empire, as refugees in Egypt. To be recklessly hopeful is the only way I know to keep going. The only way I know to face on call or ministering to a family at the death of a child or reading the news. I cannot lie and say that I can bear it, because human hearts weren’t made to, but on my knees I live in hope for the coming of the Kingdom of God.

Come Lord Jesus, when it is more than I can bear. Come Lord Jesus, and make us lights in the darkness. Come Lord Jesus and let us not fear to speak truth to power. Because I would rather live in hope on my knees with those who suffer in this world, than live in a fake peace standing up refusing to see the brokenness in this world. Come Lord Jesus…

 

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