Sunday, December 19, 2010
Offered by Joyce Shin, Associate Pastor

Almighty God, we begin this day waiting, watching, and hoping. We wait for your intervention, Lord, because we know how insufficient our own efforts are. You have a vision so grand and glorious for your world and all the peoples in it. And though we strive in a myriad of ways to do the right thing at the right time for the right cause, we know that we must attune our efforts with yours. So we wait for you, O Lord, to show us the depth, the breadth, the height of your saving love.

In Christ we receive such love. We watch for his coming. In his birth and in his death, you show us how vulnerable in flesh, how naked in truth, and how great in magnitude your love for the world is. We know, O Lord, that you put upon us the immense responsibility to receive your Son into the world. Do not let us turn, to look the other way. Do not let us hand Christ over, for he is our humanity. Where there is humanity, Lord, we know you are there. In every humane act of kindness, every gesture of compassion, in every word spoken on behalf of another, in every labor of love, you are there. So let us watch for these acts. Let us live for them.

Let us put our hope in them. Too often, Lord, we accept for reality situations with which you are not yet finished. We are too quick to accept relationships as broken, roads as leading to dead-ends, efforts as wasted. Remind us, Lord, that hope is never a useless gift. It is instead the fertile ground out of which you recreate the world and our lives. Fill us with such hope that we dare to imagine a new heaven and a new earth recreated by the love you have for us in Jesus Christ.

In his name and for his sake we pray the prayer he taught us to say:

Our Father . . .

Prayer © Fourth Presbyterian Church