Advent Daily Devotional: WEEK of HOPE – DAY 4 -Wed, Dec 1
For surely I know the plans I have for you,
says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm,
to give you a future with hope. —Jeremiah 29:11
Where is the way to the dwelling of light? — Job 38:18-20
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This solo candle lifts its presence as a guide. It shines into the season of waiting and preparing. It becomes a companion.
In day-to-day living, we probably don’t focus on our need for hope. Rather, we seek or rely on hope in times when you struggle.
Another strategy for cultivating hope, especially when you are experiencing challenges, is to find at least one relationship that remains supportive. Just one.
At first, people often respond in overwhelming numbers with tangible gestures of kindness in the wake of trauma or loss. Over time, that network of sympathy and outreach slows down. Yet your human need to foster hope is often a long-term approach to whatever situation has troubled or transformed your life. If you have one or more vital connections that continue to be present throughout your journey, this is often enough to cultivate hope.
Perhaps, on the other hand, you are that significant relationship or form of support for another person. It’s imperative to honor self-care boundaries, so that you maintain your own equilibrium when offering compassion to someone else. Yet realize, even when you set limits, that by caring and showing up consistently for another person, you make a difference. You help foster resilience in another life, as well as your own.
Maybe, in this Advent season, you receive someone else’s light. Or perhaps you offer your own to another. One way or another, hope burns. — Rev Gail
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Hope can be a powerful force.
Maybe there’s no actual magic in it,
but when you know what you hope for most
and hold it like a light within you,
you can make things happen, almost like magic.
– Laini Taylor
Listen to the inner light; it will guide you.
Listen to the inner peace; it will feed you.
Listen to the inner love; it will transform you.
— Sri Chinmoy
ADVENT INTRODUCTION for Daily Devotional: Day 1 / Week of Hope
Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. — Genesis 1:3-4
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In this year’s holiday devotional, as you light candles each day, adding a new flame every week, we invite you to meditate on the blessings of Advent: hope, peace, joy and love. Each offers a form of inspiration and illumination: both inwardly in our souls and bodies and outwardly by how we learn, live, play, work, and serve in the world.
Let us remember what Rachel Held Evans observed during a difficult holiday: “Those little Advent candles sure have a lot of darkness to overcome this year … Their stubborn flames represent the divine promise that … God can’t be kept out.” This assurance believes that each flame kindled in the world—metaphorically referring to human hearts and lives, each of them shining as lanterns in this mortal world—carries the potential to ignite transformative blazes as well as to awaken comforting hearth fires.
The daily act of lighting a candle reminds us that God chooses to return to humanity’s experience, to show up incarnate, in our messy world. Nothing can stop love’s arrival. Like dawn spilling across the horizon after the depths of a night’s vigil, love arrives with the light.Love also presses close in the holy dark.
When we practice setting a small part of our time and space aflame each day, we’re inviting the light to attend us. Abide in us. Illuminate us. — Rev Gail
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WEEK of HOPE – DAY 1
Sun, Nov 28
And now, O Lord, what do I wait for?
My hope is in you. — Psalm 39:7
The Lord went in front of them in a pillar of cloud by day,
to lead them along the way, and in a pillar of fire by night,
to give them light … — Exodus 13:21
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One candle to signify hope? The candle, until today, remains unmarked. Its wick curves like a question mark, inviting you to ask.
Within you dwell questions. Seeds that have grown and seek to open and thrive. Curiosity begins in the wilderness, or what you might consider to be the fruitful dark of unresolved, unexamined, unexplored parts of the world or the self. Questions arise where things may not yet be visible or known.
Today, before you give birth to light, by setting the wick aflame, make friends with the darkness. Stare into it. Let its depths become more visible as your eyes adjust. Grow more attuned to sitting in the absence of the light or the flame.
What senses grow keener when vision isn’t in use? What can you discern without light to heighten the contrast around the contours and edges of the world surrounding you? Or to illuminate the self within?
Allow the darkness to keep you company. Part of hope acknowledges that you begin each journey with a sense of uncertainty and discomfort. Yet hope grows in such places. Love takes root within this life-producing womb of not-knowing.
Yes, in this season, you will shine a light into darkness. Yet when you welcome the fertile depths and darkness, look into it, and let it touch you, you embrace beginnings. You invite questions to come alive.
Afterward, light the single flame. How does its presence change the darkness in which you have immersed yourself? — Rev Gail
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Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up. — Anne Lamott
Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light. — Brene Brown
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Blessing of Hope
— Jan Richardson
So may we know the hope
that is not just for someday
but for this day—
here, now, in this moment that opens to us:
hope not made of wishes, but of substance,
hope made of sinew and muscle and bone,
hope that has breath and a beating heart,
hope that will not keep quiet and be polite,
hope that knows how to holler
when it is called for,
hope that knows how to sing
when there seems little cause,
hope that raises us from the dead—
not someday but this day, every day,
again and again and again.
Advent Daily Devotional: Day 22 – Week of Love
Sunday, Dec 20 – DAY 22
Love glows bright as the focus of this week’s reflections. As we light our candles, we prepare to welcome holy love into our homes and lives.
Can you imagine a love more determined than the one that chooses to show up in our messy and imperfect world? To be born human?
It takes a stubborn love to move toward us, because we cannot ever quite reach that love itself. That is what our holy stories translate to us. Love chooses to be with us and among us in this season. And every day.
The holy love narrated in our scriptures points toward agape. Agape is a love greater than ourselves. It is different than erotic or passionate love, larger and deeper than love for friends or family.
Agape gives of itself. And part of that giving begins with movement. Holy love has turned to us and returned to us, chosen us over and over, meeting us where we are, coming to this world and time in which we live.
— Rev Gail
But as for me, my prayer is to you, O Lord. At an acceptable time, O God, in the abundance of your steadfast love, answer me. — Psalm 69:13
Agape doesn’t love somebody because they’re worthy. Agape makes them worthy by the strength and power of its love. Agape doesn’t love somebody because they’re beautiful. Agape loves in such a way that it makes them beautiful. — Rob Bell
Daily Advent Devotional: Day 21 – Sat, Dec 19
Joy may be encouraged and reinforced by your choice of environments. Opt to connect with nature. Or to change perspectives by going somewhere other than your usual setting.
How you set the stage for where you work and play permits you to access joy. Being in places that minimize interruptions and offer immediate inspiration may support your reach for the joy within. Often joy in our sacred texts is described in connection with hills and rivers, gardens and vineyards and fields. Or in sacred places such as human-made sanctuaries or holy mountaintops. Be intentional about your choice of environment, even in small ways: pay attention to the lighting, orderliness, or perhaps the view. — Rev Gail
Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing! For the Lord has comforted his people, and will have compassion on his suffering ones. — Isaiah 49:13
For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. — Isaiah 55:12
To lust for joy is to lust for the God of life. To make joy where at first it seems there is none is to become co-creator with the God of life. When we make joy, we make a holier, happier life. — Joan Chittister
For Equilibrium, a Blessing — John O’Donohue
Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore,
May the relief of laughter rinse through your soul.
As the wind loves to call things to dance,
May your gravity by lightened by grace.
Like the dignity of moonlight restoring the earth,
May your thoughts incline with reverence and respect.
As water takes whatever shape it is in,
So free may you be about who you become.
As silence smiles on the other side of what’s said,
May your sense of irony bring perspective.
As time remains free of all that it frames,
May your mind stay clear of all it names.
May your prayer of listening deepen enough
to hear in the depths the laughter of god.
Daily Advent Devotional: Day 20 – Fri, Dec 18
Gratitude is the birthplace of joy. Or vice versa.
Appreciation and perspective enable you to embrace whatever comes. To find resilience in hard times. To opt for creative responses to challenging circumstances. To be curious rather than angry. It cultivates compassion and connection. Gratitude permits your starting point to be one of acceptance and adaptation, of positive thinking and an attitude of hope and empowerment. You can find beauty and satisfaction even in the midst of thorny times.
With gratitude, you cherish what is already within reach. And value whatever gifts and experiences come to fruition. You may respect your history, savor the present moment, and believe in the potential of your future. All while experiencing keen awareness of now.
— Rev Gail
For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work; at the works of your hands I sing for joy. —Psalm 92:4
The root of joy is gratefulness … It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful. ― Brother David Steindl-Rast
Joy is the simplest form of gratitude. — Karl Barth
Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. ― Henri J.M. Nouwen
I think joy and sweetness and affection are a spiritual path. We’re here to know God, to love and serve God, and to be blown away by the beauty and miracle of nature. You just have to get rid of so much baggage to be light enough to dance, to sing, to play. You don’t have time to carry grudges; you don’t have time to cling to the need to be right. — Anne Lamott