Liturgy 005: First Monday of Advent
To observe Advent is to observe our need for a savior.
For evangelicals, this means observing our need for a personal savior to forgive us of our sins against God. Our need for God’s grace.
For progressives, this means observing society’s need for salvation from the forces of evils that create poverty, hunger, and oppressive systems of injustice. Our need for God’s deliverance.
For contemplatives, this means observing our soul’s deepest need to live in union with God, and to be delivered from our false selves. Our need for God.
During these next 20 days leading up to Christmas, I invite you to pause and prayerfully observe all three:
How great is your need for a gracious and loving God?
How great is your world, nation, community, church, and neighborhood in need of a supernatural healing from God?
How great is your need to live in union with God, as opposed to an enmeshment to satisfy others?
Let us pray.
🕊️ Invocation
Spirit of the Living God, on this Monday with a thousand tasks on my mind, I pause to welcome you into my world. Expand my imagination to see you in all things.
This year, I wish to contemplate more deeply the mystery of your coming to us in Jesus as a helpless child.
So I begin by observing my need. For your loving grace, for your deliverance. Most of all, my need and longing to live in union with you.
And I join all the world - from the Middle East to my own neighborhood block - to confess our need of you.
Come Holy Spirit.
🧘♀️ Quote
Our need for God is not a sign of inadequacy but a recognition of our inherent connection to the Divine.
—Dallas Willard
📖 Psalm 42:1
As the deer pants for the water, so my soul pants for you.
🌓 Prayer of Confession
Name the ways you have operated in self-reliance.
Name the ways you have operated as a savior - trying to fix what you cannot fix.
Confess aloud your need of God.
🤲 Blessing
This Advent, may you confess boldly your need for a savior. May the mystery of God coming to us in the surprising form of a helpless child lead you to embrace your own helplessness apart from a saving God. Amen.
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