Annie Lamott calls it \u201cthe great prayer \u2026 the hardest prayer.\u201d<\/a> Perhaps not the greatest prayer, but certainly one of the hardest, for it is an act of utter surrender, utter helplessness, and utter rejection of the darkness as the new normal\u2014that is, it is a prayer of hope.<\/p>\nThere in the depths, we watch for the Lord, \u201cmore than watchmen for the morning.\u201d I imagine the watchmen posted on the city walls, the city in desperate straits wondering what the new day will bring\u2014more enemies? A rescuer? I\u2019ve had my own days of waking up to even more enemies assaulting the city walls. \u201cYou thought yesterday was bad!\u201d has been a reality too many times.<\/p>\n
But even still, I post myself on the city walls. I watch for the morning. I know generally in what direction the sun will rise, but its actual arrival is always sudden. There\u2019s a sense of anticipation, a gradual lifting of utter blackness even when there\u2019s still not enough light to see\u2014what is going on<\/em>? I peer into the opaque sky\u2014today? Will relief come today?<\/em><\/p>\nPerhaps you, too, wait, desperately and yet hopefully, for the dawn. Today, perhaps? Will today bring a new, positive development in the cancer cycle? A breakthrough in the hostility between husband and wife? A reconciliation with the wayward child? A new opportunity? A new vision? A spiritual awakening?<\/p>\n
A friend once told me about her child, graduating from high school, who tossed a college brochure in the trash can\u2014not interested. <\/em>She had other opportunities, other interests. And then, later that day, something \u201cclicked\u201d inside her, and she dug through the trash and retrieved the brochure with a willingness to reconsider that school. That quirky reversal led to multiple other decisions that have shaped her life.<\/p>\nA simple, inconsequential story, really. No suffering involved. You know stories like this, and we mostly shrug them off as serendipity. And yet, what is that \u201cclick\u201d? What is that shift, that sudden light inside that moves us? Is that not the glimmer of a dawn?<\/p>\n
When you pray, do you not pray for these \u201cglimmers\u201d? Do you not watch\u2014relentlessly and hopefully and even desperately\u2014for these movements of the Spirit in your world? And watching, waiting, praying, are you not rejecting the darkness as the new normal?<\/p>\n
I have a long list of the \u201cglimmers\u201d I\u2019m watching for. Most of them are personal, familial, friendship-based. But can we not, even this Advent, hope and watch and pray for a dawn in our national civic life, in Washington, in our common conversations, and at our borders? Darkness is not the new normal.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Come, Lord Jesus, come!<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Image by Lisa Runnels, Pixabay<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"These are dark days, darker for some than for others. Dark, for some, in grievous loss of a child; dark, for others, in job loss and illness; darker still for trafficked girls and Central Americans caught in immigration limbo and the homeless single parent and the broken family and the desperate of all sorts. Darkest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3143,"featured_media":1920,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[378],"tags":[123,267,57,122],"class_list":["post-1917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-advent","tag-advent","tag-hope","tag-prayer","tag-psalms"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a><\/p>\n