Advent Calendar 2003
Index | Week One | Week Two | Week Three | Week Four |
Advent Sunday: 30th November
The Candle of Hope
Surprising God,
We are amazed that even in times
of deep distress and overwhelming despair
you give the warmth and brightness of your light and life
to all creation.
In Flanders Field the Poppies Grow.
1st December
The season of Advent is about beginning
and calls us to focus again on the Lord coming to dwell among us.
2nd December
In the beginning, God.
3rd December
Pray: for those who have no hope.
The mandatory detention policies of the government have caused a Baxter kid, after more than two years in detention, to say the following:
"I DON'T HAVE HOPE. I THINK I AM GOING TO DIE SOON."
(from a collection of sayings of children in the Baxter Detention Centre.)
4th December
Make me to know your ways, O Lord,
teach me your paths.
Lead me in your truth,
and teach me,
for you are the god of my salvation;
for you I wait all day long.
Psalm 25:4-5 (NRSV)
5th December
… listen to the whisperings of hope …
As New Zealand Quakers have said, 'Refusal to fight with weapons [or to support such fighting] is not surrender.
We are not passive when threatened by the greedy, the cruel, the tyrant, the unjust. We will struggle to remove the causes of impasse and confrontation by every means of non-violent resistance available. We call for a commitment to make the building of peace a priority and to make opposition to war absolute...
Let us reject the clamour of fear and listen to the whisperings of hope.'
—from Pacifism Not Passivism by Stephanie Dowrick, Sydney Regional Meeting. First appeared in Good Weekend Magazine; The Australian Friend May 2003
6th December : St Nicholas of Myra
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Writing the list …
Santa likes light beer we are told…
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
O Lord my God, how excellent is your greatness!
You are clothed in majesty and splendour;
You wrap yourself with light as with a cloak.
The sun knows the time of its setting;
You make darkness that it may be night.
from Psalm 104