Advent Calendar 2003

Index | Week One | Week Two | Week Three | Week Four |

14th December : Third Sunday in Advent

The Candle of Peace

AdventThree.jpg

Go into the world in peace
Have courage, and take hold of what is good
Never pay back hurt for hurt
Let compassion be your companion
And forgiveness your constant friend
Let the fire of the Spirit burn in your heart
Seek the Lord
Keep the faith.


15th December

Spring

To Listen, To Look
Anne Weems

Is it all sewn up, my life?
Is it at this point so predictable
so orderly,
so neat,
so arranged,
so right,
that I don't have time or space
for listening for the rustle of angels' wings
or running to stables to see a baby?
Could this be what he meant when he said
Listen, those who have ears to hear.
Look, those who have eyes to see?
O God, give me the humbleness of those shepherds
who saw in the cold December darkness
the Coming of Light
the Advent of Love!
— from Bruderhof.


16th December

Jerusalem

"When we walk to the edge of all the light we have known,
and we take a step into the darkness of the unknown,
we must believe one of two things will happen
—there will be something solid to stand on,
or we will be taught to fly."
—S Martin Edges


17th December

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Let my heart be broken
by the things which break
the heart of God.

Bob Pierce
(founder of World Vision)

(Pray:)
For all for whom Christmas will bring bitter memories and overwhelming grief.That they may be touched by the hope that came at Christmas.

'Within our darkest night, you kindle the fire that never dies away.'


18th December

Mont San Michel (France)

Mont San Michel in France (Normandy)

Whatever you can do or think you can do begin it.
For boldness has power and magic and genius in it
—Goethe


19th December

Daffodils

Tender God, touch us. Be touched by us;
make us lovers of humanity
compassionate friends of all creation.
Gracious God hear us into speech; speak us into acting;
and through us, recreate the world.
—Carter Heyward. Laughter, Silence and Shouting.


20th December

Celtic_Cross.jpg

"With all the materialistic pressures involved in Christmas today we can easily think of it as a period of hectic preparation, a day of celebration and a brief aftermath. We can forget it is more than a feast. It is a season. And like all seasons its essence is a cycle of preparation, achievement, and then incorporation of what has been achieved into the larger season of which it is a part, the season of our life Ö

Our period of preparation for celebrating the mystery is itself a joyful time, because there is a quietly deepening understanding of whose birth it is we celebrate and just how eternal an event is involved.

Each year, it seems to me, the mystery of this birth becomes greater, yet the greater it grows, the closer it seems to come to us.

In a society that has lost so much of its capacity for peace and so much of the peacefulness required to prepare quietly for anything, we run the risk of being left only with the worship of the instantly visible, the immediately possessed, of being finally left only with the dryness of the instantly forgotten."
—John Main