Saturday, December 13, 2025
Friday, December 12, 2025
Advent Hands . . .
Author: Catherine Alder
I see the hands of
Joseph.
Back and forth along bare wood they move.
There is worry in those working hands,
sorting out confusing thoughts with every stroke.
“How can this be, my beautiful Mary now with child?”
Rough with deep splinters, these hands,
small, painful splinters like tiny crosses
embedded deeply in this choice to stay with her.
He could have closed his hands to her,
said, “No” and let her go to stoning.
But, dear Joseph opened both his heart and hands
to this mother and her child.
Preparing in these days before
with working hands
and wood pressed tight between them.
It is these rough hands that will open
and be the first to hold the Child.
I see the hands of John,
worn from desert raging storms
and plucking locusts from sand ripped rocks
beneath the remnant of a Bethlehem star.
A howling wind like some lost wolf
cries out beneath the moon,
or was that John?
This loneliness,
enough to make a grown man mad.
He’s waiting for this, God’s whisper.
“Go now. He is coming.
You have prepared your hands enough.
Go. He needs your servant hands,
your cupping hands to lift the water,
and place his feet upon the path to service and to death.
Go now, John, and open your hands to him.
It is time.”
I see a fist held tight
and fingers blanched to white.
Prying is no easy task.
These fingers find a way of pulling back to old positions,
protecting all that was and is.
Blanched to white. No openness. All fright.
But then the Spirit comes.
A holy Christmas dance begins
and blows between the twisted paths.
This fist opens
slowly,
gently,
beautifully,
the twisted fingers letting go.
Their rock-solid place in line has eased.
And one by one the fingers lift
True color is returned
And through the deepest of mysteries,
The holiest of holies,
O longing of longings
Beyond all human imagining
this fist,
as if awakened from Lazarus’ cold stone dream
reaches out to hold the tiny newborn hand of God.
A Wintering Prayer . . .
O God of all seasons and senses, grant us the sense of your
timing
to submit gracefully and rejoice quietly in the turn of the
seasons.
In this season of short days and long nights,
of grey and white and cold,
teach us the lessons of endings;
children growing, friends leaving, loved ones dying,
grieving over,
grudges over,
blaming over,
excuses over.
O God, grant us a sense of your timing.
In this season of short days and long nights,
of grey and white and cold,
teach us the lessons of beginnings;
that such waitings and endings may be the starting place,
a planting of seeds which bring to birth what is ready to be
born—
something right and just and different,
a new song, a deeper relationship, a fuller love—
in the fullness of your time.
O God, grant us the sense of your timing.
Taken from Guerrillas of Grace by Ted Loder
Wednesday, December 10, 2025
An Advent-ure of Love!
According to a story reportedly written by Leo
Buscaglia, "On a cold day in December, some years ago: A little boy, about
10 years old, was standing before a shoe store on the roadway,
barefooted, peering through the window, and shivering with cold.
"A lady approached the young boy and said, 'My, but you're in such deep
thought staring in that window!'
"'I was asking God to give me a pair of shoes,' was the boy's reply.
"The lady took him by the hand, went into the store, and asked the clerk
to get half a dozen pairs of socks for the boy. She then asked if he could give
her a basin of water and a towel. He quickly brought them to her.
"She took the little fellow to the back part of the store and, removing
her gloves, knelt down, washed his little feet, and dried them with the towel.
"By this time, the clerk had returned with the socks. Placing a pair upon
the boy's feet, she then purchased a pair of shoes for him.
"She tied up the remaining pairs of socks and gave them to him. She patted
him on the head and said, 'No doubt, you will be more comfortable now.'
"As she turned to go, the astonished child caught her by the hand, and
looking up into her face, with tears in his eyes, asked, 'Are you God's
wife?'"
Sunday, December 7, 2025
No Room at the Inn . . .
Into this world, this demented inn
in which there is absolutely no room for him at all,
Christ comes uninvited.
But because he cannot be at home in it,
because he is out of place in it,
and yet he must be in it,
His place is with the others for whom
there is no room.
His place is with those who do not belong,
who are rejected by power, because
they are regarded as weak,
those who are discredited,
who are denied status of persons,
who are tortured, bombed and exterminated.
With those for whom there is no room,
Christ is present in this world.
~Thomas Merton