Tag Archives: Hope

Advent 2025: ALL THE REST

Posted on by
Reply

The HOPE candle reading for this year can be found here: https://homespunresources.com/2025/11/26/advent-2025-hope/

Here are all the rest…

Nativity Scene at Oak Lawn UMC in Texas

PEACE

Leader: As another year ends and begins

People: We light candles as a sign of our persistent prayers for true peace

Not the illusion of calm or the intimidated silence

Not the immobility of the deer in the headlights

Letting others’ reflexes decide her fate

Not misplaced trust in the false promise that things will get easier next week

But peace that is confidence in the creator of the universe

Who knows our names and has a plan and enough grace to get us there

Peace of the early morning birds who know the sun will rise

Peace of the soaking rain and the summer coast

Peace that moves us out of the weeds and out among the trees

Peace that puts down the phone and does the thing

Peace of the low grey clouds of witnesses surrounding us with care

Peace to all in conflicts and transitions small, constant, and ultimate

Peace along every shifting border

The deep peace of Grandma’s home-cooking for all

God, help us find and make peace in the wide world

As we do in the great outdoors and the big dark

Help us be present and savor the moment

And step boldly into a future neither calm nor bright

Help us hear Your voice when you tell us:

Do not be afraid to reach out for me and each other

Do not be afraid to be who you are right now

or who you are becoming in Christ.

Amen, may it be so.

JOY

Leader: As another year ends and begins

People: We light candles as a sign of our commitment to joy

In the face of the fragility of youth and the frailty of age

In the face of divisive and questionable sources

We watch for God’s joy at work in God’s good creation

Joy that jumps to its collective feet

When our trailing team gets back in the game

Joy that whoops and hollers and high fives strangers

Joy like the audience transported by a story

Joy like the music itself unifying a choir

Joy like blankets and soup and a cozy fire on a cold day

Joy like lemonade and boba when it’s hot

The joy of good conversation when we dare

To talk about what we’re afraid to talk about

God of joy, renew in us ice cream wishes

and cotton candy dreams

Help us trust You enough to say, “Surprise me.”

Help us hear Your voice when You tell us:

Do not be afraid to speak up and move forward

Do not be afraid to change the world

God, You come close when we cry out for You, saying

“Do not be afraid. You are a people formed and favored.”

We’re on a mission from God.

May all your holy-laughter plans for us and our world come to pass.

Amen, may it be so.

LOVE

Leader: As another year ends and begins

People: We light candles as a sign of Love’s ultimate reign

In the face of death and loss and loneliness

We remain sure of God’s love at work in God’s good creation

Love as promise more than command

Love as balm for the wounds love opened

Love like a well-stocked food bank

with everyone’s favorites on the shelves

Love like an exquisitely crafted menu

Each course balancing the last and complementing the next

A meal that multiplies in the sharing

Love that converts our anxious energy into concern for others

Love like fresh air transforming a closed room

Love that can sit in companionable silence

Love that listens.

God of perfect love, disrupt our callous systems

Change our dismissive hearts

Make us radically respectful and unafraid to feel

Help us to pitch in, work together, and never tire of caring

Help us hear Your voice when you tell us:

Do not be afraid to get involved and be vulnerable

Do not be afraid to make room in your heart for someone new

God, You come close when we cry out for You, saying

“When you are afraid to reach out, I am already holding your hand.”

Amen, may it be so.

CHRIST CANDLE

Leader: As another year ends and begins, we light candles

as an insistence on God’s hope…

People: that hoists colors cheering on the maligned

and isn’t afraid to keep going

Leader: as a prayer for true peace

People: that moves us out of the weeds and out among the trees

and sings like the early morning birds who know the sun will rise

Leader: as a commitment to joy

People: that whoops and hollers and high fives strangers

and isn’t afraid to change the world

Leader: and as a sign of Love’s ultimate reign

People: that converts our anxious energy into concern for others

Love like a meal that multiplies in the sharing

Leader: Tonight, we light the Christ candle as a reminder

of God come close, God with us, and God still at work

People: Child of Hope, help us practice kindness, levity, and gratitude

Leader: Bring peace along every shifting border

People: May all your holy-laughter plans for us and our world come to pass

Leader: Open our hearts like fresh air transforming a closed room

People: Amen, may it be so

This year’s Advent candle readings composed with the input of the candle lighters at Bethany Presbyterian Church, Seattle

Advent Hope 2023: A Candle-lighting Liturgy

Featured

Posted on by
Reply

.

Open the heavens and come down, O God of hope.

Bring your hope so near we can taste it—

Crisp and refreshing as apples,

Warm and tingly as a spiked hot chocolate.

.

We have seen glimpses of your hope in communities of solidarity and recovery

and in rich conversations with our brothers and sisters in the faith.

When the local whale watchers protected the humpback calf from harm,

we knew your presence.

Give us hope to trust you are at work in ways we cannot see,

like an ambient melody

that elevates and alters a space.

.

We have heard your promises:

that you have good plans for each of us

and that you will be with us wherever we go,

in heaven, on earth, and in every place they meet in You.

Every child shall have vision for a future beyond politicking and conflict.

The young shall teach us to build one another up in mutual respect.

.

Christ, our hope, make a way through the desert of despair.

Lead us to campsites in lush meadows by hidden pools.

Comfort us and give us hope,

that we may comfort others in your name.

“Hope” by Sliman Mansour

Anoint us with your Spirit to bring good news

to those sleeping outside and suffering in war zones.

Inspire our leaders.

Restore our humanity.

.

We are God’s people.

We light this candle as a sign of God’s hope

that brightens grey skies

like the rosy brushstrokes of dawn

and the glow of the turning leaves

O come, Immanuel.

.

(This year’s Advent candle-lighting liturgies are crafted around the 2023 lectionary texts and input from congregants of Bethany Presbyterian Church of Seattle)

Advent Wreath-Lighting Liturgy: Hope

Posted on by
1

Jesus, as we enter again
into the odd story of your unusual arrival,
we find hope in the unprecedented.

We find hope
in the ambivalence and complexity
of words like restructuring and remission—
such open-future words
that could mean anything,
that mean anything could happen.

We find hope
in the mixed blessings
where our faithlessness and your faithfulness meet,
like our failure to care for your creation
leading to the unmerited favor
of this disconcertingly gorgeous fall.

detail from “The New Normal: Everyday Extremes and Disaster Disparities” by Roger Feldman
photo by Jenn Cavanaugh

You set the lonely in families
and the rootless in neighborhoods.
You bring the wanderers
into communities of faith
built and stewarded by generations
in the hope of our coming and yours.

Awaken us to our role
as astonished agents of hope
in such unlikely places
as our own gutted organizations,
our own unsettled families,
and our own anxious minds.

We are God’s people.
We light this candle
as a sign of our hope in the God
who comes to us in our darkest hour
and makes a home among us.
O come, Immanuel

Lenten Calendar: Unfinished

Posted on by
Reply

“So, you’re a background singer in your own life?

Why’re you in the background?

…

You gotta let the lies go

and let your hope grow.”

— Kim B. Miller, “Lies”

Face (Claude) Henri Matisse

Face (Claude) – Henri Matisse

I find a lot of hope in being unfinished — a work in progress. When things aren’t working out as planned, well, the story isn’t over yet. It helps me extend grace to others, but especially myself — there’s less pressure to be perfect or have it all figured out.

Sometimes I have to ask myself, though, why is that part of my life or myself so underdeveloped? Why is it just roughed in? A sketch I’m in no hurry to finish? What fears and lies are keeping me from committing the time and focus it would take to fill in the features? It’s safer to be all potential, even if that means squandering it, but God has hopes, dreams, plans, and work for our completed selves. What is one step toward that future self you’ve been avoiding for fear of mistakes? What if we accepted the possibility of imperfection along the way to being made perfect?

Words of Witness – Advent week 1: HOPE

Posted on by
Reply

We gather here today in response to God’s hope

that calls us like church bells,

heralding the birth of a savior

and new life offered to all.

selective focus photography of paintbrush near paint pallet

Photo by Steve Johnson on Pexels.com

Despite the failure of our systems to protect the innocent.

Despite the arrogance of those who say there is no hope.

Despite our distorted desires

and disheartening battles, we come.

 

We come because of all these things,

believing that things could be different,

that things could be better;

that we could be changed.

God help our unbelief.

 

We gather in hope

and in need of God’s perfect hope.

A hope like unbounded light

at the end of our tunneled vision.

A hope like cool waves on sunburnt skin.

A hope that smells like fresh-baked bread,

sustaining our bodies.

A hope that tastes like fresh spring water,

restoring our souls.

A hope like the mess of a palette

resolving itself on canvas

into wonder.

 

We are God’s people.

We light this candle

as a sign of our hope in the God who comes to us in our darkest hour

and makes a home among us.

O come, Immanuel.

 

Composed by and for the American Church in Paris community, the work of the people to the glory of God.

Advent Week 1: Waiting with Hope

Posted on by
1

advent week 1 (2)

It’s been a bad week to be told to wait.

An especially frustrating – even demeaning – time to be told to wait for justice, for the world to be set right, that things will get better, things which are not entirely in our hands to fix, things that can only truly change through some odd and mystical combination of patience and systemic upheaval, accountability and radical forgiveness, quiet and cataclysm.

Waiting with hope is the antithesis of an escapism. Waiting with hope does not mean blithely ignoring or submitting to the status quo, but walking humbly enough to find oneself in the company of those most deeply threatened by it, who have no choice but to wait, because their lives depend on others acting justly. That’s deeply unsettling when you think about it: living at one another’s mercy. We all do it, but it’s a gamble with blatantly rigged odds. Sadly we don’t extend kindness or even the benefit of the doubt with anything resembling equality and no one is under any illusion that we can rectify that overnight. And so we wait, but in the hope that justice will be established, that power will protect the powerless, that the starving will have their fill of good things. We wait with those who wait. “You’re tired. But everyone’s tired./ But no one is tired enough.” So…

Wait

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven’t they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become interesting.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again;
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don’t go too early.
You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a little and listen:
music of hair,
music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

 – Galway Kinnell

from Selected Poems. © Houghton Mifflin, 1983

Advent Reflection – Day 2

Posted on by
Reply

“Hope” by Thiago Elias

“Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Either we have hope or we don’t; it is a dimension of the soul, and it’s not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, and orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons…. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more propitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper the hope is. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

– Vaclav Havel