Tag Archives: Love

Advent 2025: ALL THE REST

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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 Love: A Candle-lighting Liturgy

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

Bring Your love so near we can feel it

not just in our hearts, but on our skin,

like the sun on our upturned faces.

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We have seen glimpses of Your love in communities 

that surrounded us with care, stood by our sides, and had our backs.

When we heard confidence and optimism in our children’s voices, 

we knew Your presence.

Give us eyes keen enough to catch Your love in action,

and spirits quick enough to reflect Your grace,

as water catches and reflects the light.

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We have heard Your promises:

that You love us no matter what,

with a love greater even than faith and hope.

Where Your love rules, everything changes.

The stranger will be met with a smile.

The hurt will find a healer.

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Jesus, lover of our souls, come soothe where hate burns. 

Help us to love one another as You have loved us,

with an untamed love that is not safe, but it is good—

a love that spends its life for others.

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Anoint us with your Spirit to bring good news

to all in need of Your healing touch.

Restore what has been broken in rage.

Make us crafters of beauty from ashes.

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We are God’s people.

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

that sets up camp among us,

tending the displaced and the wounded,

then sends us out to do the same.

O come, Immanuel. 

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(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: LOVE

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Jesus, as we enter again
into the odd story of your unusual arrival,
we feel your love in the extravagant provision
and minute detail of your gifts,
crafted and tailored so we may know
that not only are we loved,
but we are known and loved 

We see your love in action
in the practice of forgiveness,
channeled through an over-the-top
care package from a friend,
in an unanticipated vantage from which
to love our adopted hometown,
and in that most intense form of grace
that visits us at our most unlovely

Yours is a love that reflects
off of objects and others
to brighten a room,
that makes itself heard
in the rustling of the leaves,
a love tasted in cinnamon rolls
and ice cream

Awaken us to our role
as astonished agents
of your astonishing love
in such unlikely places
as our political divisions
and complex relationships
including our relationships with ourselves

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

Words of Witness – Advent Week 4: LOVE

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We gather here today in response to God’s love

that feeds our souls like a good meal with friends,  

filling our minds and hearts and senses

until our best selves overflow.

aerial photo of mountain surrounded by fog

Photo by icon0.com on Pexels.com

Despite the selfish demands and betrayals of love we have suffered.

Despite the impatient and half-hearted attempts at love we have offered.

Despite our flawed definitions and our misplaced affections,

We come.

 

We come because of all these things, believing

in a love that is bigger than us, and better;

that is offered to us as we are,

even as it is beyond our scope to comprehend as we are.

Lord help our unbelief.

 

We gather in love

and in need of God’s perfect love.

A love that has been through everything

and come out stronger.

A love that knows and accepts us so deeply

that the stranger no longer poses a threat.

A love to grow into.

The gentle touch of the sun on our upturned faces

Its soft warmth on our backs when it is no more

and no less than the light by which we see.

A faint trickle of water music

heard throughout life’s song-rich forest

telling us that wherever we go,

we will never go thirsty.

 

We are God’s people.

We light this candle as a sign of the love of God,

who comes to walk in our shoes

and make 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.

Frederick Buechner on the Church as Family

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Frederick Buechner turns 92 on Wednesday (long may he drive the darkness back), but this is a word best heard gearing up for a Sunday.

“Life is extraordinary, and the extraordinariness of it is what Jesus calls the Kingdom of God. The extraordinariness of it is that in the Kingdom of God we all belong to each other the way families do. We are all of us brothers and sisters in it. We are all of us mothers and fathers and children of each other in it because that is that we are being called together as the Church to be. That is what being the Church means. We are called by God to love each other the way Jesus says that God has loved us.

…

Loving each other doesn’t mean loving each other in some sentimental, unrealistic, greeting-card kind of way but the way families love each other even though they may fight tooth and nail and get fed to the teeth with each other and drive each other crazy yet all the time know deep down in their hearts that they belong to each other and need each other and can’t imagine what life would be without each other — even the ones they often wish had never been born.”

— Frederick Buechner

from “The Church” in The Clown in the Belfry (pp. 149-159). San Francisco: Harper, 154.