Month: December 2024

This Seventh Day of Christmas, I was touched by this prayer from Frederick Buechner and wanted to share it with you.

“THOU SON OF THE Most High, Prince of Peace, be born again into our world. Wherever there is war in this world, wherever there is pain, wherever there is loneliness, wherever there is no hope, come, thou long-expected one, with healing in thy wings.”

“Holy Child, whom the shepherds and the kings and the dumb beasts adored, be born again. Wherever there is boredom, wherever there is fear of failure, wherever there is temptation too strong to resist, wherever there is bitterness of heart, come, thou blessed one, with healing in thy wings.”

“Saviour, be born in each of us who raises his face to thy face, not knowing fully who he is or who thou art, knowing only that thy love is beyond his knowing and that no other has the power to make him whole. Come, Lord Jesus, to each who longs for thee even though he has forgotten thy name. Come quickly. Amen.”

— Frederick Buechner, Originally published in The Hungering Dark

Link: www.frederickbuechner.com

I’m reading A Surprising God: Advent Devotions for an Uncertain Time by Thomas G. Long. I came to this book hoping to find an Advent devotional we could share in together next year. So far I have not been disappointed. I was inspired by this paragraph:

“As a priest friend said to essayist Anne Lamott, ‘You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.’ We do not get to create Jesus in our image; thankfully Jesus Christ comes to restore God’s image in us. The Jesus who comes to us is wider in mercy, deeper in grace, more tender in compassion, more powerful in justice than our small imaginations could ever expect.” [1]

Wider in mercy, deeper in grace, more tender in compassion, more powerful injustice. I have a hard time reconciling Jesus’ mercy, grace, and compassion with his justice. I want all four, I just don’t see how it’s possible to have all four. I think Long is onto something that hints at the answer: my imagination is too small.

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[1] Thomas G. Long and Donyelle C. McCray, A Surprising God: Advent Devotions for an Uncertain Time (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2021), 37-38.