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ADVENT 2A Prayers for the Church and World
II Advent Year A Prayers for the Church and World God of the root and the trunk, Lord of the young shoot and the green branch, We cannot break our own hard shells. We are buried too deep to be...
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Prayer for the Second Sunday of Advent (Year C)
Advent God, you are always coming to us To open our hearts, To heal our lives, To refresh our spirits, And to make a glad way Through valleys of sorrow. You are always coming to us, The delight and...
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Prayers for Advent Candle-Lighting
L: Come, People of God, let us walk in the light of God! All: We have come to God’s house, that we may learn God’s ways. L: Now is the favorable time: now is the time of salvation! All: We will put off...
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Advent Communion Liturgy
Advent Communion *Invitation L: Come, people of God, come to the table of hope! All: Our hope is in God, who made heaven and earth! L: Come, people of God, come to the table of peace. All: Christ...
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ADVENT: Prayers and Other Resources
PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION (Before the reading of Scripture) L: Let us pray. Your Word is a fire refining us for you, O God. Speak to us now, and fan the embers in our hearts. Increase our faith to hear...
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Minefield in the Manger: Supersessionism and Anti-Judaism in Advent and...
Advent and Christmas are the seasons many Christians love best, yet they are shot through with almost intractable challenges—and no, I’m not talking about the pressures of consumerism and secularism...
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Dying of Thirst
Psalm 42:1-4 As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and see the face of God? My tears have been my food...
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Say It Again
Malachi 3:3-4 For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit and refine them until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. Reflection Every Advent, the prophets...
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Simply Loves Us
Matthew 3:11 But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. Reflection John says he isn’t worthy of the one who is coming, but it’s not because the One who...
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A Pastoral Prayer for A Cold Sunday in Advent
–www.ronsdigitalmedia.com Let us pray… God, have pity on our world this cold and bitter day. Remember all your creatures who need a little warmth to make it through— squirrels and possum and birds,...
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Virgin Mary
Young Mary is flummoxed by Gabriel’s announcement that she will have a son without human agency. She wonders aloud how it could happen, this unheard-of virginal conception. It’s an obvious and simple...
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Third Advent Sing! [Isaiah 35:1-10]
A young woman had just become the associate pastor of a big suburban church—her first job in ministry—and was asked to give a children’s sermon during the season of Advent. She’d had a hard, busy week...
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Take 2: A Good Word for the World in Advent
Last Advent I posted a Facebook Note called “A Good Word for the World in Advent.” It got a lot of shares. But it did not, alas, change the world, or the church. Oh well. In that piece, I argued that...
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Divinized
“The One who makes rich is made poor, taking on the poverty of flesh, that I may gain the riches of divinity. The One who is full is made empty, devoid a while of glory, that I may share that glory...
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In Common
“O come, Desire of nations, bind in one the hearts of humankind…” —O Come, O Come Emmanuel On a visit to South India, the Archbishop of Canterbury was asked to bless the Hindu kitchen staff of a big...
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Lectio Divina with Mary in Advent
First Church in Cambridge, Congregational, UCC Lectio Divina Advent 2007 The Word of Scripture should never stop sounding in your ears and working in you all day long, just like the words of...
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Pastoral Prayer at the End of Advent
Most gracious God, desire of every living thing, you have lighted our way in Advent candle by candle, dispelling our gloom. and now four candles shine. The night is almost over. The Day is almost...
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Commemoration of Saint Nicholas, December 6
“He had to be made like his siblings in every way, so that he might become a merciful high priest… For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses…”—Hebrews 2:17, 4:15...
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“And All The Merry-Hearted Sigh”
From the UCC StillSpeaking Writers Group Advent Devotional 2019 “The earth dries up and withers…The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants;for they have broken the everlasting covenant....
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