December 7/First Friday of Advent One thing I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: to live in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in his temple. ~ Psalm 27.4 This beautiful verse from Psalm 27 floats into my mind’s eye every Sunday when I…
Keeping Advent 5: Passing the Peace
December 6/First Thursday of Advent Those of steadfast mind you keep in peace, in peace because in you they trust. ~ Isaiah 26.3 One of the prayers that most fed my soul as I was growing up in the Episcopal Church — a prayer that still blankets me with comfort — is the post-Communion blessing. “The peace of God, which…
Keeping Advent 4: The Last Straw
December 5/First Wednesday of Advent Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “I have compassion for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat.” ~ Matthew 15.32 All of us occasionally have “last straw” moments in our lives, when we feel we simply cannot bear the weight of one more…
Keeping Advent 3: What Fear Is
December 4/First Tuesday of Advent His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD. ~ Isaiah 11.3 Midway through a retreat I was leading for faculty and staff of a Jesuit high school, a young teacher raised her hand. “How,” she asked with a hint of exasperation, “do I explain ‘fear of the Lord’ to my students? They just…
Keeping Advent 2: Higher Up
December 3/First Monday of Advent In days to come, the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established as the highest mountain and raised above the hills. ~ Isaiah 2.1 In this age of discord and incivility, we are in need of a vision of hope. The prophet Isaiah — writing perhaps as early as the 8th century before the…
Keeping Advent 1: Directly
December 2/First Sunday of Advent The days are coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and Judah. ~ Jeremiah 33.14 As a little girl, whenever I plaintively asked our housekeeper, Frances, when my mother would return from errands or a volunteer meeting, she would invariably reply, “She’ll be here directly.” The…
Song 40: A Gracious Plenty
March 31/Holy Saturday You make springs gush forth in the valleys; they flow between the hills, By the streams the birds of the air have their habitation; they sing among the branches. From your lofty abode you water the mountains; the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work. LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have…
Song 39: Broken
March 30/Good Friday For all my foes I am an object of reproach, a laughingstock to my neighbors, and a dread to my friends; they who see me abroad flee from me. I am forgotten like the unremembered dead; I am like a dish that is broken. ~ Ps 31.12-13 The other morning as I was unloading the dishwasher, a…
Song 38: What to Give the God Who Has Everything
March 29/Holy Thursday How shall I make a return to the LORD for all the good he has done for me? ~ Ps 116.12 “What can I give him, poor as I am?” asks the poet Christina Rossetti in the Christmas hymn “In the Bleak Midwinter.” The psalmist, too, wonders, “How shall I make a return to the LORD for…
Song 37: Darkness Visible
March 28/Wednesday of Holy Week Insult has broken my heart, and I am weak, I looked for sympathy, but there was none; for consolers, not one could I find. I will praise the name of God in song, and I will glorify him with thanksgiving. ~ Ps 69.21, 31 And then there are the dark days, when our lives seem…