God, you sending Jesus to earth is an amazing reminder of the original goodness in which you created the universe and of how it can be lived out by humanity. For this, we give thanks.
At the same time, it can be difficult from our historical vantage point to really have a sense of how - in the centuries that passed between creation and Jesus’ birth - your good news of liberation for the poor and oppressed was only a promise. While it was a hopeful promise, it was also one which generation after generation did not see fulfilled.
So God, help us to begin to appreciate what it means to wait. We’re so used to instantly having our every wish met. Help us to seek to understand what it means for those living in the dark shadows of injustice and suffering to hope for light to come.
Help us to not take your grace for granted.
Others of us know all too well what it means to continue to wait for things to be made right. We’re familiar with the weariness of hope deferred. God, help us be on the lookout for where even glimpses of the hope of your promise of are being born within us and around us.
God, thank you for your free and life-sustaining gifts of grace, which we can all tap into, regardless of where life finds us in this season.
Amen.
