Story by Katie Harmon-McLaughlin, Formation Ministries team director and World Church Spiritual Formation team lead

And Mary said, I’m bursting with God-news; I’m dancing the song of my Savior God.

Based on the Advent Devotion for Families and Households available at https://account-media.s3.amazonaws.com/26072/uploaded/h/0e18630581_1729692500_hope-is-near-advent-2024-23102024.pdf 

Open: Light a candle or ring a chime.

Ask: Take a few minutes and ask yourself, “When did I feel hope today or yesterday?”

Listen:
I open the curtains revealing a sliver of moon and two bright stars in a brightening blue sea of morning sky. It awakens delight. I linger in a moment of sustained gaze until I feel the nudge of tasks pressing in the unfolding day. Even in the face of stunning beauty I can feel an itch of impatience. What would it be like to sit with a landscape until I am no longer entertained by it, to let myself belong there, to allow two stars and a barely visible sliver of light speak deep into my soul about our shared identity as creation?

I wonder what the constant need to be entertained says about the state of my soul. I can waste an hour on social media busying my mind with a continual array of new images for this over-stimulation addiction. What great spiritual deficit is this causing in me, in my culture? Always on the surface of everything at once, will we one day forget how to be with the “one thing needful” which draws us deeper…deeper…deeper? Will we forget how to make space to hear the One Voice through the many multiplying voices always around us?

These waiting-preparing times in the spiritual tradition are for creating space enough to discover the living love residing within. And this experience cannot be bought. It is not entertainment. It is radical amazement. It is the speechless awe that must have filled the shepherds the night of Christ’s birth when everything was suddenly ablaze with divine proclamation.

What if I resisted the addiction to move to the next thing and simply remained present long enough to hear the voice of the Holy around me, to feel the movement of the Holy within me?

That in its arrival we are ready,
Present enough to receive it, to live it, to let it amaze us and sustain the gaze.

Breathe

The season of Advent reminds us that even as we wait for the birth of Christ in our lives and world, God is always with us. Right here, right now—wherever we are and with the ones we love. Take a deep breath and breathe in the presence of God.

Respond

How can you bring hope to others today?

Prayer

God, today I will be mindful of your presence with me.

Today’s Prayer for Peace

Engage in a daily practice of praying for peace in our world. Click here to read today’s prayer and be part of this practice of peace.