God of snowdrift and long luminous nights, we sense your wild spirit criss-cross the tumultuous dark of long winter solstice, and we give you thanks for places of warmth and comfort in the vulnerable uncertainties of this cold season. For the gentle blanket of snow, the sunrise and blue sky day, the heaping promises of incarnation just beyond us.
Here, we surrender to you. Here, we are lured to love more, serve more, heal more, finding ourselves restored and mended and knit tighter against the small manger story you entrust to us. Whisper your truth to us through shepherds and magi and that little town of Bethlehem. Awaken in us an appetite for compassion, a hunger for earth-bound holy love, a craving for the illuminated life. Stir in us.
For every fear, wound, sense of exclusion, friendless day, deep loss and long-held worry, Lord hear our prayer.
Lend us your ear as we hand over to you every vulnerability, every panic, every angst and unease. As we prepare to meet you anew, your word emerging, light from light, we ask that you draw us into a spirit of tenderness, especially for those whose bodies are immobilized by days and months and years of war: for the pain and grief of violence, and humanity’s staggering appetite for brutality.
Be our prince of peace. As you did in ancient days, urge us, anew, to make our weapons into gardening tools, and to study war no more. Let us practice, instead, incarnation. Let us rehearse resurrection. For we trust that hidden within every long night is a radiant dawn, hidden in every cold night, the soil is readying seedlings, and tulip bulbs incline themselves toward the heavens, ready for spring. The days lengthen and our spirits rise toward you. Lord, hear our prayer.
And let us lift our voices in the prayer you teach us: Our Father…. Amen.