Prayer: Beginning Again with the Rev. Dr. David Long-Higgins

Prayers and Ponderings

Beginning Again

An Advent Prayer
Loving God,

Thank-you for the gift

Of beginning again

When all seems lost

Or weariness wears down

The last inch of hope.
Yes, turn the page

Of over-rehearsed despair

Or dread of dullness

Formed by too much

Of just about everything.

Form instead Your promise

When night’s weight

Seems too heavy for

Dawn’s readiness to rise

In surprises unlikely

To be noticed by the world

Yet formed by You

As the beginning place

Of Your grand renewal,

Starting as one small baby

Still in formation

Not yet ready to be born

But quickening the senses

With miraculous movement.

Yes, form this advent

Of Your grand reversal

In me as I wait in wonder

At what You will readily reveal

In this long season

Of late dawn and early dusk.
Let me savor the beauty

Of what I do not know

Urging me to wait

When all around me

The world rushes

In frenzy of the overfull,

The too much and the too soon.
Still me into the gift

You so yearn to give,

Of silence rising

From deep within

Touching everything

With Your cosmic creation

Daring to form a new world

Unknown by the old one

Satisfied with a hypnosis

Of over-rehearsed hopelessness.
Yes, grant me

An Advent awakening

Muting every resistance

And releasing a new song

Of thanks for Your grand gift

Of beginning again…

Here…now…yes…thank-you.

-November 2022, DMLH