Advent 2019 - Day 7 - A Hope for Advent

Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash

Where is our thrill of hope
We have already been downtrodden
Weeping on our knees
We are weary, Lord

Where is your law of love
Your gospel of peace
When chains still bind
And oppression runs unceasing 

Will your mercy and your peace
Wash away the burning fires
Clear away the tainted water
Bring life back to a devastated earth 

When everything sits empty
And the tombs have all been filled
How will you make a holy space

You will and you can
Because

You have been here
You are every child without clean water
You are the forests that still burn
The coral that is dying
The families waiting
For the breaks
between the
bombs to
break
bread

The one who cannot go home
The one who returns 
only to find 
that home is a hostile land,
a sweater that doesn’t fit.
The one who carries their shame in their body
And the weight of it in their minds.
You are the foreigner, the forgotten, the forsaken. 

You are the detained
The separated
The incarcerated
You are the ones who have been
Rounded up
Like lambs for slaughter

You were every bright life
Cut short and silent
Every hand raised for peace
Every heart crying for righteousness
Standing firm in the face of authority

This is how we dare for better
This is how we long for more
I look around at grasped hands
Gathered family
From close and from afar
I stand with others in the gap
Folks who’ve walked these roads before

They tell me
I am not alone

Like you told me
I am not alone 

Is it hope or terror
That sits
Like a swelling wave
A burning flame
Like breathlessness
In our chests

There is room for ‘and’ within me 
There is room for hope and fear
There is room for Advent’s candles
Though the gloom still lingers here

Night will not last forever
Day will come with morn
And unto us, unto us
A Savior will be born.