A prayer given at Hope College’s Christmas Vespers service, December 2006 in Holland, MI.
God, Revelation, in the beginning you hovered over chaos and, from your imagination, spoke a Word to form reality: a Word voiced from the deep primordial darkness that was to set into motion a creation and creatures bathing in a changeless light. But we, your creatures, loved darkness and favored its chaos so much that we no longer could hear the cadence of your voice making all things new. We lost all sensitivity and suffered in our madness of disbelief. We wandered homeless in despondent shadows. Until… Until… that chosen moment when…
You spoke the eternal Word of light into flesh, a Word that thundered through the whimper of a child. This child, nursed through the body of Mary, is himself the visible presence of the invisible God, the fragile whisper of hope breathing new life into humanity. As God, this child is the goal; as human, he is the way – the eternal wisdom of true light from true light. Christ has come and lit the wick of Hope; he is a hope that shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.
“Revelation is our secret longing undressed.
It is the air in the lungs of faith;
the song in the ears of hope;
the blood pumping through the heart of love.”
This overwhelming light exposes us to the wonder of your revelation: the revelation that is the event of your self-proclaiming love, the source of all life and all wisdom. If we are honest, revelation is what we most need. We need it more than knowledge, more than money, or status, or even food, for we do not live by bread alone.
Revelation is our secret longing undressed.
It is the air in the lungs of faith;
the song in the ears of hope;
the blood pumping through the heart of love.
And, so tonight, we push open the doors of this sanctuary like it is a magic wardrobe to step through Vespers and into new Kingdom, to hear the melody of Your voice where humanity finds its harmony. For Your voice is our deepest and best desire.
For when You speak the impossible is possible. For the revelation of spoken Word made flesh is the assured knowledge that, at any moment, You O God can speak into existence a new beginning for the world. We thank you eternal God that the revelation of your Son’s light meets us like a familiar stranger who we have barely dared to believe in, whose whisper suggests there is more, much more reality to hope for. So we dedicate ourselves tonight to let your light shine in our lives so our souls will flicker like candles in the window, allowing the coming hope of the Christ child to dress us in translucent light and transform us in his image, like magic, in the twinkling of an eye. To that end, come Lord Jesus, and come soon.
Amen.
(Header image courtesy of Hope College.)