It’s Saturday, perhaps not just a regular Saturday, but the day after Christmas Saturday. Many of us are still feeling warm and fuzzy; others are just picking up the mess of paper and ribbons on the floor, wondering what we will do with the leftovers from our dinners the day before, and thinking about the coming New Year, not so far away now.
People haven’t stopped getting sick or dying, and those signs of hope we felt earlier as the Covid vaccines were being rolled out are dampened by the discovery of a mutant virus that seems to spread more easily. We worry: can this mutant be stopped by simply closing borders? Or will this mutant just simply pop up and what does that portend for our futures?
We still want to have a weekend without worries and bask in the warm glow of at least our small family pods but we have a feeling of quiet desperation even on this day, one when the world is not quiet. We reach for God to enfold us in the arms of mercy.
Prayer for the Day
We want to bask in the warm glow of Christmas, O God,
But we are apprehensive as we consider the coming New Year;
We want to still hear the songs that angels sang, O Lord,
But the opening skies seem to have closed in again.
Enlarge our vision of your promise that came with the babe,
So we can live a broader understanding of your grace.
In the name of him who is the instrument of that grae,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
We must learn to pray out of our weaknesses so that God can become our strength.
- Joan Chittester, OSB, American religious writer
As an act of love, prayer is a courageous act. It is a risk we take. It is a life-and-death risk, believing in the promises of the gospel, that God’s love is indeed operative in the world. In prayer we have the courage, perhaps even the presumption and the arrogance or the audacity to claim that God’s love can be operative in the very specific situations of human need that we encounter.
- John E. Biersdorf, Pastor, American religious writer
Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge;
In the shadow of your wings I will take refuge until the destroying storms pass by.
I cry to God Most High, to God who fulfills a purpose for me.
Psalm 57: 1-2