Third Week of Advent 2023
We finished the third week of Advent with some more thought-provoking and meaningful words.
Below are the words from this last week, along with meditations, quotes, scriptures or prayers that reached my heart when I was researching each word. I also always include a photo that I’ve taken on trips or in my daily life. If you would like to receive these daily in your inbox, sign up here.
Sunday – SPIRIT
“Bless this hearth, O Lord, and bless the gatherings that will happen around it in the coming season. May this hearth be to us a port in the storm, a cheering beacon, and a place of fellowship marked by the consolation of your SPIRIT. May it be a place of celebration, of conversation, of caring, of the sharing and bearing of burdens, of the multiplication of joys, of light in the darkness and warmth in the cold. May it be a place of prayers and hopes, of plans and quiet considerations. A place of shared stories and of good dreams. Grant us grace to savor this season as we live it together, that in later days the memory of this place and these times will linger sweetly, shaping our lives, our words, our deeds.”
(Photo: Our “hearth” – sometimes you have to be creative!)
Monday – REPAIR
“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not REPAIRing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”
Tuesday – GIVE
“You will come in contact with a lot of people who are at their absolute breaking point this week. While it may be the merriest time of the year for some, it may be the saddest, most stressful, loneliest, most heartbreaking for others. We’re all busy. But we’re not too busy to be kind, caring, and patient. Compassion is a choice. Empathy is a choice. The best thing you can GIVE someone this season is love.
“Since you have been chosen by God who has given you a new life, and because of His deep love and concern for you, your life should be filled with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.” Col. 3:12
Wednesday – DREAM
“O Christ, I bring to You now the weathered fragments of my former dreams, the broken pieces of my expectations, the rent patches of hopes worn thin, the shards of some shattered image of life as I once thought it would be.
What I so wanted has not come to pass. But You are the sovereign of my sorrow. You apprehend a wider sweep with wiser eyes than mine.
My history bears the fingerprints of Your grace. You were always faithful, though I could not always trace quick evidence of Your presence in my pain, yet you remained at work, lurking in the wings, sifting all my splinterings for bright embers that might be breathed into more eternal dreams.
My dreams are all so small. Your bigger purpose has always been for my greatest good. Let me listen to Your holy whisper, that I might release at last these lesser dreams. That I might embrace the better dreams you dream for me, and for your people, and for your kingdom, and for your creation.
You answer not what I demand, but what I do not even know to ask. Here in the ruins of my wrecked expectation, let me make this best confession: Not my DREAMS, O Lord, not my DREAMS, but Yours, be done.”
Thursday – LAUGHTER
“To gather joyfully is indeed a serious affair, for feasting and all enjoyments gratefully taken are, at their heart, acts of war: in celebrating this feast we declare that evil and death, suffering and loss, sorrow and tears, will not have the final word. The joy of fellowship, and the welcome and comfort of friends new and old, and the celebration of these blessings of food and drink and conversation and LAUGHTER are the true evidences of things eternal, and are the first fruits of that great glad Joy that is to come and that will be unending.“
Friday – QUENCH
“You are my beloved. I have called you by name, from the very beginning. You are mine and I am yours. You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests. I have molded you in the depths on the earth and knit you together in your mother’s womb. I have carved you in the palms of my hands and hidden you in the shadow of my embrace. I look at you with infinite tenderness and care for you with care more intimate than that of a mother for her child. I have counted every hair on your head and guided you at every step. Wherever you go, I go with you, and wherever you rest, I keep watch. I will give you food that will satisfy all your hunger and drink that will QUENCH all your thirst. I will not hide my face from you. You know Me as your own as I know you as my own. You belong to me. Wherever you are I will be. Nothing will ever separate us. Nothing. You are my Beloved.”
Saturday – PONDER
“The season of Advent means there is something on the horizon the likes of which we have never seen before.
So stay. Sit. Linger. Tarry. PONDER. Wait. Behold. Wonder. There will be time enough for running. For rushing. For worrying. For pushing.
For now, stay. Wait. Get ready. Something is on the horizon.”