Gremlins and Greyness

The busyness of this holiday season can sometimes be overwhelming. In the midst of everything that usually needs our time and attention, there are gifts to purchase and parties to plan.  Travel arrangements have to be worked out and schedules have to be arranged in order to celebrate the Christmas holiday.   Along with this, the holiday season stirs up memories of Christmas’ in the past and the people we once shared it with.  For some this season isn’t always joyful, but a somber one because the absence of loved ones is hard to bear.  It’s difficult to think about the empty place at the table and the person who brought so much joy by filling it.

Because of this, there are times when it is difficult to raise our eyes above our daily work.  With the work and the emotions, sometimes it is just easiest if we keep on going and not think about what is happening around us.

However, in my studies last week, I came across a wonderful prayer found in the book Cloth for the Cradle, produced and published by the Iona Community in Scotland.  I incorporated it into my Pastoral Prayer in worship on Sunday and I share it with you here now.  It reminds us to raise our eyes above our daily habits to notice God’s love moving around us everyday, even in those times when we don’t feel like it and especially in this Advent season.

“Open our eyes, O Lord, especially if they are half shut because we are tired of looking, or half open, because we fear to see too much, or bleared with tears because yesterday and today and tomorrow are filled with the same pain, or contracted because we only look at what we at what we want to see. 

 “Open our eyes in worship today, O Lord, to gently scan the life we lead, the home we have, the world be inhabit, and so to find, among the gremlins and the greyness, signs of hope we can fasten on and encourage. 

“Give us, whose eyes are dimmed by familiarity, a bigger vision of what you can do, even with hopeless cases and lost causes and people of limited ability.  Show us the world as in your sight, riddled by debt, deceit, and disbelief, yet also shot through with possibility for recovery, renewal, and redemption.

 “And lest we fail to distinguish vision from fantasy, today, tomorrow, this week, open our eyes to one person or one place, where we – being even for a moment prophetic – might identify and wean a potential in the waiting…

 “And with all this, open our eyes, in yearning, for Jesus, in our city, our work, our homes, through corridors of power and the streets of despair, to help, to heal, to confront, to convert, O come, O come, Immanuel.”