Advent Greetings!
As we enter these days of Advent we invite you to pause in reflection and prayer with the Open Table Community. These Sundays of Advent we will send a meditative reflection to your inbox. (you can sign up here). Use them for your own Advent study, use them in your community of faith or share them around your dinner table. Though we are spread across the country, and around the world, may these weekly reflections connect us to each other and to God.
Blessings,
The Open Table Cooperative Board
A Responsive Reading based on Isaiah 9:2
For private reflection or public reading
One: A call of invitation from the Sufi Poet Rumi:
Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving.
It doesn’t matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times.
Come, yet again, come, come.
“The people who walk in darkness will see a great light;
Many: Those who live in a dark land, The light will shine on them.”
One: This verse from Isaiah chapter 9 reminds us that we are not stuck in our darknesses
Many: And the light shines on the darkness
One: We are the people who walk sometimes, even a little, in the dark
Many: And we need – And we will – to see a great light.
One: That light is coming and that promise is coming. In Advent, we pause to reflect on that which has come and is yet to come.
Many: Emmanuel, God with us, become our way, our truth, our light
One: Sisters, brothers, siblings, receive the promise that is and is and yet to be. There is a light.
Many: Can it shine in our darkness?
One: And the light shines on in the darkness. Your darkness, and as we spread the light, all the darkness.
Many: May it be so.
One: May it be so with all who need. And as our lights are renewed,
may we be the light-bearers to the world.
Amen and Amen.
Written by Matt Rittle
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