God of love, we come to you in this season of waiting— waiting not because love is absent, but because love is on the way, gathering itself into flesh and breath,
preparing to be born among us once again.
In this season of Advent, you teach us that love does not arrive with fanfare, but with courage. Love shows up in the ordinary, in the vulnerable places, in bodies that carry hope and fear at the same time. Love enters the world not to escape it, but to dwell within it.
And yet we confess that this world can be loud with distraction. The news cycles churn with violence and grief. Wars continue to claim lives and futures. Families are separated by borders and policies. Communities struggle under the weight of poverty, illness, and exhaustion. Many carry private burdens— diagnoses whispered, relationships strained, loneliness that feels even sharper during the holidays.
It is easy, O God, for fear to speak louder than love. Easy for despair to dull our expectations. Easy to forget that you are still coming, still choosing presence over power, still insisting that love is stronger than all that threatens it.
So in this season of waiting, teach us again what love looks like.
Let love be patient in us when the world demands urgency without care.
Let love be kind in us when cruelty feels easier or justified.
Let love widen our vision so that we see not only our own longing, but the longing of our neighbors near and far.
May love move us beyond mere words into unity. Beyond comfort into compassion.
Beyond belief into action.
We pray for those for whom this season is heavy— for the grieving, for those struggling to make ends meet, for those navigating mental illness, addiction, or despair. We pray for children growing up amid violence, for elders whose days feel quieter than they once did, for all who wonder if there is room for them in this world.
And even so, God of Advent, we dare to hope. Because love is already at work.
Love is already stirring in acts of care, in communities that refuse to give up on one another, in people who keep choosing generosity.
As we wait for Christ’s birth, shape us into people who recognize love when it arrives— not only in the manger, but in the faces of the vulnerable, the cries for justice, and the everyday holiness of showing up for one another.
Hold us in peace, steady us in hope, fill us with joy and send us out as bearers of the love that is coming and is already here.
We pray all of these things, with expectant hearts and voices joined together as we pray the prayer Jesus taught us, saying:
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.