Below you will find seven days of 2019 Advent Devotional for week 1, December 1-December 7, Peace. It was created by Rev. Roger Butts. The devotionals are organized: scripture, reflection questions and readings of poetry and prose. It coincides (in some cases more closely than others) with our Advent theme, Traveling Truths, a donkey, a dusty stable and other inconviences that brought us love. If you would like it printed, let us know!
Psalm 122 (the first reading) is the be read daily before or following the daily devotional.
Song of Praise and Prayer for Jerusalem
A Song of Ascents. Of David.
1 I was glad when they said to me,
“Let us go to the house of the Lord!”
2 Our feet are standing
within your gates, O Jerusalem.
3 Jerusalem—built as a city
that is bound firmly together.
4 To it the tribes go up,
the tribes of the Lord,
as was decreed for Israel,
to give thanks to the name of the Lord.
5 For there the thrones for judgment were set up,
the thrones of the house of David.
6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
“May they prosper who love you.
7 Peace be within your walls,
and security within your towers.”
8 For the sake of my relatives and friends
I will say, “Peace be within you.”
9 For the sake of the house of the Lord our God I will seek your good.
December 1. “The Journey”
Scripture
Psalm 122, Verse 1
Let’s go to the house of the Lord.
Reflection
This is a Psalm of Ascent, a psalm that celebrates a journey to the temple in the beloved city of Jerusalem.
What has your journey—in life, in faith, with your beloveds—been like? Think about your “journey.” Take some time and really reflect on where you’ve come from, where you are, and where you’re headed.
Reading
The Journey by David Whyte
Above the mountains
the geese turn into
the light again
Painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.
Sometimes everything
has to be
inscribed across
the heavens
so you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.
Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that
first, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.
Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out
someone has written
something new
in the ashes of your life.
You are not leaving.
Even as the light fades quickly now,
you are arriving.
from House of Belonging by David Whyte
December 2 “Gladness”
Scripture
Psalm 122, verse 1
I was glad when they said, Let’s go to Jerusalem.
Reflection
This gladness is anticipation of entry into the city and the wonder that will come upon experiencing it as a place of beauty and divine presence.
What brings your gladness? On your journey, what has brought you deep abiding gladness and wonder? Where do you go that enables you to feel beauty and divine presence? Pray today in the spirit of that beauty and in that divine presence.
Reading
Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does It End? By Mary Oliver
There are things you can’t reach. But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.
The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.
And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.
The snake slides away; the fish jumps, like a little lily,
out of the water and back in; the goldfinches sing
from the unreachable top of the tree.
I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.
Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around
as though with your arms open.
And thinking: maybe something will come, some
shining coil of wind,
or a few leaves from any old tree–
they are all in this too.
And now I will tell you the truth.
Everything in the world
comes.
At least, closer.
And, cordially.
Like the nibbling, tinsel-eyed fish; the unlooping snake.
Like goldfinches, little dolls of goldfluttering around the corner of the sky
of God, the blue air.
December 3 “Shalom, the dream”
Scripture
Psalm 122 Verse 2
Our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem
Reflection
Shalom is within the name of Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a dream, a dream of peace.
Jerusalem is not just any capitol. It is a place from which comes the disarmament of the world (Micah 4). Isaiah 65 suggests that the shalom of the city is an expectation of a socioeconomic infrastructure in this world that permits a viable and sustainable human community, and a house of prayer for all peoples.”
What is your dream of peace? What does it look like? How are you walking towards it, nurturing that vision, and keeping it alive? How are you standing in that dream? Pray today about your dream of peace.
Reading
Howard Thurman
There must be always remaining in the individual life some place for the singing of angels -- some place for that which in itself is breathlessly beautiful and by an inherent prerogative, throwing all the rest of life into a new and creative relatedness -- something that gathers up in itself all the freshets of experience from drab and commonplace areas of living and glows in one bright light of penetrating beauty and meaning -- then passes. The commonplace is shot through with new glory -- old burdens become lighter, deep and ancient wounds lose much of their old, old hurting. A crown is placed over our heads that for the rest of our lives we are trying to grow tall enough to wear. Despite all the crassness of life, despite all the hardness of life, despite all the harsh discords of life, life is saved by the singing of angels.
Look well to the growing edge. All around us worlds are dying and new worlds are being born; all around us life is dying and life is being born. The fruit ripens on the tree, the roots are silently at work in the darkness of the earth against a time when there shall be new leaves, fresh blossoms, green fruit. Such is the growing edge. It is the extra breath from the exhausted lung, the one more thing to try when all else has failed, the upward reach of life when weariness closes in upon all endeavor. This is the basis of hope in moments of despair, the incentive to carry on when times are out of joint and men and women have lost their reason, the source of confidence when worlds crash and dreams whiten into ash. Such is the growing edge incarnate. Look well to the growing edge.
As long as we hold a dream in the heart, we cannot lose the significance of living. The dream in the heart is one with the living water welling up from the very spring of Being, nourishing and sustaining all of life. Where there is no dream, the life becomes a swamp, a dreary dead place and, deep within, the heart begins to rot.
The dream need not be some overwhelming plan; it need not be a dramatic picture of what must be some day. Such may be important for some; such may be crucial to a particular moment in human history. But it is not in these grand ways that the dream nourishes life. The dream is the quiet persistence in the heart that enables us to ride out the storms of our churning experiences. It is the exciting whisper moving through the aisles of the spirit, answering the monotony of limitless days of dull routine. It is the ever-recurring melody in the midst of the broken harmonies of human conflict. It is the touch of significance which highlights the ordinary experience, the common event. The dream is no outward thing. It does not take its use from the environment in which one moves or functions. It lives in the inward parts, it is deep within, where the issues of life an death are ultimately determined. Keep alive the dream; for as long as we hold a dream in the heart, we cannot lose the significance of living.
December 4 “To Give Thanks”
Scripture
Psalm 122, Verse 4
To Jerusalem, the tribes go up,
to give thanks to the name of the Lord.
Reflection
The point of this particular journey is to give thanks to the name of the Lord
The act of thanksgiving is the quintessential act of ceding life back to God, who has given it.
How do you give thanks? For what? How do you see your life as a gift, and how do you cede it back to God? Take some time today to pray a prayer of thanks. And, reflect on this: What is the point of your particular journey.
Reading
Carl Sandburg, from Chicago, 1916.
Our Prayer of Thanks
FOR the gladness here where the sun is shining at evening on the weeds at the river,
Our prayer of thanks.
For the laughter of children who tumble barefooted and bareheaded in the summer grass,
Our prayer of thanks.
For the sunset and the stars, the women and the white arms that hold us,
Our prayer of thanks.
God,
If you are deaf and blind, if this is all lost to you,
God, if the dead in their coffins amid the silver handles on the edge of town, or the reckless dead of war days thrown unknown in pits, if these dead are forever deaf and blind and lost,
Our prayer of thanks.
God,
The game is all your way, the secrets and the signals and the system; and so for the break of the game and the first play and the last.
Our prayer of thanks.
December 5 “Peace Be Within You”
Scripture Psalm 122, Verse 8
For the sake of my friends, I will say “Peace Be Within You”
Reflection
On this journey towards wholeness, when have you known peace? How? What was different? What helps you gain peace, in the midst of the bruisedness and beauty of this wild wild world? Pray, today, for peace within yourself, within your friends, within your family, within the whole world.
Reading
May today there be peace within.
May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.
May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.
May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.
May you be content knowing you are a child of God.
Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love.
It is there for each and every one of us.
― Teresa of Ávila
December 6. “Firmly Bound Together.”
Scripture
Psalm 122. Verse 3.
Jerusalem—built as a city that is bound firmly together.
Reflection
On your journey, who are the people who are your “tribe?” To whom are you bound? Who has come into your life? Who is now of blessed memory? What did you learn from them? What endures? Paul writes in one of the Epistles about the cloud of witnesses. Take some time today to think about who has walked alongside you on your journey and to pray about who and what you are bound to.
Reading
WHAT THE LIVING DO
by Marie Howe
Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up
waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It's winter again: the sky's a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through
open living-room windows because the heat's on too high in here and I can't turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,
I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,
I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.
What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss--we want more and more and then more of it.
But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep
for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless:
I am living. I remember you.
December 7. “I will seek the good.”
Scripture
For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek the good.
Reflection
How do you seek the good? What was a time that was just really good? How do you understand the goodness at the heart of all creation? Reflect today on the goodness at the heart of your life.
Reading
The Great Surmise, Carl Scovel (Former minister, King’s Chapel, Boston)
The Great Surmise says simply this: At the heart of all creation lies a good intent, a purposeful goodness, from which we come, by which we live our fullest, to which we shall at last return. And this is the supreme reality of our lives.
This goodness is ultimate-not fate nor freedom, not mystery, energy, order nor finitude, but this good intent in creation is our source, our center, and our destiny. And with everything else we know in life, the strategies and schedules, the technology and tasks, with all we must know of freedom, fate and finitude, of energy and order and mystery, we must know this, first of all, the love from which we were born, which bears us now, and which will receive us at the end. Our work on earth is to explore, enjoy, and share this goodness, to know it without reserve or hesitation.
"Too much of a good thing," said Mae West, "is wonderful." Sound doctrine.
Do you see how the Great Surmise stands all our logic and morality on its ear? Neither duty nor suffering nor progress nor conflict-not even survival-is the aim of life, but joy. Deep abiding, uncompromised joy.