Friday Prayer

 

For our Friday prayer, as you open to the serendipitous ways hope, peace, joy, and love can show up in our lives, I invite you to pray the opening words of, O Come, O Come Emmanuel:

O come, O come, Emmanuel

And ransom captive Israel

That mourns in lonely exile here

Until the Son of God appear

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Shall come to thee, O Israel

Wait, did you catch that?  I love that sudden/startling move from asking God to enter a place where you feel contained or closed off or captive; the place where you feel alone and in a strange land.  Just when you are going to hang your head, the writer of the hymn calls us to “rejoice”.  How can we rejoice in captivity?  How can you offer praise from a prison cell or behind bars where you are confined physically or emotionally or spiritually or relationally?  It doesn’t make sense ~ which is where we started this week.  Sometimes praise is a protest.  Sometimes rejoicing rings out louder and clearer than our critique of the brokenness.  Sometimes rather than hanging our head, we lift every (and I mean every) voice to sing to God.  This may not mean that what confines and contains us vanishes instantly.  Our exterior situation may not change at all when we sing praise, but the state of our soul moves to a new location.  Praising God is not just putting frosting on a burnt cake/sugar cookie of life, nor is it denying the reality of the pain. But it does preach and prophesy that the pain is not the end of the story.  Where do you feel captive or closed off on this first day of the month?  Where do you grieve and mourn for what may not be or may no longer be possible?  Where do you feel alone?  How can we find others to sing this hymn of hope, peace, love, and joy that God is not finished?  I pray we will do more than intellectually ponder this question but might actually find ways to practice singing together in these days.  God’s blessings to you all.