Thursday, December 5, 2019
Spiritual Work
by Joyce Zimmann
May he judge your people with righteousness,
    and your poor with justice.
May the mountains yield prosperity for the people,
    and the hills, in righteousness.
May he defend the cause of the poor of the people,
    give deliverance to the needy,
    and crush the oppressor.

--Psalm 72:2-4
Oh! Our hearts are heavy this Advent. We fervently ask Jesus to come again. We watch the clouds, be they white downy beauty, rosy in sunrise, or angry gray and stormy, we hope to hear the trumpet sounding that Jesus is coming.

We feel helpless. But we work spiritually in Advent while we wait.

We pray, we pray, we pray -
  • for victims still in want since multiple tornados ripped our communities,
  • for those torn and saddened by the mass shooting,
  • for victims of white supremacy at a rally in our own town square,
  • for refugees by the thousands including innocent ones in cages far from loved ones,
  • for "wars and rumors of wars" spoken to us by Jesus in Mark 13:7, where He says they are expected before He returns.
On and on it goes. We beg for mercy, Mighty Lord of us ALL! We know in our hearts that Jesus suffered and died for such as this. We are comforted deep in our spirits when we remember.

He rose! He will come again! Come quickly, Lord Jesus! These words bring me hope and here I am again, gratefully able to pray in God's glorious beauty on earth. A sunny autumnal beauty, replete with woodpeckers finding suet, little songbirds filling their tummies with feed against cold days to come, and hooty owls back after a summer away helping their owlets find homes of their own. God's wondrous creation continues in my woods.

Yet even so, like Jacob, we wrestle. " He shall have a new name, 'Israel,' one who struggles with God ." (Genesis 32:28)

We wrestle, we trust, we hope, we pray.
Prayer: 
Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who alone does wondrous things.
Blessed be his glorious name forever; may his glory fill the whole earth.
Amen and Amen. (Psalm 72:18-19)
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