Waiting for the Light That Has Already Come: Advent Poem #2
Lord have mercy
We live in a world
Full of both sunsets
And sunken ships
Of indescribable beauty and light
And darkness so thick we can’t breathe
Even though the light has come
We still taste the sting of death
Knowing that we belong to life
Yet not experiencing its fullness yet
Lord have mercy
It hurts to watch the people we love
Struggle with difficult things
Or watch them experience pain
We long for the darkness to completely flee
And only light remain
The world seems seeped in trouble
Illness, prejudice, hunger, violence
We’re desperate for things to change
But sometimes it feels as though Your answer is silence
Lord have mercy
Laughter and mourning
Walk side by side
And hold each other’s hand
This is something, we must confess
Our minds don’t understand
We long for laughter to walk alone
Or only with its friends,
Like joy and peace and contentment and health,
In a world with no poverty only wealth
Lord have mercy
We long for You to restore things
To a state where all is as it should be
For You to bring shalom
Make this place more like our true country
We know that we belong to a new kingdom
Ushered in by Jesus’s birth
We long for you to bring heaven down,
To us who live on earth
Lord have mercy
Our hearts still fill with sorrow
Our bodies still get weak
The world seems filled with tumult
We long to hear You speak
Above the chaos that surrounds us
Above the deafening noise
Oh Father, tune our ears to You
We want to hear Your voice
Lord have mercy
We grow weary in our suffering
And say Oh Lord, come soon!
Our world is filled with shadows
Though we want them to leave the room
Beauty and death coexisting
Such a strange juxtaposition
We long for one to be fact
And the other to be fiction
Lord have mercy
What can we do
But bring this all before You
Lord
Who rules over it all
In our fragile hands
Offering it up
As citizens of the
Already
And not yet
With hope set
On the completion
Of the dawn of the Light
Turning to full day
And so we pray
Lord have mercy
Over us who still weep
Who keep
Our eyes on the hills
Knowing that help has come
And yet wait for it still
So when darkness overwhelms us
Remind us that we’ve seen a great light
Darkness does not own us
It is not to what we belong
We do not walk at midnight
But rather in the dawn
Even though there are shadows,
We are overwhelmed with beauty and light
Even though we see the darkness,
We know that we are not in endless night