For the Advent season, we will be using the book Light Upon Light by Sarah Arthur as a guide. Each component of the service will be taken from that book.

 

Opening Prayer:

 

O Thou, whose glorious, yet contracted light,

Wrapped in a night’s mantle, stole into a manger;

Since my dark soul and brutish is thy right,

To Man of all beasts be not Thou a stranger…

 

Text:

Luke 2:22-35

 

Literary Selection:

Nativity by Li-Young Lee

In the dark, a child might ask, What is the world?

just to hear his sister

promise, An unfinished wing of heaven,

just to hear his brother say,

A house inside a house,

but most of all to hear his mother answer,

One more song, then you go to sleep.

 

How could anyone in that bed guess

the question finds its beginning

in the answer long growing

inside the one who asked, that restless boy

the night's darling?

 

Later, a man lying awake,

he might ask it again,

just to hear the silence

charge him, This night

arching over your sleepless wondering.

 

this night, the near ground

every reaching-out-to overreaches,

 

just to remind himself

out of what little earth and duration,

out of what immense good-bye,

 

each must make a safe place of his heart,

before so strange and wild a guest

as God approaches.

 

Benediction:

 

...To Man of all beasts be not Thou a stranger:

Furnish and deck my soul, that Thou mayst have

A better lodging, than a rack, or grave. 

Amen.