Advent Prayer

Lord, meet me, join me. Make my aim, Lord, this Advent to bring joy to You through the giving of myself-my time, my plans, my agenda-for You to use. My gift to myself to You must take priority over my gifts to my family and friends. After all, it is Your birthday we are celebrating-not mine, not my children's, not my husbands. Part of my gift to you is loving the people you have put in front of me, those who are easy to love and those who are not. I want to give You my response to lonely people around the world-the orphan, the widow, the ones who are all alone, the ones who others have passed by. But, I do not know how to respond. Forgive me when I do not take the opportunities you have put in front of me. May an awareness of your presence fill me every moment of my day so that rather than You being squeezed out of my busyness, I will be aware of You walking with me as my shepherd. You are the only one this advent season who can help me find those ordinary yet amazing experiences of joy that You provide with such grace and mercy and love amongst all the responsibilities, pressures, and heartaches of this world. (Author Unknown) I wrote this prayer in my journal last Christmas. I failed to write down the author's name, but they expressed so clearly my emotions and my words. On Christmas Day, last year, we formally applied to adopt from Ethiopia. The homestudy/dossier process took the first six months, and then the waiting began. As I "wait" for her face to be revealed, I can only meditate on His promise to me. "Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God's spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That's why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good." Romans 8:26-28. The Message.