Joy

Prayer of Preparation: O God, we give you thanks for coming to make all things new, and we rejoice as we open ourselves to you this Christmas season. Light our lives with your imagination. Show us the creative power of hope. Teach us that peace comes from justice. Fill us with the kind of joy that cannot be contained, but must be shared. Magnify your light within us. Prepare our hearts to be transformed by you. Amen.

Lighting of the Advent Candle

Voice 1: In Advent, we wait upon the Lord: awaiting signs of hope, peace, love, and joy. We gather this morning in hopeful expectation. We gather to give praise to God for the promise that the Christ child will be born to us again this year.

Voice 2: We gather this morning with anticipation, awaiting God’s newness in our lives, awaiting God’s light that comes to the dark places in our hearts and in our world. This is a day of rejoicing, as our season of waiting is nearly over. We marvel that God would step into our broke and hurting world; and we rejoice that God is accomplishing something new, shining the light of hope into our lives.

Voice 1: Today, we light four candles, with joy and expectation, confident of the immanent birth of hope and light that will be born again into our world and into our lives. The pink candle is lit as we rejoice in God our Savior, who has come to make all things new. These candles remind us that God’s love surrounds and fills us at all times, even as we still live in a world with sorrow and pain.

[Light the pink candle, then the three purple candles.]

Call to Worship

Rejoice in the Lord always, pray without ceasing and give thanks.

We will greatly rejoice in the Lord, our whole being shall exult in God.

Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say, rejoice.

The time is coming when the weak will be made strong and the lowly will be lifted.

The time is coming when God’s people will come together singing.

Rejoice, the time is coming when we will celebrate the birth Christ, the light of the world.

Prayer of Confession

Come, Lord Jesus. Come quickly into our lives and into our hearts. Renew us with your love. Where there is hatred, heal us with you love. Where there is discord, calm us with your peace. Where there is sin, cover us with your grace. Where there is despair, strengthen us with your hope. Help us to proclaim your good news in our words and in our actions, that we may be Your light in the world. Amen.