This liturgy is taken from Every Moment Holy Volume 3 from Rabbit Room Press. You can find more liturgies like these at EveryMomentHoly.com.
By Douglas McKelvey
O God Who Did First Speak
Light into Deep Darkness,
illumine and warm again
our numbed hearts.
For we are increasingly wrung
by this tiring tide of night,
even as our hopes are wearied
by the long winter that attends it.
Our world tilts further from the sun;
the days grow shorter by degrees,
the darkness more complete.
Our bodies become sluggish, our brains
also—by lack of light—are altered in their
chemistry, so that for many of us,
this hard season must be endured as
a war of attrition. We are dug in, defending
against the bleakness of winter, while
levity, productivity, and dreams
are scuttled luxuries strewn somewhere
behind us, abandoned and covered over
as by thickly drifting snows—casualties
of a long battle waged simply to preserve
some shard of hope tucked within
the folds of our souls.
The sunlight, even when it briefly
kisses our skin this time of year, seems
distant, thin, and weak against the gloom.
Ah Lord, how many times might we
say the same of your mercies, your
grace, your presence?
Have we not endured such seasons
of the spirit, when we do not feel
the warmth of your nearness? When
the light of your mercy is pale
and seems so far away? When we cry
to you and discern no sudden answer?
When our love is cold, our fortitude
crumbled, and our faith slumbering
inaccessible as some torpid beast
adrowse in a winter den?
In such times we might have been tempted
even to abandon the main narrative
of our lives: The story of your
life-giving Spirit and your bright
kingdom ever on the move,
at work amongst us,
in us, and through us,
training our hearts to yearn toward
the impending renewal of all things.
Such hope can be a thread
so easily lost in winter darkness.
O Christ, shine now, into this long night!
O Spirit, blow upon these cold embers
of our faith, our hope, our love.
O Father, prepare your children a secret
fellowship and a feast, even here in this place
that feels today like desolation.
Use this numbing chill to turn our faces afresh
toward the warming fires of your presence.
Use this passing darkness to kindle again
our longing for your eternal light.
Use this sad weight of melancholy
to train our hearts more perfectly
in the school of Christlikeness.
For is it not in such bleak fields as these
where we might best learn obedience?
Is it not in such dark hours
when we might practice the making
of small, faithful choices, regardless
of our feelings? Is it not in the heavy
temptation to despair that the
worthiness of the object of our
trust is finally proved? Is it not in
this place of pressing cold and
night—when we find that within
ourselves we can no longer muster
meaningful hope of any good end
to our journey—where we must learn
to collapse in your arms, O Christ, and
there find light and grace enough to take
one more step,
and then another,
and then another, until
at last we lift our eyes again
and turning, see how long and far
we have followed you—by a steady
succession of small trusts—through
this bleak and barren slog, trudging
toward the day when winter is
finally in retreat?
And though we know in this life
we will suffer the cycling of
such seasons again and again—our
suffocating sense of the shortness
of days an annual struggle, our tired
hopes pitted perennially against this
cold and darkness—still let us hold
fast in our hearts this secret:
We know that our conflict ends at last
in a final victory of light and delight,
in the City of God, where the
lamb is the light eternal.
AT WINTER SOLSTICE ONE MIGHT ADD THE FOLLOWING:
So here in the heart of this longest night,
let us raise our glasses
to toast this turning of the tide,
this beginning of the victory of light.
Let us step into this fray, well-armed
with mirth and joy, buoyed by
the fellowship of friends,
or at least with a fond remembrance
of such things, and with the good hope
of their inevitable return.
Winter has done its worst. And by
your grace, O God, we are still standing.
This night marks not the victory of darkness,
but the far limit of its incursion,
and from here, like an army overrun,
it will be pushed back,
rolled up day-by-day as the sun
draws nearer, warming the ground,
till trees bud, flowers bloom, and
birds return, and we pass again
into the green and golden
light of spring, our world
pregnant with the promise
of resurrection.
So let us assail this keep of winter,
with a sacrifice of conscious praise,
kindling joy inside its dark heart, that
we might find our own tired hearts stirred
again to holy flame, and our own wearied souls
roused to remembrance of—and trust in—
the long faithfulness of that same God
who first spoke light into darkness,
that same Spirit who even now
illumines our hearts and minds,
and that same Good Shepherd
who leads us through every long winter,
and into the budding fields and bright songs
of a world newly awakened.
Amen.
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