Month: December 2025

            The wolf shall live with the lamb;
                    the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
            the calf and the lion will feed together,
                     and a little child shall lead them.
                                —Isaiah 11.6

God, I am home to both lamb and wolf,
both love and anger, fear and desire,
both lashing out and running away.
I fear the world’s anger
yet adopt it as my own.
I am torn between the anxious prowl
and your gentle peace within me.

I accept them both,
so that I may freely choose.

Help me to trust your grace,
and dare to dwell with the wolf,
knowing that even in the face of evil and injustice
I may have peace,
that even amid uncertainty I may have hope,
that even now I may know joy.

Child of God, lead me.

            May the God of hope
            fill you with all joy and peace
            in trusting God’s grace,
            so that by the power of God’s Spirit in you
            you may abound in hope.
                         — Romans 15.13

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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          John said to them,
          “You brood of vipers!
          Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?”
                       —Matthew 3.7

The “coming wrath” is not God’s vengeful anger,
but the doom of the world’s self-sentenced ways,
the inevitable collapse of all greed and violence
into pointlessness and the abolition of being.
Those who came to John to judge were trapped
in their own grace-starved world. Fighting
for their place, they would destroy each other,
drowning in their own anger, fear and selfishness.

The Coming One invites us into a different world,
where God’s wrath is not vengeful anger
but refining fire, the blacksmith’s hot anvil,
God’s insistence on transformation,
where our swords are hammered into plowshares,
fear bent into courage, greed worked into trust.
It may feel like wrath, to be so wrought
for the sake of love—even by grace,
but there is no anger, only mercy
and the hard, painful labor of birthing us
into a new realm.

The blacksmith, pleased with the work,
plunges it into the deep baptismal water,
and it comes out tempered, strong, and ready.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           The axe is lying at the root of the trees…
           The one who comes after me
           has their winnowing fork in their hand,
           and they will clear the threshing floor
           and will gather their wheat into the granary,
           but burn the chaff with unquenchable fire.
                       —Matthew 3.12

O my Redeemer,
I can’t rid myself of these sins,
my wayward wants and hates and fears,
my killing habits, my unloving ways,
these growths that strangle me.
With all your merciful strength
take up your axe of grace,
and prune the branches of my heart.

Bring, muscled, to my gathered being
your winnowing fork.
Thresh the grain of my life.
Save all that is good and all that is blessed.
And all that is deadly, all that robs,
all that weighs without fruit, carry off and burn
in the mercy of your unquenchable fire.

By your welcome grace take from me
what I haven’t the power to do away with.
Relieve me of what I, enthralled, still cling to.
Come, liberating axe, dear winnowing fork,
have at me, and set me free.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:38 — 2.3MB)

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          Repent,
          for the realm of heaven has come near.
                       —Matthew 3.2

To repent is no arduous labor,
no pious accomplishment,
but simply to let go.

Let go of resentments,
the conviction that it won’t work,
my will to do it my way….

Let go of having to please this world,
to appease the Emperor,
to go along….

Let go of the lie
that I won’t be happy unless…
and dare instead to trust it can be given.

Let go like a sleeping child
and know I am loved, carried,
borne somewhere new.

I am given
(and the whole world with me)
the grace to begin anew.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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