Category: Reflections

          John sent word and said to him,
           “Are you the one who is to come,
          or are we to wait for another?”
                       —Matthew 11.2-3

So many signs,
so many people raise our hopes,
and then fade in history’s crowd and clutter.
Will this be the Christmas when—…?

But we do not await some traveler from a far shore,
some miracle for a while withheld, then granted.
We await the blossoming of what is already within,
“as a farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth.”

The One we await is the Beloved, present here,
the spirit of love, embodied already.
Many may bear that spirit, but it is also within you.
Turn to love, and the One you await will appear.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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            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
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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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          The night is far gone; the day is near.
          Let us then throw off the works of darkness
          and put on the armor of light.
                                —Romans 13.12

Oh, we still dwell in night;
the day we long for, aching, we don’t yet see.
Advent comes unseasonably among us,
a rose in winter, too soon blooming,
yet opening still, a dawning even in the night,
a light not seen but known, relied upon.
O Light of Hope, not merely dreaming
of some better time, but trusting, now, the Mystery,
not mastered or deserved but purely given,
grant us that light, and let us shine
with the warmth and brightness
of your love for us.
Your light will be our armor in these jagged times.
It won’t defend us from life’s pain,
but from the darkness trying to seep in,
the death of care that is our deepest night.
Our trust in grace will shine and light our way,
and so, among a billion hoping hearts,
your Christ will come, and find a manger here,
and even in the midnight world’s deep gloom
a dawn will rise.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Give thanks.
Give thanks for the whole thing,
this whole Milky Way-cradled world,
this sun-held, moon-adored earth,
this land and water throbbing with life,
and all the swarming life therein.
For the breadth of life, for plains and forests,
for herds and flocks and pods and schools,
for colonies and webs of living things—give thanks.
For generations threaded back through centuries,
for all who have borne us to this day,
who have taught or shaped or simply lived,
that we may live—give thanks.
For all our years, grace-blessed, pain-torn,
for all the grieving, dancing, days,
sin-plundered, joy-ribboned days,
for the whole path, wonders and blunders,
for every mystery-shrouded moment—thanks.
For those we love, and who love us,
each failing, irreplaceable and dear,
we give our humble, gracious thanks.
And for that Love that shadows us,
that bears us each through awful times and grand,
that never will abandon or relent,
that Love that speaks our secret name
and gently bids us into this next wondrous day,
this very moment, now—with gratitude, we bless,
and pray that all this day and our lives
may be our heartfelt way of giving thanks.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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          Keep awake.
                       —Matthew 24.42

          It is already the moment
          for you to wake from sleep.
                      —Romans 13.11


We are awake to the coming of Christ
and the Reign of God,
which is not a private matter,
but a transformation of society.

We rouse ourselves from the sleep of apathy,
from the mindless coma of denial. We waken.

We are awake to the coming of justice,
and awake to the many forms of injustice
Jesus comes to make right.

We are awake to the suffering around us,
aware of greed and racism and violence,
how it works, where it moves,
attentive to how it hurts and how it may be healed.

We are awake to the ways justice breaks in among us,
alert to ways Christ is born among us,
ways God works grace in the midst of our evil;
we are awake to hope, and trusting in that hope.

This is what Jesus means by keeping awake.
This is what the Black community has meant
by “staying woke.” They are the same.

We do not let others take that from us.
We don’t give in just because they’re terrified of the word.
We stay with hope, stay with being aware.
We stay woke.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             You must be ready,
             for the Human One is coming
             at an hour you do not expect.
                               —Matthew 24.44


Grace flits in, a butterfly in winter.
Forgiveness dismantles gallows.
A child, frightened, stands anyway.

The minds of the dulled
are on other things.
Heaven passes unnoticed.

The naive keep waiting
for the white horse, the sword.
Foggy opera glasses.

Cynics, fearing the mystery,
can always prove otherwise.
The lock snaps shut.

The faithful are not sure
but open,
watching for the luminous.

A spirit, wholly given,
emerges
like a song among many.

Blessed are the ready, watching,
over and over,
for the world made new.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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The coming of Christ is no sentimental visit;
it is an incursion into our empire of cruelty,
an insurrection against our apathy and injustice.

But it comes in tiny moves, small and fragile.
By grace made flesh, tender and willing,
the tear is mended one stitch at a time.

A germ of goodness, a mere germ,
moving through the people,
transforming the body.

A healing presence, quantum forgiveness,
never more privileged or powerful
than a newborn infant.

An ancient song rises, a simple melody
carried by a single voice, a gathering chorus
the noise of the Empire can’t drown out.

A crack in the dam. A seed in the soil.
A gentle people, powerless and confident,
knowing the Emperor fears the child.

In the harsh winter a turning,
on a moonless night a welcoming manger,
at the foot of the empire a dangerous babe.

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