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Yesterday marked the first Sunday of Advent, the season in the Church leading up to Christmas. This Advent, we are working through a series that we’re calling “What Do You Fear?” In this series, we will invite you to identify where fear is present—both in the Advent story and in our lives—while also finding a way toward hope. Yesterday, we talked a little bit about the scary world and political time that Jesus was born into, including the cruel and oppressive King Herod. Here is this week’s Advent poem, based on that reality:

In the Time of Herod
I didn’t live during Herod’s time—that brutal, murderous king, God save his soul.
But even hundreds of years later, I know the prayers of his people.
I know the prayers of the mothers and the children under his rule.
I know the prayers of the young men under his angry arm.
I know their prayers, because anyone who has ever lived
in this soft world for more than two days
knows how to pray for a miracle.
We rub our hands together.
We fold weary shoulders in,
a cage of bone to protect our bleeding hearts.
We sing, we shall overcome and bind my wandering heart to thee.
We walk across bridges and in front of powerful buildings.
We cover our cars in stickers that scream, we will not give up!
We allow a hungry cry to slip from our lips,
giving our lament a life of its own (with room to dance!).
And when all of that is said and done, we whisper to our creator,
God, break through the yelling and the fear.
Break through the violence and the oppression.
Get past the Herods of this world, and come be here.
Like every bleeding heart before, we pray for a miracle.

If you’d like to dive deeper into our Advent series, you can find a devotional and a set of art pieces and artist statements that accompany each week of the series at galvestoncentralchurch.com/advent.
We hope this theme resonates for you as we all reach for hope in a scary world.
-Pastor Julia

Poem by Rev. Sarah A. Speed | A Sanctified Art LLC | sanctifiedart.org