The Service of Light & Vespers: Evening Prayer for Advent 1

To observe Advent is to wait, instead of racing ahead to the end of the story, Christmas. We read

psalms and the prophets and by doing so, we practice waiting with the children of Israel in the

dark times when they hoped against hope for a Messiah. The people of the Old Testament

modeled our own anticipation for a second great coming of Christ. We rest and wait, listen and

pray during Advent, trusting that new life, new light will come. Hoping, that the One, lying in

the manger, the One who walked out of the tomb, will return and bring us to that place where

sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but life everlasting.