When I was a child we learned two different table prayers that we said before each meal. One was the Roman Catholic prayer that my mother learned growing up. It goes like this, “Bless us O Lord and these Thy gifts which we are about to receive, from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen.” We also learned the table prayer my father learned growing up in a strongly German Lutheran family and it went like this, “Come Lord Jesus be our guest and let these gifts to us be blest. Amen.”
Each evening before eating dinner one of us five children would lead the family in either the prayer my mother taught us or the one from my father’s background. As time went on we gravitated exclusively toward reciting my father’s Lutheran table prayer. It was shorter and seemed less complicated than the Roman Catholic version so we could dig into my mother’s delicious cooking as quickly as possible!
That table prayer, especially the first part, makes a good Advent prayer also. Come Lord Jesus, be our guest!
The season of Advent, along with all its church related customs and worship practices can be traced back to probably the 4th to 5th centuries AD. Scholars and historians differ. The earliest Christian Advent prayers, Gospel, and Epistle readings can be traced back to the Gelasian Sacramentary from the mid-eighth century AD.
In the early Christian Advent prayers, lessons, and teachings clearly Advent was a time for preparing one’s heart for the celebration Christ’s threefold coming, as the baby born in a humble stable in Bethlehem, as the Word Made Flesh who earnestly desires to come and live in our hearts by faith, and the One who will come at the end of the ages in glory and pomp to right all wrongs, judge the living and the dead, and usher in His eternal Kingdom of peace where “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them” (Isaiah 11:6 KJV).
One of the ways we invite Jesus to come and be our guest every Sunday during the Advent season at First English, Marysville is by lighting the Advent wreath. Each candle on the wreath has a special meaning and heightens our expectation for Jesus’ coming this year during our seasonal celebration of Christmas and on the Last Day. Here are the names of the five candles that we light in succession as we pray earnestly, “Come Lord Jesus!” 1. The Hope Candle 2. The Peace Candle 3. The Joy Candle 4. The Love Candle 5. The Christ Candle
The Collect (liturgical prayer) for the First Sunday of Advent sums up well our spiritual anticipation as we wait for our Lord’s threefold coming during this season: “Stir up your power, O Lord, and come, that by your protection we may be rescued from the threatening perils of our sins and saved by your mighty deliverance; for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
Come Lord Jesus! I prayed these words as a hungry child waiting to gobble down my dinner but that prayer means so much more as I ponder Advent and the greater gifts our Lord comes to impart. Amen.
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