December 7

104 O Lord, How Shall I Meet You

O Lord, how shall I meet you, how welcome you aright?
Your people long to greet you, my hope, my heart’s delight!
O kindle, Lord most holy, a lamp within my breast,
To do in spirit lowly all that may please you best.

Love caused your incarnation; love brought you down to me;
Your thirst for my salvation procured my liberty.
O love beyond all telling, that led you to embrace
In love, all loves excelling, our lost and fallen race.

You come, O Lord, with gladness, in mercy and goodwill,
To bring an end to sadness and bid our fears be still.
In patient expectation we live for that great day
When your renewed creation your glory shall display.

Devotion

Advent is characterized so frequently by a great period of waiting—yet, I know I often struggle to know what exactly to…do? Waiting for me often looks like sitting in a doctor’s office waiting rooms twiddling my thumbs, reloading my inbox over and over hoping that that email I’m waiting for will finally pop up, and listening to audiobooks while I wait through my morning commute.

Somehow, these ideas of waiting don’t quite feel like they match up with the holy period of advent waiting. “O Lord, how shall I meet you, how welcome you aright?” this hymn cries out in question. What does it mean to prepare, to spend time individually getting ready for the waiting to end? This hymn doesn’t seem to offer a perfect answer, nor do I, but I invite us to lean into this question together.

What does it look like for you to wait in a holy way, in a way that focuses you in on both the longing to greet God, and the desire to do all that may please God best? Maybe, for you, that looks like time set apart for prayer, for reading scripture, for meditation. Maybe, it looks like intentional walks through nature to consider God’s creation. Maybe it looks like just focusing on rest, or on being more honest with God. Maybe it looks like something completely different. No matter what this practice means to you, I

invite you to take time to sit with it, to wonder “O Lord, how shall I meet you?” And what shall we do while we wait, to prepare?

Kim Rubish

Prayer

God, who is our heart’s delight, kindle within us a peace and sense of holy preparation as we sink into waiting. Amen.