As the Dark Awaits the Dawn, ELW 261, stanza 4
Devotion
Shine your future on this place,
enlighten ev'ry guest,
that through us stream your holiness,
bright and blest, bright and blest;
come dawn, O Sun of grace.
We learn to pray, "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." The birth of Jesus the Christ marks the beginning of God's reign coming fully on earth as in heaven. In Christ, God has chosen to dwell with us—to make a home among us. We are guests in this household, welcomed by God's gracious and divine hospitality. The birth of Christ was just the beginning. Through his life, death and resurrection, we have been made full members of God's household, forgiven, redeemed and beloved children. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, "In Christ we are offered the possibility of partaking in the reality of God and in the reality of the world, but not in the one without the other." In Christ, our eternal home and our lives as God's holy people called to love and serve our neighbor perfectly intersect.