a while back doug gay sent me a version of the magnificat that he had written for the URC for advent. i loved it but assumed it was for a written publication. but i wondered the other day if it was online so typed doug gay magnificat into google and sure enough it is there and was top of the list as part of a site called commitment for life. simply click on the resources button to download a 4 page pdf with a range of things for advent including two pages by doug with a wonderful prayer of invitation and the magnificat which i have cut and paste below (and made worship trick 52)…

Hail Mary, Mother of God. Sister of the church.
Sing for us now and in all the hours of life.
Blessed are you among humans,
Blessed is the source of your song, Jesus.

Sing to name God for us,
For us who doubt God’s power in times when justice seems so weak.
Sing out that God is Saviour, Mighty, Holy, Mercy
Sing for us now.

Sing and Sing glory up to God,
When our sad souls and spirits shrink, reduce, grow small with waiting,
Sing out for joy to magnify the great God of small things
Sing for us now.

Sing of God’s past,
We are the ones who hardly still believe tomorrow can be new creation
Sing loud God’s mighty acts, God’s arm stretched out to turn worlds upside down,
to overpower evil and sing quiet of
God’s hand cupped soft to shield the dying flame,
to break the sparrow’s fall
God’s faithfulness to broken Israel and beyond –
to Sarah’s children and to all the rest of us, children of Hagar and Keturah’s bairns.
Sing for us now.

Sing of God’s food,
While people still live and still die in hunger
Sing of the God of milk and bread and wine, God’s body pouring life into the world
Sing for us now.

Sing for us now – sing out and bend the notes
sing Zaghareet and Daqqaqat
sing gospel out of blues
sing jazz to shift the minor scale to major
sing like Mahalia or Makeba,
sing like the girl next door sings to her babby of her fierce commitment to his life.
Sing for us now,
Sing for us now,
Sing for us now and at the hour of death and on the resurrection morning too.
Sing for us now.

darren has posted some TOLLS advent liturgies/service outlines

i found this a striking image of mother and child

and tim morgan, a friend and colleague at CMS sent me his reflections on bethlehem (word file) sparked by two visits he has made there. in it he speculates…

Today Bethlehem is a Palestinian town in a territory occupied by the Israeli army.  So let us imagine for a moment that Mary and Joseph are Palestinians and that today they had to leave Nazareth for their home town of Bethlehem.  Would they, Arjan asks, manage to arrive in time for their son’s birth?  Would they arrive at all?

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