Here's a powerful meditative prayer from Brian Wren's outstanding book, Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany: Liturgies and Prayers for Public Worship








God, how can a baby change the world
even before it is born?
The proud seem quite secure,
the seats of power look unshaken.
The hungry are unfed,
and the rich take plenty away.
So how can a baby change the world?
And yet, when it stirs in the womb,
it changes somebody’s world,
and when a child is born,
our lives are changed for ever.
Who knows, at birth, what a child will become?
Did Mary sing her song when her son left home,
when he sat on a hillside, hung on a cross,
and shattered the tomb?
Then how can a baby not change the world?
Who knows what a child will become?
For when, in a home or a nation,
new life surges, strong as the incoming tide,
it changes the shape of the shoreline
so that even the castles of power
are like sand.
Amen.