{"id":256,"date":"2009-12-03T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-03T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/prayerplainandsimple\/2009\/12\/advent-prayer-welcoming-grace.html"},"modified":"2009-12-03T06:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-03T06:00:00","slug":"advent-prayer-welcoming-grace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/2009\/12\/advent-prayer-welcoming-grace.html","title":{"rendered":"Advent Prayer: Welcoming Grace"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Claudia Mair Burney<br \/>\nThursday, the first week of Advent<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\">&#8220;In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country where she entered the house of Zechariah, and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary&#8217;s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit&#8230;&#8221; Luke 1:39-41, NRSV<\/div>\n<p><em><\/em><br \/>\nThis is such a startling moment. Elizabeth had waited a lifetime, living righteous before God and blameless, yet she bore the shame of being barren until she received the promise of a miraculous birth, around the same time Mary did. Mary&#8217;s visit set a number of wonderful actions in motion, beginning with Elizabeth&#8217;s immediate recognition that Mary was indeed, full of grace. How often does God actions come to our homes? Will we recognize His work and praise God, or will we simply miss Him, once again, not seeing the holy in the wholly ordinary.<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\">Generous Father,<br \/>\nWhen your grace comes to me in such a personal way, do I recognize that it is You? Or do I go on doing things the same way I always do, or seeing things the same way I always see them, without Your knowledge and insight? Will you please help me, kind Father, to know when You indeed, have come to visit me. And may I rejoice as Elizabeth did, at my marvelous fortune, saying,<br \/>\n&#8220;Come, Lord Jesus.&#8221;<\/div>\n<p><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Claudia Mair Burney Thursday, the first week of Advent &#8220;In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country where she entered the house of Zechariah, and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary&#8217;s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,46,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advent","category-advent-prayer","category-prayer"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Advent Prayer: Welcoming Grace<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/2009\/12\/advent-prayer-welcoming-grace.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Advent Prayer: Welcoming Grace\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Claudia Mair Burney Thursday, the first week of Advent &#8220;In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country where she entered the house of Zechariah, and greeted Elizabeth. 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A New Yorker by birth but a Floridian by tenure, Nicole graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. She moved to NY to pursue a career in journalism which started at In Style magazine. There she learned the ropes of magazine reporting, researching, and writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand became exponentially more stylish. But what seemed like a deep interest in fashion and entertainment would soon be revealed as merely the vehicle that moved her closer to discovering her purpose, writing and covering matters of the Christian faith. While in her purpose-driven vehicle she can be found traveling between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens for life, work and worship, respectively. 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