Come Now Where We Least Expect You

A hymn for this first week of the Christian new year to help us reorient our thinking around Christ’s coming in the past, present and future:

Come now where we least expect you,
Christ our hope and longing, come.
Show us where we still reject you
in the world you made your home.
Look around!
Christ is found
far beyond our sacred ground.

Come where we have tried to own you
locked within the distant past,
where your church has scarcely known you,
where the least remain the last.
Enter still
where you will,
come to challenge and fulfill.

Christ-child, come in loving kindness;
come, great Judge whom angels praise!
heal us of our pride and blindness,
purge our hearts and change our ways.
God's own Word,
love outpoured,
come to us, O Christ our Lord!

Marnie Barrell, 1996