A Collect for Advent 2

Advent 2, Year C

God of the Wilderness, you are the One that goes with us as we find our way through. Help us have the courage to walk the prophetic paths laid out ahead of us, contributing our part in smoothing out whatever is rough, so that access to mercy and justice may widen, and widen, and widen. In the name of Jesus, who loves the wild and liminal places, Amen. 

Luke 3:1-6

“In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,

The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:

'Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.

Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,

and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth;

and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'"