ADVENT WEEK FOUR: LOVE
December 22 Rev. Allie Utley, PhD
The Turning
Luke 1:46b-55
…indeed, his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.
Luke 1:50
There is a group of researchers at Samford Center for Worship and the Arts
studying the experiences of young people in worship. According to their web-
site, “the purpose of the Young People and Christian Worship (YPCW) study
is to listen deeply to how young people, including teenagers and emerging
adults (aged 13–29), experience public Christian worship in a range of liturgi-
cal contexts—Roman Catholic, mainline Protestant, evangelical, and charis-
matic.”
In a recent survey, they found that one of the favorite songs among young
people in the Roman Catholic and Mennonite traditions is Canticle of the
Turning, a hymn text based on the song of Mary*.
It inspires me that young people connect with Mary’s vision of a God who
subverts the world order. From generation to generation, God casts down the
proud and powerful and shows preferential love to the marginalized. From
generation to generation, God promises that the tyrants of this world will fail
and fall.
But even if we trust in this promise, we can struggle to see beyond the evils of
our day. We might remember that Mary sings about the mighty work of God
while she is still pregnant. She embodies expectancy and hope. Advent is a
season of tension for us as well: God’s love is breaking in, and still, we wait for
its fullness.
Where might you catch a glimpse of that turning today? And as you wait, how
might you live as though God’s love is already reshaping the world?
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*Emily Snider, “Young People and Christian Worship: Seeing the Liturgical Assembly through
the Eyes of Teenagers and Emerging Adults” (Societas Liturgical, Paris, July 30, 2025).
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