Over the last seven days, many of us have been meeting or reacquainting ourselves with the Little Prince from the novella by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Our daily readings have connected the story with the lectionary resources for this first week of Advent. You can receive the eAdvent resource daily by email on request. In case you have missed out, here is the first week of ABIDE as a catch-up.
🕯️ Advent Week 1 — Hopeful Confusion
Day 1
| PAUSE Take five deep breaths. Check-in with how you are feeling – in body, in mind, in spirit. Take five more deep breaths and ask God to abide with you in this moment |
Advent is the season of waiting and watching — the Church’s yearly invitation to lift our heads and look for Christ’s coming, in the world, in our lives, and in our hearts. It reminds us that God still breaks into the everyday world, still stirs our dull imaginations, still calls us to see differently.
Advent arrives again in two days’ time, Sunday 30th November. And so once again the season of Hopeful Confusion is upon us! In our Scriptures we will hear that Isaiah dreams of peace among nations; that the psalmist rejoices at Jerusalem’s gates; that Paul urges us to wake from sleep and put on the armour of light; and that Jesus calls us to stay awake, ready for the Son of Man. Each reading holds both uncertainty and hope: the world is unsettled, yet God is already at work. You can click the list of passages here to access the readings in full.
Isaiah 2 : 1–5 | Psalm 122 | Romans 13 : 11–14 | Matthew 24 : 36–44
And today, we meet a new friend. We will hear for the first time from the pilot who will accompany us through Advent. We are going to be reading from the 1940s novella The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and it begins with a pilot who explains that as a child, he drew a picture that no one understood. The grown-ups saw only a hat, not the wonder hidden inside it — and with some Advent uncertainty, that we might wonder if we would see the hat for what it was.
Chapter 1
The Hat That Wasn’t a Hat
When I was six years old, I once saw a magnificent picture in a book on the virgin forest called Stories of Life. It was a boa constrictor that had swallowed a wild beast. Here is a copy of the drawing.
It was written in the book: “Boa constrictors swallow their whole prey without chewing. Then they cannot move, and they sleep during the six months of their digestion.” I then thought a lot about the adventures of the jungle and, in turn, succeeded, with a coloured pencil, in drawing my very first drawing. It was like this:
I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups and asked them if my drawing frightened them. They said, “Why would a hat be scary?” My drawing was not of a hat. It was a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. I then drew the inside of the boa constrictor, so that the grown-ups could understand. They always required more explanation. My second drawing was like this:
The grown-ups advised me to leave aside the drawings of boa constrictors from the outside or the inside, and to interest myself instead in geography, history, calculation, and grammar.
Thus, at the age of six, I abandoned a magnificent career as a painter. I had been discouraged by the failure of my first drawing and my second drawing. Grown-ups never understand anything on their own, and it is tiring for children always to have to give them explanations.
So I had to choose another profession. I learnt to fly planes. I flew all over the world. And geography, that’s right, served me well. I knew how to recognise, at first glance, China or Arizona. It is useful if you have gone astray during the night.
I have had, in the course of my life, a lot of contact with many serious people. I have lived among the grown-ups. I saw them up close. It did not really improve my opinion of them. When I met one who seemed to me a little lucid, I had them experience my drawing number one, which I had preserved. I wanted to know if they could come to a real understanding. But they always replied, “It’s a hat.”
After that, I spoke to them neither of boa constrictors, nor of virgin forests, nor of stars. I put myself within their reach. I talked about bridge, golf, politics, and ties. And the grown-ups were glad to know such a reasonable man.
| PONDER Spend some time reminiscing about your childhood drawings. Did you enjoy drawing? Do you remember how it felt while you were creating? Who did you show your pictures to, and how did they respond? What do those memories stir in you now? |
| PRAISE Pause with what has caught your attention today. Give thanks for a glimpse of wonder — however small. Praise God for keeping imagination alive, and for the hope that will carry us into Advent, as in just two days’ time we begin this journey again. |
🕯️ Advent Week 1 — Hopeful Confusion
Day 2
Look up Matthew 24:36-44
OR CLICK HERE TO READ IT ONLINE
On Saturdays throughout Advent, we will read the Gospel for the following morning. The reading from Matthew gives us a mysterious scene. Jesus speaks of ordinary people at their work — in fields, at the mill — when suddenly something happens that cannot be explained. No one sees it coming; there is no warning, only the quiet separation of one life from another. It is unsettling, and haunting because of its ordinariness. There are no signs in the sky, no armies or earthquakes, only human routine — the same gestures repeated day after day. Jesus’s words suggest that God’s arrival comes disguised as continuation: people still at their tasks, and yet one heartbeat later the world is changed.
| PAUSE Take five deep breaths. Check-in with how you are feeling – in body, in mind, in spirit. Take five more deep breaths and ask God to abide with you in this moment. |
Our chapter from The Little Prince today holds that same strangeness. The pilot — a man alone, in danger and surrounded by silence — wakes to a voice that should not be there. The child’s request, “Please draw me a sheep,” is as unexpected as the coming of the Son of Man is in the Gospel reading. No wonder the pilot says, “Huh?”
Chapter 2
Please Draw Me A Sheep
So I lived alone, with no one I could really to talk to, until I had an accident in the Sahara Desert six years ago. Something had broken in my engine. And since I had neither a mechanic nor a passenger with me, I prepared to try and make the difficult repair myself. It was a matter of life and death, as I had scarcely a week’s worth of drinking water.
The first night I fell asleep on the sand a thousand miles from any inhabited land. I was much more isolated than a castaway on a raft in the middle of the ocean. Then you can imagine my surprise, at dawn, when a funny little voice woke me up. He said:
“Please draw me a sheep!”
“Huh?”
“Draw me a sheep.”
I jumped to my feet as if I had been struck by lightning. I rubbed my eyes, blinked hard and looked carefully around me. And I saw a very extraordinary little boy who looked at me gravely. It is the best portrait I later managed to make of him.
But my drawing, of course, is much less charming than the model. It is not my fault. I had been discouraged by the grown-ups at the age of six in my career as a painter, and I had learned nothing to draw, except boas from the outside and boas from the inside.
I looked at this apparition with eyes full of astonishment. Do not forget that I was a thousand miles from any inhabited region. Now my little fellow seemed to me neither astray, nor dead of fatigue, nor dead of hunger, nor dead of thirst, nor dead of fear. He did not look like a child lost in the middle of the desert, a thousand miles from any inhabited region.
When I finally managed to speak, I said to him, “What are you doing here?”
Whereupon he repeated to me, very gently, as a very serious thing, “Please draw me a sheep.”
When the mystery is too impressive, we do not dare to disobey. As absurd as it seemed to me, a thousand miles from all inhabited places and in danger of death, I took out of my pocket a sheet of paper and a pen. But I remembered that I had studied geography, history, calculation and grammar, and I told the little fellow (a little crossly) that I did not know how to draw.
He replied, “It does not matter. Draw me a sheep.”
As I had never drawn a sheep, I drew for him one of the only two drawings of which I was capable. A boa from the outside.
And I was astounded to hear the little fellow reply, “No! No! I do not want an elephant in a boa. A boa constrictor is very dangerous, and an elephant is very cumbersome. Everything is very small where I live. I need a sheep. Draw me a sheep.” I drew. Then he looked attentively, and said “No! That one is already very ill. Do another one.” I drew. My friend smiled gently, indulgently, and said, “You see, it’s not a sheep, it’s a ram. He has horns.” Once again, I made another drawing, but it too was rejected. “This one is too old. I want a sheep that will live for a long time.” Then, for lack of patience, as I was anxious to begin the dismantling of my engine, I scribbled this drawing.
Then I explained, “That’s the box. The sheep you want is in it.”
But I was very surprised to see the face of my young judge lighting up. “That’s exactly how I wanted it! Do you think it will need a lot of pasture?”
“Why?”
“Because where I live, everything is so small.”
“There should be enough grass for him. I gave you a tiny sheep.”
He leaned his head toward the drawing. “Not so small that … Oh, look, he has gone to sleep”
And so, I made the acquaintance of the Little Prince.
| PONDER Isn’t it wonderful that the Little Prince looks at the drawing the grown-ups called a hat and knows what it truly is? The pilot, alone and misunderstood for years, is recognised. Spend a time with that feeling, really exploring the moment between pilot and prince? |
| PRAYER When have you had moments like this? What do you feel is still unseen or misunderstood? Ask God to be the one who meets you in the desert this Advent |
Isaiah 2 : 1–5 | Psalm 122 | Romans 13 : 11–14 | Matthew 24 : 36–44
🕯️ Advent Week 1 — Hopeful Confusion
Day 3
| PAUSE Take five deep breaths. Check-in with how you are feeling – in body, in mind, in spirit. Take five more deep breaths and ask God to abide with you in this moment |
Our third chapter opens with the pilot recalling that it took him a long time to understand where the little prince came from. The child’s words and questions are unlike anyone the pilot has met before. Bit by bit, through their conversation, something strange and unmistakable emerges: the little prince is not from this world. His quiet mention of another planet is the first sign of his otherness.
Chapter 3
What Planet Are You From?
It took me a long time to understand where he came from. The little prince, who asked me many questions, never seemed to hear mine. It is thanks to the odd word here and there that I began to make sense of it. For instance, when he saw my plane for the first time (I will not draw my plane, it is a drawing far too complicated for me) he asked me, “What is that thing?”
“It’s not a thing. It flies. It’s a plane. This is my plane.” And I was proud to tell him I could fly.
Then he exclaimed, “What? You dropped down from the heavens?”
“Yes,” I said modestly.
“Oh, now that’s funny,” and the little prince broke into a lovely peal of laughter — which irritated me very much. I wish to take my misfortunes seriously. Then he added, “so you too come from heaven! What planet are you from?”
I immediately caught a glimpse in the mystery of his presence, and at once I asked, “so you have come from another planet?”
But he did not answer me. He nodded softly as he looked at my plane. “It’s true that you cannot have come from very far away on that.” And he sank into a reverie that lasted for a long time. Then, taking my sheep out of his pocket, he plunged into the contemplation of his treasure.
You can imagine how intrigued I was by this half-confidence about “the other planets.” So I tried to find out a little more. “Where do you come from, my little fellow? Where is ‘at home’? Where do you want to take my sheep?”
He replied after a meditative silence, “what I like about the box that you have given me is that the sheep can use it as his house at night.”
“Of course. And if you are a good boy, I will also give you a rope to tie him up during the day. And a post to tie him to.”
The proposal seemed to shock the little prince. “Tie him up? What a funny idea!”
“But if you do not tie him up, he will wander off, and he’ll get lost.”
And my friend burst into laughter again. “But where would he go?”
“Anywhere. Just straight ahead.”
Then the little prince gravely remarked, “it wouldn’t matter. Everything is so small where I live!” And, with a little melancholy, perhaps, he added, “straight ahead, you cannot go far.”
| PONDER No wonder today’s conversation leaves the pilot more puzzled than satisfied. Confusion is often part of the hope that our faith offers us. This Advent, how might it feel to bring your questions out into the open as a way to come closer to God? |
Throughout Advent, on Sundays we will take time to light the candle for the week. And so we turn from the confusion of the pilot to the hope of our first Advent candle.
| PRAISE Do light a candle where you are if this is possible for you today. We will call this week’s candle HOPEFUL CONFUSION. Take five more deep breaths and ask God to abide with you in this moment. |
People of God: awake!
The day is coming soon when you shall see God face to face.
Remember the ways and the works of God.
God calls you out of darkness
to walk in the light of his coming.
You are God’s children.
Lord, make us one
as we walk with Christ
today and for ever. Amen.
Isaiah 2 : 1–5 | Psalm 122 | Romans 13 : 11–14 | Matthew 24 : 36–44
🕯️ Advent Week 1 — Hopeful Confusion
Day 4
Look up Isaiah 2:1-5
OR CLICK HERE TO READ IT ONLINE
On Mondays throughout Advent, we will read the Old Testament reading for the week. Isaiah’s vision begins with a simple picture that anyone can imagine: people walking together up a mountain. They are heading towards the place where God is said to dwell, hoping to learn better ways to live. In Isaiah’s time, nations often fought each other, and people trusted weapons more than wisdom. But the prophet describes something completely new — a time when those weapons are melted down and reshaped into tools for farming and peace. Swords become ploughs. Spears become pruning hooks. It’s a daring, hopeful picture, but also a confusing one. How can the world really change like that? What would it take for people to stop training for war and start learning peace? Isaiah’s invitation is to begin walking anyway — to trust that light will be given as we go. “Come,” he says, “let us walk in the light of the Lord.” That’s what Advent feels like: taking steps towards a future that we do not yet fully see, but still dare to believe in.
| PAUSE Take five deep breaths. Check-in with how you are feeling – in body, in mind, in spirit. Picture ascending in hilly country. Take five more breaths and let the phrase “Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord” play gently in your mind. |
Isaiah saw a world transformed when people learned to walk in God’s light. Our chapter from The Little Prince today also turns our eyes upward, but in a very different way. It introduces a Turkish astronomer who is dismissed because of his appearance. Years later, dressed in a European suit, he is believed. Nothing about his discovery has changed — only how he looks.
Chapter 4
The Turkish Astronomer
I had learned a second very important thing: that his planet was scarcely larger than a house. It did not surprise me that much. I knew that, besides the big planets like the Earth, Jupiter, Mars, and Venus, which have been given names, there are hundreds of others that are sometimes so small that it is very hard to see them even through a telescope. So when an astronomer discovers one of these, he gives it a number rather than a name. He calls it, for example, “Asteroid 325.”
I have serious reason to believe that the planet from which the Little Prince came is Asteroid B-612. This asteroid was seen only once, in 1909, by a Turkish astronomer. He made a great demonstration of his discovery at an International Astronomy Congress, but nobody believed him because of his Turkish attire.
Grown-ups are like that.
Fortunately for the reputation of Asteroid B-612, a Turkish dictator later ordered his people, under penalty of death, to dress in European style. The astronomer repeated his demonstration in 1920, wearing a very elegant suit — and this time, everyone believed him.
If I have told you these details about Asteroid B-612, and if I have given you its number, it is because of the grown-ups. Grown-ups like numbers. When you tell them about a new friend, they never ask about the important things. They never say, “What does his voice sound like?” “What games does he love best?” “Does he collect butterflies?” They ask instead, “How old is he?” “How many brothers does he have?” “How much does he weigh?” “How much money does his father earn?” Only then do they think they know him.
If you say to grown-ups, “I saw a beautiful house made of rosy brick, with geraniums in the windows and doves on the roof,” they cannot imagine such a house. You have to say, “I saw a house worth a hundred thousand francs.” Then they exclaim, “What a pretty house!”
So if you say to them, “The proof that the Little Prince existed is that he was delightful, that he laughed, and that he wanted a sheep. Anyone who wants a sheep surely exists,” they will shrug their shoulders and treat you like a child. But if you tell them, “The planet he came from is Asteroid B-612,” they will be convinced, and they will leave you in peace from their questions. They are like that. We must not blame them.
Children should be very indulgent towards grown-ups.
But of course, we who understand life could not care less about numbers!
I would have liked to begin this story as fairy tales do. I would have liked to say: “Once upon a time there was a little prince who lived on a planet hardly larger than himself, and who needed a friend.”
For those who understand life, that would have seemed much truer. I do not want my book to be read carelessly. I have experienced much sadness in setting down these recollections. It is already six years since my friend went away with his sheep. If I write about him here, it is so as not to forget. It is sad to forget a friend.
Not everyone has had one.
And I might become like the grown-ups, who are interested only in numbers. That is why I have bought a box of paints and some pencils. It is hard to take up drawing again at my age, especially when I have made no other attempts since my two drawings of the boa constrictor — one from the outside and one from the inside — when I was six. I will try, of course, to make my portraits as true to life as possible, but I am not sure that I shall succeed. One drawing goes well, another not at all. I make mistakes with the size — here the Little Prince is too big, there too small. I also hesitate about the colour of his clothes. So I fumble along, this way and that, as best I can. I shall also be mistaken about some more important details, but that must be forgiven. My friend never explained anything to me. He thought, perhaps, that I was like him. But, unfortunately, I do not know how to see a sheep through the sides of a box.
I may be a little like the grown-ups.
I have grown older.
| PONDER Read the two paragraphs below from the story again. Reflect on the gap between grown-up questions like how old someone is and the childlike curiosity about butterflies or what someone’s voice sounds like. How grown-up and how childlike are you in the way you think and talk — and pray? |
If I have told you these details about Asteroid B-612, and if I have given you its number, it is because of the grown-ups. Grown-ups like numbers. When you tell them about a new friend, they never ask about the important things. They never say, “What does his voice sound like?” “What games does he love best?” “Does he collect butterflies?” They ask instead, “How old is he?” “How many brothers does he have?” “How much does he weigh?” “How much money does his father earn?” Only then do they think they know him.
If you say to grown-ups, “I saw a beautiful house made of rosy brick, with geraniums in the windows and doves on the roof,” they cannot imagine such a house. You have to say, “I saw a house worth a hundred thousand francs.” Then they exclaim, “What a pretty house!”
| PRAYER Hold in prayer those who find this season difficult to face. Remember the ones who, like the pilot, feel the ache of loss or the weight of remembering. Ask God to meet them gently, to bring light into their quiet places, and to keep imagination and hope alive as we draw close to Christmas once more. |
🕯️ Advent Week 1 — Hopeful Confusion
Day 5
Look up Romans 13:11-14
OR CLICK HERE TO READ IT ONLINE
On Tuesdays throughout Advent, we will read the week’s New Testament reading, usually from the epistles. Today we join Paul, late on in his letter to the Christians in Rome. He is encouraging them to live their faith in everyday life under the pressures of a hostile culture around them. The community was waiting for Christ’s return as something imminent but struggling to stay alert and hopeful as time went on. Paul reminds them that faith is not just about believing for the future but about being awake to what God is doing now. “Wake from sleep,” he says, “for salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers.” Advent asks for the same watchfulness: the sense that something precious is at stake, both within us and in the world around us.
| PAUSE Take five deep breaths. Check-in with how you are feeling – in body, in mind, in spirit. Picture the horizon just before dawn breaks. Take five more breaths and let the phrase “the day is near” play gently in your mind. |
Paul’s warning to “wake up” finds an echo in today’s chapter of The Little Prince. The danger on the Little Prince’s planet is not sudden or dramatic, but slow and creeping. Baobab trees begin as tiny shoots, easy to overlook. Left alone, their roots grow deep and strong until they split the planet apart. Each morning the Little Prince checks for new shoots and pulls them up before they take hold. It is quiet, faithful work — the kind of waking Paul writes about — seeing what needs tending while there is still time.
Chapter 5
Beware of Baobabs
Every day I learned something on the planet — about the little prince’s departure, about his journey. The information came very slowly, in moments when he was reflective. On the third day I learned about the danger of the baobabs.
It began again with the sheep, for suddenly the Little Prince asked me, as if caught in a serious doubt, “It’s true, isn’t it, that sheep eat shrubs?”
“Yes, that’s true,” I said.
“Ah, I’m glad,” he replied.
I didn’t understand why it mattered so much that sheep ate shrubs, but the Little Prince added, “So they also eat baobabs?”
I explained that baobabs were not shrubs but great trees, as large as churches, and that even if he brought a whole herd of elephants, it would not be enough to eat a single one. The idea of the elephants made the Little Prince laugh. “We’d have to put them one on top of another,” he said. Then, thinking more seriously, he added, “The baobabs start off small, before they grow.”
“That’s true,” I said. “But why do you want your sheep to eat the little baobabs?”
He answered, “Oh, come on!” as though it were obvious. It took me quite some time to work his problem for myself.
On the planet of the Little Prince, as on all planets, there were good plants and bad plants. So there were good seeds of good plants and bad seeds of bad ones. But the seeds are invisible. They sleep in the secret of the earth until one of them decides to wake. Then it stretches and pushes upward, timidly at first, toward the sun — a tender little shoot. If it’s a radish or a rose, you can let it grow as it likes. But if it’s a bad plant, you must pull it up as soon as you can tell what it is.
Now, on the Little Prince’s planet, there were some terrible seeds — the seeds of baobabs. The soil was full of them. And if you leave it too late, you can never get rid of them. They take over the whole planet. They pierce it through with their roots, and if the planet is too small, and the baobabs too many, the planet bursts apart.
“It’s a matter of discipline,” the Little Prince told me later. “When you’ve finished getting yourself ready in the morning, you must also then get the planet ready for the day as well. You have to pull up the baobabs regularly, as soon as you can tell them apart from the roses, which they closely resemble when they’re very young. It’s a very boring job, but very easy.”
One day he told me I ought to make a fine drawing of it, to help the children where I live remember. “If they travel one day,” he said, “it could help them. Sometimes it doesn’t seem important to put things off. But with baobabs, it always ends in disaster. I once knew a planet inhabited by a lazy man. He neglected three little bushes…”
So, at the Little Prince’s request, I drew this planet. I don’t usually like to sound like a moralist, but the danger of the baobabs is so little known, and the risk so great for anyone wandering among the stars, that for once I made an exception.
“Children,” I say, “watch out for the baobabs!”
I wanted to warn any friends about the danger they have lived with for so long, just as I had, without knowing it. That’s why I worked so hard on this drawing. The lesson was worth the effort.
You may wonder why there aren’t other drawings in this book as grand as the drawing of the baobabs on the next page. The answer is simple: I tried, but I couldn’t do it. When I drew the baobabs, I was filled with a feeling of urgency.
| PONDER Advent, like Lent, is a baobab season! It invites us to take stock and to care. The Little Prince shows that neglect can let small things grow until they threaten the whole planet. Advent calls us to tend our own hearts and homes, and also the great home we share with all creation. How can we use this Advent to deal with baobabs in the small patch of life that is ours to nurture? And what about the baobabs that plague us all and the wider world we all depend on? |
| PRAISE Reflect on your own little planet. Some things are more fragile than they once were, as we have changed over the years. Take time, though, to remember the baobabs you have dealt with in the past. Some were deeply rooted, and you never thought you would be rid of them. Others you faced quickly and easily. And there are seeds you know will return — but now you have the life and wisdom to uproot them when they do. Give thanks for what you’ve faced down and left behind. |
🕯️ Advent Week 1 — Hopeful Confusion
Day 6
Chapter 6 — Forty Four Sunsets
Ah! Little prince, I have understood, little by little, your little melancholy life. You had only for a long distraction the sweetness of the sunsets. I learned this new detail, on the fourth day in the morning, when you said to me, “I like the sunsets. Let’s see a sunset.”
“But you have to wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“Wait until the sun goes down.”
You looked very surprised at first, and then you laughed at yourself. And you said to me, “I keep on thinking I’m at home!” Indeed. When it is noon in the United States, the sun, as everyone knows, is setting in France. If you could travel to France in one minute, you could watch the sun setting there. Unfortunately, France is far too far away though. But, on your little planet, it was enough for you to pull your chair a few steps. And you were watching twilight falling whenever you wished.
“One day I watched the sun go down forty four times” you told me! And a little later you added, “you know, when you’re really sad, you love sunsets.”
“So the day you watched those forty four sunsets, were you really sad?” I asked. But the little prince made no reply.
| PAUSE Take five deep breaths. Check-in with how you are feeling – in body, in mind, in spirit, especially in the light of the melancholy in today’s chapter. Take five more deep breaths and sit with God to watch a sunset in your memory, imagination or for real. |
Look up Psalm 122
OR CLICK HERE TO READ IT ONLINE
On Wednesdays throughout Advent, we will read the Psalm for the week. Advent is a pilgrimage. Psalm 122 gives us the voice of those who have arrived. The pilgrims have walked, waited, and reached the holy city. Their feet carry dust from the road; their breath carries prayers shaped by the journey. They are no longer on the way — they are within the gates.
But the Little Prince speaks from a different place. He is not at the gate; he is in exile. On Earth, far from home, he remembers the days when he could watch the sunset forty-four times on his own small planet. Then, he was at home, turning again and again toward the light he loved. Now, he is the traveller, longing to return — like a pilgrim who dreams of Jerusalem, eyes fixed on the horizon that will one day bring him home.
Advent is about both. It holds together what has already happened and what is still to come. Christ has come — the Word made flesh, born into the dust and joy of our world — yet the world is not yet healed. We live between those truths: God has drawn near, and God will draw near again. Advent is the season that refuses to choose between them.
| PONDER “Forty-four times” sounds like excess, but perhaps it is devotion. What practices do you rely on to keep hope alive? What would forty-four sunsets of prayer look like in your own life? What practice could you begin (or begin again) this Advent? |
| PRAY Give thanks for the glimpses of hope you see already see this Advent, despite the confused times we are living in. Like the Psalmist, pray for the peace of your city, your family, your soul. Let the words of the psalm become your prayer — ‘peace be within your walls; peace be within you.’ |
🕯️ Advent Week 1 — Hopeful Confusion
Day 7
| PONDER Make a quick mental list of what’s broken around you — the hinge that sticks, the light that flickers, the thing you keep meaning to mend. How does that list make you feel? Hold that feeling for a moment before you read on. |
Our first week with the prince and the pilot draws to a close. The pilot grows frustrated as he struggles to repair his plane. He wants to focus on nuts, bolts, and engine parts — things that seem solid and practical. But the little prince keeps asking about thorns. “What use are they?” he wonders. The pilot, distracted, snaps that thorns are useless — that flowers have them out of sheer spite. The little prince is horrified. His face turns red, and anger and sadness pour out. This is the first time we see the little prince cry. It moves the pilot deeply; his irritation melts into compassion.
Chapter 7
The War Between Sheep and Flowers
On the fifth day and once again to the sheep, a secret of the little prince’s life was revealed to me. He asked me abruptly, without preamble, as if voicing a question he had long pondered in silence, “A sheep, if it eats shrubs, does it also eat flowers?”
“A sheep eats whatever it finds,” I replied.
“Even flowers with thorns?”
“Yes. Even flowers with thorns.”
“Then what are the thorns for?”
I didn’t know. I was busy trying to unscrew a bolt that was stuck too tightly on my engine. I was really worried — the breakdown was starting to look serious, and with our drinking water nearly gone, I feared the worst.
“What are thorns for?” he asked again.
The little prince never let go of a question once he had asked it. Irritated by my bolt, I answered without thinking, “thorns are useless. It’s just pure wickedness on the part of flowers.”
“Oh!”
After a pause, he said, with a kind of bitterness, “I don’t believe you. Flowers are weak. They’re naive. They reassure themselves as best they can. They think their thorns make them fierce.”
I didn’t reply. At that moment, I was thinking: If this bolt still won’t budge, I’ll smash it with a hammer. But the little prince interrupted my thoughts again, saying “Do you really think that about flowers?”
“No! No! I don’t think anything! I said whatever came to mind. I’m busy with things that actually matter!”
He looked at me, stunned. “Things that actually matter?” He saw me with my hammer in hand, my fingers black with grease, bent over an object that seemed very ugly to him. “You talk like grown-ups.” I felt a little ashamed of myself. But he was relentless. He added, “you confuse everything, you mix everything up!”
He was really quite angry. His golden hair shook in the wind. “I know a planet where there’s a red-faced gentleman. He’s never smelled a flower. He’s never looked at a star. He’s never loved anyone. He’s never done anything but add numbers. And all day long he repeats, just like you: ‘I’m busy with things that actually matter! I’m busy with things that actually matter!’ And it makes him puff up with pride. But he’s not a man — he’s a mushroom!”
“A what?”
“A fungus!”
The little prince was now pale with anger. “For millions of years flowers have been growing thorns. And for millions of years sheep have still been eating flowers. And it doesn’t really matter to try to understand why flowers go to all that trouble to make thorns that are of no use to them? Isn’t the war between sheep and flowers more important than the sums of a big red gentleman? And if I know a flower — unique in all the world — that exists nowhere but on my planet, and a little sheep can destroy it in one bite, one morning, without even knowing what it’s doing, doesn’t that really matter?”
He blushed, then continued. “If someone loves a flower that’s one-of-a-kind among millions and millions of stars, that’s enough to make him happy when he looks at the stars. He says to himself: My flower is out there somewhere. But if the sheep eats the flower, then for him it’s as if all the stars suddenly went dark. And that’s not important?”
He couldn’t say anything more. He suddenly burst into tears.
Night had fallen. I let go of my tools. I no longer cared about my hammer, my bolt, my thirst, or even my death. On a star — a planet, the Earth — there was a little prince to comfort.
I took him in my arms. I held him. I said to him:
“The flower you love is not in danger. I’ll … draw a muzzle for your sheep. I’ll … draw armour for your flower. I’ll … ” I didn’t know what else to say. I felt clumsy. I didn’t know how to reach him, how to join him. The land of tears is so mysterious.
A Collect for the First Week of Advent
Holy Thief, stealing away our false securities and idle vanity: awaken us from the dull sleep that clings to empty fear and vacant routine; unfold on us the time of crisis when love of truth floods a thirsty world; through Jesus Christ, the one who is to come. Amen
(Steven Shakespeare, Prayers for an Inclusive Church, Canterbury Press, 2008.)
This prayer fits the story like a key. The “Holy Thief” steals away the pilot’s false security in machinery and self-sufficiency. The moment of crisis comes when love floods in — unexpected, disruptive, and true. In Advent, God breaks into our routines the same way: not to wound, but to awaken us to what really matters. In our gospel this, Jesus speaks of the coming of the Son of Man as something no one can predict — a quiet hour when ordinary life continues as usual. Perhaps this is what the little prince’s tears reveal: that love often arrives unnoticed, right in the middle of our repairs and routines, asking us to stay awake to what is tender and true.
| PAUSE You may have forgotten that list of broken things from the start. Take a moment to bring it back. Name them, one by one. Not to fix them — just to notice. God doesn’t always mend what’s broken straight away. Sometimes the fault stays, and still God stays. Advent teaches us to live with what’s not yet mended. |
| PRAISE Give thanks for the love that cannot be measured or mended, only received. Praise God who comes not first to fix the world, but to be with it. As this opening week of our Advent journey draws to a close, bring to mind one thing that still confuses you, and one thing that still gives you hope. Offer them together to God, without needing an answer. |