You, LORD, are our father,

our redeemer you are named forever.

Why do you let us wander, O LORD, from your ways,

and harden our hearts so that we fear you not?

Return for the sake of your servants,

the tribes of your heritage.

Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,

with the mountains quaking before you,

while you wrought awesome deeds we could not hope for,

such as they had not heard of from of old.

No ear has ever heard, no eye ever seen, any God but you

doing such deeds for those who wait for him.

Would that you might meet us doing right,

that we were mindful of you in our ways!

Behold, you are angry, and we are sinful;

all of us have become like unclean people,

all our good deeds are like polluted rags;

we have all withered like leaves,

and our guilt carries us away like the wind.

There is none who calls upon your name,

who rouses himself to cling to you;

for you have hidden your face from us

and have delivered us up to our guilt.

Yet, O LORD, you are our father;

we are the clay and you the potter:

we are all the work of your hands.

Isaiah 63:16B-17, 19B, 64:2-7

That’s right: Based on the First Reading for the First Sunday of Advent, later this month, because I’m in an apocalyptic frame of mind. To the tune AURELIA (“The Church’s One Foundation”):

 Come, Lord, and save your servants,
 if servants still we are;
 devoted hearts and fervent
 are now benumbed and hard.
 Long gone is our observance;
 your words we cast afar.
 Oh, Lord of bonds and burdens,
 return and touch our hearts.
  
 Oh, savior, rend the heavens
 as once you tore the veil
 that kept us from your presence
 and bound us, mortal, frail
 to death's all-dread incessance
 and to this shadowed vale
 where now we wander senseless,
 found wanting in the scales.
  
 Though we have failed, oh Potter,
 in love and vigilance,
 don't cast us down to shatter
 upon these desert sands.
 Revive your sons and daughters,
 the labor of your hands,
 with your own living water.
 Restore us with your glance!