Mikali Anagnostis, Rev Glen Spencer, and Helen Norton have generously contributed their creative skills to write a new song, Emmanuel (Draw Near to Us), for Common Grace's 2026 Advent series, with input from John Arndt and David Gungor from The Brilliance.
Sometimes, a song gives language to our longing. It can help us hold onto hope, imagine a different world and keep walking towards it. And when we sing together, that hope becomes something we share.
This feels especially true in Advent, when we pay attention to the world as it is, and long for the world that is coming.
We look at our fractured world and cry out for peace, justice, reconciliation and healing. We long for a world made whole. And Advent meets us in that place with a surprising promise: God comes near - into the mess, the rubble and the places where hope feels most out of reach.
Emmanuel (Draw Near to Us) was born from this Advent hope. Written by Common Grace songwriters Helen Norton, Mikali Anagnostis and Glen Spencer, with creative input from The Brilliance, the song is part of Common Grace’s 2026 Divine Disruption Advent series.
It invites us to behold where God is already at work, drawing us towards one another and inviting us to join in God's work of restoring all things.
This is the story of Emmanuel (Draw Near to Us).
The song began around Helen's piano in her spare bedroom.
Helen, Mikali and Glen had been invited by Common Grace to write a song for the 2026 Advent series, Divine Disruption. As they began writing, they kept coming back to the heart of Advent: God comes to us.
“We might be pursuing justice,” Mikali reflects, “but Advent reminds us that God comes to us. God is already at work, and we get to join in.”
That thread runs through the whole song. We long for peace and work towards justice, but we are not waiting for God to finally show up. God is already moving towards us.
There’s a peace that longs to kiss the earth
To heal our fractures and our wars
Into the rubble of a world that’s torn
Hope like a child being born.
Written with the reality of devastation in Palestine, the birthplace of Jesus, fresh in their minds, these words hold together the ache of the world as it is and the hope of the world as it could be.
For Mikali, there is something both “absurd and hopeful” about a child being born into rubble.
The Christmas story is, after all, a story of God entering a world that is far from whole.
“God comes into the mess because we can’t work it out ourselves,” Helen says. “There’s this longing for hope to be born.”
The song continued to take shape when Mikali and Glen had the opportunity to work with John Arndt and David Gungor from The Brilliance during a creative writing retreat with Uniting Creative. Together, they reworked the music and lyrics, with the phrase “a new world breaking through” emerging from that collaboration.
One word became particularly important as the song took shape: “behold.”
“That word that really struck a chord with me” notes Glen. “I love the invitation to lift our eyes in worship of the One who has drawn near, but also to be attentive to what is happening around us and notice where God is already at work.”
Emmanuel we long for you to come
Grace our eyes to see where your work’s begun.
That prayer feels particularly fitting for Advent. We are not simply asking God to come and fix everything. We are asking for eyes to see the places where love, justice, peace and reconciliation are already taking root.
Behold! Behold! Behold!
A new world breaking through.
And God's nearness doesn't simply draw us towards God. It draws us towards each other.
You draw near to us
Draw us to each other.
For Mikali, those words speak into a world increasingly marked by division and othering.
“There’s a fresh possibility when we’ve become so used to violence and othering. In Christ, we can become one and enter into the life of God together.”
That idea feels very much at the heart of Common Grace. We are a movement of people from different places, traditions and experiences, learning what it means to pursue justice together, listen to voices that have been unheard and work towards a different way of being community.
For the songwriters, and the Common Grace team, it is our deep hope and prayer that churches and faith communities will sing this song together throughout this Advent season and beyond.
Mikali would love it to be “a gift to communities”, giving people language for what they feel and yearn for, and nourishing them as they continue the journey towards justice.
Helen hopes churches will make space for songs that help us sing about more than our individual faith. Songs that give voice to the bigger story of God's kingdom: justice, mercy, reconciliation and the hope of a world being made new.
For Helen, one of the most surreal moments came when the song was sung at Common Grace’s 2026 Let Justice Flow Conference. A song that had started around her piano was suddenly being sung back by the movement.
That is part of the gift of a song. It can leave the hands of the people who wrote it and become something a community carries together.
And that is what makes Emmanuel (Draw Near to Us) such a fitting song for Divine Disruption.
This year's Common Grace Advent series invites us to notice the surprising ways God comes near, disrupting the ordinary, meeting us in unexpected places and drawing us towards one another.
The song gives that invitation a melody:
Grace our eyes to see where your work’s begun.
So as Advent approaches, perhaps we simply need to behold.
To look again at the world around us.
To see where peace is taking root, where love is reaching out, where strangers are being drawn close and where hope is being born in unexpected places.
God's new world is not only something we wait for.
It is already breaking through.
Emmanuel (Draw Near to Us) has been released as part of Common Grace's 2026 Divine Disruption Advent series. We hope you'll listen, sing it with your community and make space this Advent to see where God is already drawing near.
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Feature Image Credit: Helen Norton, Mikali Anagnostis and Glen Spencer performing 'Emmanuel' at the Common Grace 2026 Let Justice Flow Conference. Song cover art 'Gift' by Jo Huntington.
Helen Norton is a song-writer and candidate for ordained ministry in the Uniting Church. She has a passion for the role of creativity in bringing about social transformation and loves bringing people together around the story of Jesus, embracing the marginalised and restoring justice.
Rev. Glen Spencer is the Associate General Secretary - Mission and Education for the Uniting Church Synod of NSW and ACT. He writes songs hopeful that music might open us to new ways of seeing and being, and so join the God who is reconciling and renewing all things.
Mikali Anagnostis is a candidate for ordained ministry in the Uniting Church. As a musician and song-writer, Mikali leads and contributes to the sacred arts collective Marion St, which creates worship music centring voices from the margins of the church.
Mikali Anagnostis, Rev Glen Spencer, and Helen Norton have generously contributed their creative skills to write a new song, Emmanuel (Draw Near to Us), for Common Grace's 2026 Advent series, with input from John Arndt and David Gungor from The Brilliance.
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