Advent and Waiting
Advent is about waiting for Jesus. For the long expected Savior. Anticipating and celebrating His arrival.
We look back with the perspective of Hope fulfilled and promises received.
What must it have been like to wait 400 years? To know the promises, but not completely understand what they were looking for. To live everyday wondering if today was the day. Did their spirits dip every evening at sunset? New dawn bringing hesitant hope or frustrated doubt. Or maybe indifference. How many stopped waiting at all?
We live in hope of fulfilled and promised deliverance. But that does not mean we are not all waiting on Jesus for something. We all have our own personal advent. Awaiting Jesus to step into a situation. Awaiting for rescue that feels promised. How do I keep my hope alive when my eyes feel strained from searching?
Even Jesus is no stranger to waiting. When His mother urged HIm to perform a miracle at the wedding in Cana, he responded “My time has not yet come.”
Waiting is holy work and a holy calling. It requires endurance. A constant supply of fuel for the journey. Measured breaths to fill your lungs like a runner in a marathon.
Waiting is not passive. It requires determination and intentionality to not accept detours to doubt, or bitterness, or distraction.
To be on this journey our strength and determination cannot come from ourselves. We cannot muster up what it takes to keep going.
We must keep our eyes on Jesus who never changes despite our circumstances. Choose again and again with every breath to remember and believe Truth. To remember what He has already done and what He promises to do.
When waiting is hard, it is tempting to try to reconcile our fleshly experiences with Truth. But that is an exhausting endeavor. And in our long journey, we normally only have enough strength for the trip, not to argue within ourselves. We are allowed to take God at His word, and to trust what He says is true despite our feelings.
We must always remember that we will always be waiting on something. We will not be satisfied until Heaven because this world will never satisfy.
I think of the Choir of Heavenly Hosts that sang to the shepherds in celebration of Jesus’ coming. That triumphant arrival was the beginning of a long difficult journey. One ending in death. And yet, they celebrated. Because the journey to the cross would ultimately bring the salvation of the world.
In our Advent, we can live in the “now, and not yet”, in the joy mixed with sorrow.
Because the long awaited Savior came into the world, and He is coming again to restore what sin stole. And until then Christ is with us in the current suffering sustaining us and sympathizing with us. Reminding us of what is to come, even in the waiting.
