Advent Meditations About Waiting

A word about waiting…waiting is hard

Advent is a season in the church calendar that we participate in just prior to Christmas.   There is all manner of historical background that informs the Advent season, and if you would like a short historical summary, I recommend Ryan Reeves’ article on The Gospel Coalition website entitled, The History of Advent. 

Bottom line, Advent is a season of waiting and preparation.  Preparations have their challenges, but they can be overcome.  We all spend time buying presents, mailing Christmas cards, and getting the house ready with decorations for our guests. Making preparations can be costly and time-consuming, but even the most curmudgeonly among us, I think, still find some joy in preparing, as we listen to Christmas carols and see the twinkle of lights on the tree. 

Waiting, on the other hand, is another matter.  Waiting is hard, sometimes very hard.  Why is waiting so hard?  It’s hard because waiting requires trust.  When you wait, you have to put your faith in something or someone else.  When we wait we stop doing something in order to give time for something else to happen.  We have to put our trust in something, and that’s hard.  In fact, our success in waiting is directly tied to the trustworthiness of the object of our faith.  Put your hope in a dead seed, and you’ll be disappointed as you await harvest.  Put your hope in the sun to rise, and you’ll be rewarded because the sun has never failed to come up in all its years of existence.  What we wait for matters.      

The Psalmist encourages us to wait in the Lord, the best object of our faith.  He writes,

“I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning.”

(Psalm 130:5–6)

The Lord does not disappoint, he is more faithful than the sun.    

This Advent we practice waiting, and waiting is hard.  But it is made easier as we practice and remember in whom we are trusting.  We trust the Lord, we trust Christ.  He came long ago and said he would come again.  We can trust him.