Advent is teaching me more about waiting. After all, that’s been the theme lately. If I could sum up the season that I have been in for the past three years, it would be the phrase “waiting on the Lord”. In short, I’ve learned/am learning patience.
It feels like an ongoing dichotomy: I am content and yet still waiting. I am joyful and yet aching. When I read the news, when I hear from friends that are struggling, when the economy is taking its toll on us all, when my extended family fractures and splinters, when tragedies near and far occur, when small children are dying in war zones, when there is hunger, disease, war - when I take into my heart the sorrows of a broken world, I ache – with all of creation – for a deliverer.
Our soul – as humanity – waits for the Lord. We stand and wait in remembrance of his arrival in a manger. And we stand, expectant together, for another return, when all tears will be wiped away and God’s dreams for humanity and creation are realised.
More brilliance from Ann at Holy Experience:
In the waiting weeks of Advent, we too rustle in the winds of this world, quiet cries for SomeOne to finally enter our frozen hearts, break us free, gather us Home. The anticipation and expectation that sings on every street corner, on every tongue, through the weeks of December is the hope, the refrain, of freedom coming. Freedom coming down.
“Do you want to be delivered? That is the one great question Advent puts to us,” writes Dietrich Bonhoeffer. “Does even a vestige of longing burn in us? If not, what do we want from Advent, what do we want from Christmas?”
“Look up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” (Lk. 21:28)
It’s drawing near and I long to be delivered. My anticipation has been building in a way I can’t explain as I’ve followed Advent with the rest of the Church.
Advent reminds me that it is for God alone that my soul, in silence, waits. Truly my hope is in him. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold, so that I shall not be shaken.
In the midst of my life – privileged, beautiful, joyous and full of love even during bouts of children’s diarrhea(!) – I can’t forget that my trust is always in him, that I pour my heart out before him for God is my refuge. We are all like a fleeting breath but steadfast, unfailing love is only in God.
No wonder the cry of the church during this season is “Even so, come, Lord Jesus!”
This is a season of watchfulness
We watch and wait for the One who heard our cries and entered the suffering of our world
We expect new light to shine as the season of joy approaches.
(Much of this has come from Psalm 62, Psalm 65)
