We barely need to wait in line anymore – we can order online, and someone brings it to is. We are out of practice with waiting.
I’ve seen Christmas decorations in the store as early as June. And it often seems like most of it is gone by October. Halloween happens, and then “BAM,” the stores are playing Christmas music. Even in my own mind, winter begins as soon as Thanksgiving is over. Sometimes, if there is early snow, I am ready to play Christmas music.
Ultimately, Advent is the time of waiting between Jesus’ first coming, all those years ago, and his second coming, which is unknown to us. We are in an Advent now and have been since Jesus left this earth. And we set aside this time in the 4 weeks leading up to Christmas Day to do more than celebrate Christmas . . . but to wait, to long for. We long for Jesus to come back, because we know that when he does, all will be made right again. Historically, the people of God are very familiar with waiting. Whether it was waiting for them to be released from slavery to Pharaoh, waiting to reach the Promised Land after years in the wilderness, waiting to be released from their exile in Babylon, or waiting for God to give them the king they begged for . . . often, a great deal of waiting was involved in being God’s people. And when I think about impatience, I often think about the prophet Habakkuk.
Habakkuk was God’s prophet in a politically turbulent time. Assyria had ruled Judah with a heavy hand for well over a hundred years, inflicting punishment and tribulation. Still, Assyria was beginning to weaken, and soon Babylon would be the world power. Judah, God’s nation, had become morally and spiritually corrupt, and Habakkuk was complain-ing to God that he had to wait too long before God would do something about this moral corruption. God answers Habakkuk’s impatience: For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay. (Habakkuk 2:3) The whole book of Habakkuk is a conversation between God and this prophet, with Habakkuk continually dissatis-fied with God’s answers, and the waiting he has to do, because God’s wasn’t fixing the moral corruption of his people NOW. But God tells him to wait: “Though it linger, wait for it.”
As we wait and prepare to celebrate Christmas, consider how waiting can be passive and active in your life. We may not be able to do something to get Christmas to arrive faster, but we can notice what God is doing in us as we wait . . . how he might be refining us, using the time of waiting to strengthen our trust in his good and perfect plan. Make room for that waiting to be something powerful.
What often happens in our waiting is that God is providing a restoration and growth that we may not even realize we need.
In Christ, Pastor Stephanie
