The light turns green, you hesitate for only a second, and the person behind you honks. You are infuriated, and flip them off. Not that you have ever done that, but it is pretty irritating! The impatience of others drives you nuts. Then again, when the food is late at the restaurant, when somebody is taking for-ev-er to make a turn, your impatience gets to irritate them. We all stink at waiting.
Because of this, and because our default drive is to want everything yesterday, we stink at Advent too. What do I mean? We want to sing Christmas carols the day after Thanksgiving, and miss a whole season of intentional waiting, and in so doing, we miss honing our spiritual experience to include "waiting" or "longing" as a primary theme. If you think God is supposed to show up all the time for you, you are going to be sorely disappointed. Because regular operational procedure is.... you have to wait.
What are you waiting on? A job? Spouse? Child? Friends? Physical or emotional health? Self discovery? To finally be happy? To not be restless? For friends to be reconciled? For life not to feel soul killing? For that financial deal to finally come through? For a promotion? For people to like you? To not feel alone? For the grieving to end and the healing to begin? For your child to wake up? For your spouse to wake up? For you to wake up?
That's what Advent is all about. Longing. How Long O Lord? This is what Isaiah the prophet asks God after a seemingly hopeless oracle. He's asking "is it ever going to get better?" To quote Fleming Rutledge:
"This is exactly where we are in Advent. Here we are stuck with North Korea, "the land of lousy options." Here are the poor Haitians, their whole country sick unto death and half the foreign aid piled up in warehouses for lack of a distribution system. Here is Iraq, with the residents who returned to the country two years ago now leaving again in desperation. Here is our own country mired in the most uncivil, negative, and adversarial public mood that anyone can remember. Here are the shrimpers of our Gulf Coast, almost completely forgotten since the BP spill was plugged up, yet-according to an NPR interview today-suffering in a heartbreaking fashion.
"How long, O Lord?" Is it ever going to get any better? Advent tells us the bleak truth: there is no human capacity able to rescue this planet from itself."
Advent tells us that life is filled with waiting on God. Maybe we've forgotten along the way that waiting is a primary theme, not a secondary theme in Christian experience. Is it possible we've bailed on our faith because we didn't anticipate this waiting? Or we've compromised our values in areas of our lives because we didn't anticipate the waiting? To quote Rutledge further: "Advent is only secondarily about the baby Jesus. It is primarily about the rending of the heavens and the coming of the Lord in power and glory to take the creation back for himself."
When is that going to happen? Well, you'll have to wait. And I suppose you can flip God off for making you wait. While I understand the urge, Advent comes to us and says, "God has done this before, and he'll do it again, and in the waiting, I'll grow you up, I'll not abandon you, I'm here, trust me". Advent, ultimately, tells us to trust that He'll show. So let's not skip waiting and go straight to the manger. Instead let's allow the manger to tell us He can be trusted, and to wait alongside each other.
The full Fleming Rutledge article can be found here >
Daily Advent Devotionals
A time of anticipation marks the season of Advent as we prepare for the arrival of the Messiah, the Savior of the world, Jesus born on Christmas day. We have various advent resources available here >