What Are We Waiting For?

I’m not a very patient person; more than that, I hate being late for appointments or events. Whether I’m driving home from church, or watching my laptop for an email to come through, or trying to figure out what I’m going to write for my next blog post, I try to get things done quickly. Part of this comes from my personality, and part of it comes from several college education classes that instilled the value of economizing my words in the limited time frame of a lesson. And yet, with my tendency to rush headlong toward a goal or appointed time, I always find myself welcoming the times of preparation and expectation in the church, particularly Advent. More and more, I’m discovering the value of this season, where I have to hurry up and wait—the preparation for the coming of Christ is an important exercise in developing my faith.

When did you hear your first Christmas song this year? Were you able to avoid it until after Thanksgiving, then tune into whatever lite radio station was running Delilah’s show, or did you happen upon it even earlier than that? I confess that I started listening to some Christmas choral music as early as October- but that was more to get me in the mood as I planned worship for Advent than anything else. The Christmas decorations started going up in the retail stores just as soon as they stripped the stuff from Halloween, and the Lexus/Mercedes/Kay Jewelers commercials on TV weren’t far behind. We have become so conditioned to look forward to Christmas that we sometimes forget that Advent, just like Lent, is a season of waiting, as we yearn to hear the birth story again.

How many times in the Bible do we see of God causing people to hurry up and wait? Sarah waited so long to have a child that she laughed when told that she would bear Isaac. The Israelites were made to wander the desert for 40 years, before reaching the Promised Land. Even Jesus himself had to wait, not coming to us as a fully-grown man, but as a vulnerable newborn that would have to grow, all the while learning to walk, and talk, and navigate the challenges of his own world before beginning his ministry.

Last year, several church members approached me after each Sunday in Advent, asking why we weren’t singing the good old Christmas hymns yet. They were so eager to break into the familiar refrains of “Joy to the World” and “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” that they couldn’t help but be disappointed when they saw that we were singing things like “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” and “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence” instead. It’s a good problem to have: people who are ready to sing about the coming of Christ, and the beginning of his story all over again. But before the birth story can be told, we must hear of a voice crying out in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord!” What are we waiting for? Jesus, his birth, and all the celebrations that come along with it. But we still have to wait. And so we sing:

Come, thou long-expected Jesus,

born to set Thy people free;

from our fears and sins release us;

let us find our rest in thee.