Thoughts for Advent
A Time to Wait
When in your life have you felt the least patient? I think about when I’ve been travelling home after a long stint overseas, finding the final flight of my journey to be delayed - the injustice! Those weren’t my finest moments of patience. The Christian season of Advent is often likened to waiting, and that has me thinking of the different kinds of waiting we do…
There’s impatient waiting, like standing cold at a bus stop, urging the bus to appear on the horizon.
There’s passive waiting, like killing time in an airport terminal before you board a plane.
There’s fear-filled waiting, like sitting in a dentist’s lounge before your root canal.
There’s doubt-filled waiting, like worrying when somebody should have been home earlier but they haven’t arrived yet.
There’s ready waiting, like when you’ve finishing preparing for a dinner guest and are simply waiting for them to arrive.
The word advent means coming, and in all these different examples of waiting, something was coming (it’s just a matter of when). I wonder if there is an advent way to wait? We Christians deliberately embody postures of waiting throughout the four weeks before Christmas, remembering the Israelites who waited for the coming of their Messiah. Helpfully, Advent is full of symbols for us to reenact waiting. Some people wait until Advent to put up trees and decorations and to listen to Christmas music. Some count down the days with calendars and paper-doors. Most of us keep gifts wrapped and unopened in secrecy until the 25th, and we all wait to eat our Christmas dinners. In Churches all over the world, candles are slowly lit one by one each week until Christmas day.
During Advent, we can be reminded of another reason why Christians wait. Jesus came as a baby thousands of years ago, but Jesus is also coming. He will return. Advent holds this beautiful symphony of different types of waiting: remembering when and why Jesus came, but also remembering the second coming and that we wait eagerly for Jesus to return and finish what He started. We humans get so fixated on the idea going to heaven when we die, but really we’re waiting for heaven to come to earth. God brought heaven to earth when Jesus came, but we wait for the true fullness of this.
This advent season, let us remember what type of waiting Christians are called to. It isn’t a frantic, worrisome, fear-filled waiting, nor is it a ‘sit back and relax’ passive waiting. We wait in eager, confident expectation. Not just the four weeks of advent, but every week of the year; every week of our lives. We embody readiness and trust. We behold preparedness and anticipation. We live out joyful preparation. For, baby Jesus came all those years ago as the true King of God’s people, establishing His kingdom here on earth, and we wait with hope-filled faithfulness knowing that Jesus will one day return, like He said He would.