Waiting

Wait for the Lord;
   be strong, and let your heart take courage;
   wait for the Lord! (Psalm 27: 14)

If longing and hoping are very much Advent themes, then so is waiting. But for most of us for most of the time, waiting is not easy. Like children on a long car journey we can end up incessantly asking ‘Are we nearly there yet?’

We do not live in a world where waiting is much valued. Everything seems to be ‘instant’. And – by and large – that is how we like it; instant coffee, instant ready-meals, instant gratification, instant credit....

... and the availability of instant credit (for example) means we no longer need to wait until we have ‘saved up’ before indulging our desire for whatever it is we would like to purchase.

But for some things we simply have to wait... there is no hurrying them by wishing they would come faster. They just take their time. Even the most excited child cannot make Christmas come any more quickly by wishing for it, or by opening all the doors on the Advent Calendar!

One of the reasons I choose to delay the putting up of Christmas decorations and the singing of Christmas carols until late in Advent is as a reminder of our need to wait and not ‘jump the gun’! I want to allow Advent to be this time when we explore longing and hoping and waiting and much more besides, rather than prematurely being all about Christmas!

Amongst other things, it serves as a wee reminder that God’s people had to wait for generation upon generation before their longing for the coming of Messiah was fulfilled (and even then it was not at all as they had expected!)

But waiting is not always easy.

Waiting can strengthen faith and can be an important spiritual discipline. But it can also lead to despair and loss of faith.

What makes the difference? I guess that would be a sermon – or a book – in itself! But one thing I do think is that the elimination of the need for waiting from much of our daily lives and the premature focus on the nativity story does not do much to help us to learn to positively and faithfully wait.

But I also wonder if the negative effects of waiting are also part of the story that we need to explore. 

It is all too easy to imagine God’s people waiting for centuries for the fulfilment of the ancient prophecies and imagine them watching, waiting, praying and longing; always looking to the heavens for the promise to be fulfilled. But in fact they often rebelled, rejected God, relied on themselves and turned to false gods.

No. Waiting is not always easy.