According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, to wait is to “to stay in place in expectation of.” Advent is the season of intentional waiting. It is the invitation to stay in place and expect.
When Thanksgiving comes as late as it has this year and the reality that Christmas is just a few weeks away, it’s easy to feel the panic. What do I need to do? What does my family expect? What commitments have I made? How much decorating, cooking, and planning is expected of me? These are the questions that are all too easy to fall prey to during this season but to think only of Christmas is to miss Advent. And to miss Advent is to miss the importance of waiting. It is to miss the importance of staying in place in expectation. It is to miss the deep need to prepare our hearts.
The Reality of Advent
We light candles and use the words hope, peace, joy, and love, but I often wonder, do we really expect them? In a world that feels so fractured and polarized, where family gatherings can simply be magnifying glasses for the broken places in our lives, do you and I stay in place expecting these things? Do you expect hope to come over you and change your life? What about peace? And joy? What about genuinely pure love?
I wonder if Advent isn’t a call to resistance. I wonder if it isn’t a call to resist the temptation to get pulled into the chaos, to the busy nature of the season to the pressure to do it all right.
Perhaps the art of Advent waiting is to resist all those things and defiantly stay in place genuinely expecting hope and peace and joy and love. Perhaps the art of Advent waiting is so counter-cultural that it has the power to transform our lives and prepare our hearts to receive the love of God in the most vulnerable way possible; that of a human infant, totally dependent on human nurturing.
Standing Together in Faith
I wonder if we might encourage one another this year to stay in place and simply expect that God does indeed keep God’s promises and that you and I are about to witness a miracle! I pray we stand firm together, staying in place and waiting.
Emmanuel is coming!
Grace and Peace,
Leigh
