My guilty conscience leads me to confess this. I have been guilty of that most heinous of Christmas crimes. I have, when all in the house is quiet, when a tiny creak in the floor would shatter the silence like brick through a window, snuck into my parents closet with mischief in mind. I have, as they snored, dreaming of their angelic children growing up to cure cancer and save the rainforest, devilishly rummaged through their hidden stash of goodies meant for me. They had things planned for me that I would love, come Christmas Day, but I didn’t want to love it on Christmas day. I wanted to love it now! Or more accurately I wanted to love it now and on Christmas day, as if having my cake and eating it too had ever been possible in the world. I was tired of waiting. Looking back I don’t think it was even about the presents. As with so many things, the issue wasn’t the real issue. What I wanted was represented for me by those presents. I wanted Christma, and the world be damned, I wanted it now! It was as if the meaning of those nights spent singing carols of anticipation around the lit candles of advent had been completely lost on me. I wanted Christmas without advent. I’d probably want Easter without lent, and maybe I’d go ahead and just have God skip the millennia of a fallen world and have him fix it all in a day. Wouldn’t everything be beautiful if there was no need for waiting, and in turn, preparation, and as a result growth.
Waiting.
There is a holiness in waiting. It started with God, waiting until “the fullness of time” to send his son to reconcile himself to the people who had betrayed him. Who had turned their back on him. He waited, with things not right in the world for only God knows how long. He waited when he could have fixed everything right then. And in so much as God can feel hurt, as God’s heart can be broken, he lived with it and waited. So needless to say there is biblical precedence for waiting. Jesus too waited, spending time as a helpless infant and a rambunctious youth. Close to thirty years before the reason he had been sent could begin to take shape, to be formed into completion from the multitude of potential that had, until that point, been building and growing, like a water balloon about to burst. And the Jews got pretty good at waiting themselves. They waited as slaves in Egypt. They were delivered and God had them wait another 40 years in the desert wilderness before they were allowed into the promised land. They waited from the time of Abraham until the birth of Jesus for the messiah that would deliver them permanently out of the trouble they seemed to constantly be caught in. And it wasn’t easy. And not all of them could do it. Some grew tired of waiting and turned to less fulfilling things. Some looked at the fruit that was forming in their lives and grabbed it with both hands, biting in to what was not yet ripe. And missed what could have been because the time was not right. Perhaps they thought the time was then. Or, more likely, they thought that what they were waiting for would never come. Their hope and faith failed them and they gave out with a last gasp and let go. I expect that they had taken it on the chin one too many times to remember the occasions when God had helped them win. One too many blows to the head, and punch-drunk, they abandoned the chase.
I can sympathize excruciatingly with these poor souls. With all poor souls who have found themselves unable to wait for their lives to reach their potential. Friends who have decided to take matters into their own hands. I’ve had friends marry girls not right for them out of fear of permanent solitude. I’ve known too many give in to the quiet darkness and silence of loneliness and say to themselves, “this will never end unless I make it end.” I have thought these things. I have been afraid of these things. You see, nobody wants to wait for what will never come. Nobody wants to admire the view of all those things passing him by if he can’t remain convinced that this isn’t his stop. That his destination will have all of those things and more. It’s like we’re all on a train to somewhere and we can only see out the windows to the side. We can see the people smiling. They must be happy getting off here. But its not where I’m supposed to get off. And that is difficult. The train ride gets longer, it gets dark outside, I can’t see where I’m going, and I can’t see where I’m at. And I can only hear myself in the silence. “What if is this ride never stops?” “What if where you’re going is worse than where you’ve been?” These voices have overtaken many, and they could overtake me. In their subtle, constant pull on my heart. But they are not of God. After all, God waited. And he’s made promises, and if there’s any one to be trusted to keep their promises, its God.
Now, grown up, or at least more so I can appreciate advent like I did not as a child. Advent is a wonderful gift from God. The blessing of advent is this: that at no other time in the world is the beauty of waiting and preparation as evident. The joy of Christmas is realized on Christmas day, but it is only a piece of the entire beautiful picture of a hearts cry for rightness, a God who would have things put right, and the time it takes to paint the picture of God’s glory in this world as only the artist himself would paint it. As the prophet Diana Ross put it: You can’t hurry love. You’ll just have to wait. And wait I will for God to complete the picture of my life as he intends it. And when my life’s Christmas arrives, I’ll be ready and the joy will be perfect and complete. Amen.
