Waiting
As a kid, December brought with it a lot of waiting—waiting to decorate, waiting for school to be out, waiting for my sisters’ Christmas concert to be over. And of course, I was waiting for Christmas morning and unwrapping presents.
Such waiting has made it easier to embrace a more concerted observance of Advent, for Advent is a time that teaches us to wait. In this season, we look back and remember God’s people expectantly longing for the first coming of Christ, and we look forward, waiting in hope for his second.
Advent’s lessons in waiting seem increasingly important to me, for I grow more and more convinced that the life of faith is a life of waiting. We’re waiting on God. We’re waiting for him to fulfill his promises and to unite all things in Christ.
Waiting is an act of faith. It requires faith because we’re trusting God, relying on him to be good and faithful. Waiting exposes the weaknesses of our faith, revealing the divide between our knowledge of God and our belief in him. Waiting also grows us in faith as it makes us face our own finitude. I am limited, unable to bring about the things for which I long.
Waiting is hard work. Has there ever been a time marked by patience? Surely, our age is not one that reinforces the value of patience. I seek the smallest possible interval between the inkling of a desire and its fulfillment. When I do have to wait, I find it so difficult because there’s nothing I can do to hurry it along. It’s busy-less work. All my extraneous activity eventually exhausts itself, and still I wait. How much more true this seems with the work of God. He doesn’t seem hurried along by schedule.
Scripture recognizes the difficulty of waiting. It speaks of waiting with the language of preparing for battle. “Wait for the Lord,” David commands, “Be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord” (Ps 27:14). This is how the Lord instructed Joshua was he prepared to lead the people of Israel into battle for the promised land: “Be strong and courageous, of you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to the law that Moses my servant commanded you” (Josh 1:6-7). Waiting is a battle. It is a a battle of the heart, a battle of the flesh versus the spirit. No wonder then, that the Apostle Paul identifies patience as a fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22). Only God’s grace to us through the Holy Spirit can enable us to do the hard work of waiting well. The courage and strength needed to wait upon the Lord must come from him.
David, who composed Psalm 27, was no stranger to waiting. When he was only a boy (maybe 10 to 15 years old), the prophet Samuel anointed him as king over Israel (1 Samuel 16). David is set apart to be king over the whole nation, but then, he continues as a shepherd, caring for his family’s flocks. It will be years—including years of being pursued by Saul—before David becomes king over Judah (2 Sam 2). Then, it will be another seven years until, at the age of 30, David becomes king over Israel (2 Sam 5:4). David had been set apart by God when he was only a boy, and it took until the age of 30 to see this promise fulfilled. The intervening years were fraught with danger, intrigue, and betrayal. Through it all, David learned to be strong and courageous as he waited upon the Lord.
Again and again, the Bible reveals that God works through waiting. God often accomplishes the most in his people’s lives when he seems the most absent. For years, Abraham and Sarah wait and wonder if God will be faithful to his promise of a son. Joseph waited in captivity for years, first as a slave and then as a prisoner. Moses waited for in the wilderness for 40 years before God took him back to Egypt to lead his people out of slavery. In each of these accounts, we can look and find the work God was doing in the waiting. When God calls people, he calls them to wait in order to deepen their faith and grow them into the people they need to be.
Advent reminds us that people of faith are people who wait upon the Lord. Advent invites us to remember how God’s people waited for the coming of Christ, so that we can join in waiting faithfully his return. All the while, we trust that the waiting is not wasted, for we know that God continues to work to bring about his good purposes.
