Actively Waiting

It’s time to sit around and wait. Well, if the hurry, rush, and business of the holiday season gave us the option to sit around. Regardless, we are just entering a time of waiting. It is a time of preparation. It is a time of anticipating. It is a time to reflect on what is yet to come. We are not all that good at waiting. We like to fill in the time with things to do, people to see, and places to go. I tend to carry at least one book with me to occupy myself when I know there is a high chance that I will be waiting.

Advent, however, is not quite the same as sitting around the doctor’s office in anticipation of my appointment, awaiting the doctor’s return after a review of my chart, of sitting in line awaiting blood work. Advent’s waiting has more to do with getting myself ready along the lines of training for a marathon, prepping for an exam, or preparing for the coming of a baby.

We await our celebration of Jesus’ birth, yet we likewise live in the expectation of Christ’s return and our joining God in a heavenly reality we can only vaguely grasp. The waiting of Advent is preparation like that of the farmer getting his fields ready for spring planting. It is like the waiting of a chef getting the kitchen in order in anticipation of what will come out of the oven. It is like the waiting of a teenager picking out what to wear to the prom, a bride planning her wedding, or an architect drafting the design for a new construction.

This waiting is work. It is anticipation. It is life-consuming. It is challenging. It is full of action, purpose, planning, and execution of those plans. If we are preparing for the coming of Messiah in celebration of Jesus’ birth and Jesus’ return, our waiting is not sitting by idly. It is a period of active reflection. It is a period of ministry. It is a period of building community. It is a period of doing the work of allowing God’s grace, love, and joy to flow through our lives as we anticipate the larger fulfillment of God’s presence coming into our world.

So, maybe waiting is not really the right word. Advent is living the reality we anticipate. It is making that future we anticipate a present reality even as we expect a greater fulfillment down the road. We can do more than sit around awaiting the coming fulfillment of God’s presence and fullness. We can begin to live into that coming reality, for to some extent, it is as we lean into that future reality that it begins to make its presence known already.

This Advent let us await the fulfillment of God’s coming presence, even as we make God’s presence more fully known. We are not called to idleness but to active reflection. Christ has come. Christ is here. Christ is coming again. We can live all of those realities as one.


— ©Copyright 2019, Christopher B. Harbin

http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/

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