I Can't Wait - 1st Sunday of Advent, 2022

 I can’t wait!

How often have we said “I can’t wait”? As children, we would say it in anticipation of Christmas and the gifts we were eager to receive. Expectant parents (and their parents – grandparents-to-be!) say it in anticipation of the birth of their child. “I can’t wait to hold her!” We adults say it in anticipation of seeing our children and grandchildren again. “I can’t wait to see you!”

We say “I can’t wait” about something we eagerly desire but can’t have just yet. It is about the future and our expectation of what the future will bring us. It looks to the future as we anticipate what will be but is not yet.

“I can’t wait!” Yet we do. We have to wait until the future becomes the present, until what will be becomes what is. Waiting is what we do in the midst of what is.

Waiting is not one of my favorite things to do - whether I’m stuck behind a slow driver in the fast lane on the interstate or in a line waiting to be seated at a restaurant or for processes to come to fruition in the life of the church. I don’t like waiting. I assume I am not alone in this struggle.

Waiting is a reminder that we are not in control – that’s why waiting is so frustrating and painful to us. Someone or something else is calling the shots and making the decisions. While what is is not what we want or would choose, we are powerless to change it. All we can do is wait (and fret and complain and . . .) Waiting invites us to focus on the only thing we can control – ourselves and our attitude while we wait.

The season of Advent – which begins today - is about waiting. The season reminds us that waiting is an inescapable part of life. It calls us to deal with the discomfort and impatience we feel when we have to wait. It teaches us how to deal with waiting. It invites us to make peace with waiting. It reminds us that waiting is an inherent part of being the people of God and the followers of Christ.

The Advent season lifts our focus from what is to what will be – the future. It points us to the coming of Jesus, first, in the promise of his birth and, second, in the promise of his return. The saints in the Hebrew scriptures looked forward to the birth of the Messiah and to the new way of life that the Messiah would usher into being. The New Testament saints lived with a keen sense of the imminent return of Jesus in which he would bring that new way of living (the Kingdom) to fulfillment.

Looking forward to what will be is an act of faith. We look forward in eager anticipation because of the promises of God. We trust the steadfast, faithful love of God, believing God is at work to bring about a future that is different from the present. Trusting God’s redeeming, transforming work, we believe what will be will not be like what is. Thus, for the followers of Jesus, waiting is about trust . . . trust in God’s faithfulness, trust in God’s promises, trust in God’s redeeming, transforming work, trust in what will be.  

Our faith transforms our waiting. It fills our waiting with hope. Hope is the forward look of faith. It is the quiet confidence that what God said will be will be, even though it is not yet. When our waiting is infused with hope, we move beyond fretting and complaining into peace – inner peace, a peace that cannot be explained (Philippians 4:7), the peace of Christ (John 14:27).

Waiting filled with hope is not passive. It is more than enduring what is. As we wait for what will be, we work to bring what will be into reality here, now. “Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). We live the ways of God in the midst of what is. In doing so, we partner with God in bringing into reality what will be – the kingdom, here on earth.

And so another Advent journey begins, teaching us the spiritual discipline of waiting as an expression of the forward look of our faith. I can’t wait to see what the journey will bring.