Waiting. The season of Advent is about waiting … waiting for what is not yet but will be.
Waiting does not come easily for most of us — waiting in line … waiting for the light to change … waiting in stop-and-go traffic … waiting for that special occasion to finally arrive … waiting for what we want but don’t have.
Waiting is often frustrating. Waiting leaves us feeling powerless … at the mercy of time or circumstances beyond our control. It confronts us with something that is “out of our hands.” It leaves us with time on our hands … unproductive time … time we can’t spend as we would like … time that seems wasted. When we are waiting, the best it seems we can do is to mark time. “I’ve been stuck in this traffic for 30 minutes.” “It’s 26 days until Christmas.”
Waiting is about the future … that which is not yet.
The waiting of Advent is about a promised future. It is about a future that is different from the present reality … from what is. It is about a future in which life is shaped by and patterned after the ways of God — what the Hebrew prophets called justice and righteousness (Isaiah 9:7). It is about a future in which power is used to bring life into being and nurture it to maturity (Isaiah 2:2-4) as opposed to power being used over, down against others for our personal benefit at their expense (Mark 10:42-45). It is about a future that God is working to bring into reality — a new heaven and earth (Isaiah 65:17-25; Revelation 21:1-7). “The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this” (Isaiah 9:7).
Because it is about what is not, but will be, the waiting of Advent is waiting in hope.
Hope is the traditional theme of the first Sunday of Advent. Hope is the forward look of faith … the quiet confidence and settled assurance that what is not yet, will be. Our hope is grounded in God and God’s faithful love. The LORD will not give up on us or abandon us until what God has promised becomes the reality of our lives — Christ-like spiritual maturity for us individually and, for creation, a new heaven and a new earth shaped by and patterned after the ways of God (Romans 8:18-25).
The Spirit is God’s guarantee to us of this future reality. The Spirit’s work in our lives, producing spiritual transformation and progress, solidifies our hope. “Hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5:5). Our hope is not just longing for things to be different. It is more than wishful thinking. Our hope is a quiet confidence that the LORD will bring into reality what God has promised.
The waiting of Advent is more than just marking time. It is not a time of feeling powerless as though things were beyond our control. Rather, the waiting of Advent is a time of working to bring what is not, but will be, into reality … here, now. It is a time for living the ways of God in the midst of what is. It is a time to pray for and work for the kingdom to come on earth today, as it is in heaven.
And so we wait … and work … in hope!
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