What Am I Waiting For This Advent?

Advent is a season of waiting—but waiting for what, exactly?

The obvious answer is Christmas, the celebration of the Incarnation. But Advent has always had a double meaning: we remember the first coming of Jesus as a child in the stable - yet at the same time anticipating his return.

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Advent - a season suspended between memory and hope.

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If I'm honest about what I'm waiting for - it is for things to make sense.

I don’t understand the way suffering seems so unevenly distributed. The way good intentions can curdle into conflict. The way we hurt the people we love most. The way time evapourates and the important things remain unsaid. Why a person carries the weight of chronic pain or depression that never lifts, while others move through life largely untroubled. According to scripture the good are supposed to thrive but in life it seems the evil ones are the ones who really thrive. The randomness of it all tends to sit heavy with me.

Advent names this ache. The prophets cried out for justice to roll down like waters. The psalmist asked, "How long, O Lord?" Mary sang of the proud being scattered and the hungry filled. These are not the words of people who found the world satisfactory. They are the words of people who looked at what is and insisted that it was not yet what it should be.

So, I wait for the world to be as it should – but I think I would have to outlive

Methuselah who lived to be 969 years (Gen 5:27). For reconciliation where there is estrangement. For clarity where there is confusion. For peace - not the shallow peace of avoidance, but the deep peace that comes when things are really set to right.

And in the waiting, there is this strange gift: the reminder that I am not the one who

fixes it. Advent is the season that says, "Help is coming." Not the help I manufacture, but the help that arrives quietly, unexpectedly, in the last place anyone would think to look:

A stable            A child.

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The Word made flesh, dwelling among us.

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Maybe that's what I'm really waiting for: the courage to believe that such a small beginning could be enough.

Let us pray this Advent that the world will begin to be as God would like it. And that through his grace we will help in changing things.

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Life is a constant Advent season

We are continually waiting to become, to discover, to complete, to fulfill. Hope, struggle, fear, expectation and fulfillment are all part of our Advent experience.

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Isaiah’s Announcement

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned. 

You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy; they rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest, as warriors rejoice when dividing the plunder. 

For as in the day of Midian’s defeat, you have shattered the yoke that burdens them, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor. 

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 

Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.