Waiting Well

What do people do while they wait for something?

I’ve seen the weary traveler dozing in the busy airport terminal, and heard the impatient customer complain loudly about “getting another register opened up!” I once saw a driver shaving at the stoplight on Peach and Kuntz (the efficiency experts would approve). And I heard of a husband who claimed to have, over the years, read an entire set of encyclopedias while waiting for his wife to get ready to go out!

What will we do while we wait this year for Christmas?

We generally experience Advent by trying to re-create the Christmas scenario. By putting ourselves in Mary’s sandals or the shepherd’s bare feet or even the donkey’s hooves – trying to feel what they felt and experience what it all meant to them. We dress up like them, we sing "O Come O Come Emmanuel," and we wonder what it really would have felt like to be on the waiting side of Jesus’ coming.

But we are on the waiting side of Jesus’ coming - again. Ronald Klug wrote:

“I am an Advent Christian… Advent Christians believe Christ came, but we still sing, ‘Oh, Come, Oh, Come, Emmanuel.’ We believe that in Christ the kingdom of God has dawned, but we still eagerly pray ‘thy kingdom come’ because we long for a world that is still to come. Exile, longing, watchfulness and waiting resonate with us…” The cry of Advent is still, as Klug writes, “Wake up! Be alert! Watch for his coming.’”

Watch for the One Who “will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God” (1 Thess. 4:16 NIV). Watch for the One called Faithful and True, with eyes like blazing fire, on Whose head are many crowns, and on His robe and thigh is written this name: King of Kings and Lord of Lords (Rev. 19). Wait eagerly; look and long for His appearing.

He may not come on our watch. But no matter, the charge remains: Wait well. Don’t fill the intervening days and years with busy work just to look productive; don’t reach for mindless diversions; don’t sink into lethargy like the foolish virgins of Jesus’ parable. Don’t grow impatient or discouraged and adopt the mindset of the skeptical world: “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? (2 Peter 3:4 NIV).

Instead, “live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming… Make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him… looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness” (2 Peter 3:11-13 NIV).