Advent Waiting

Nobody really likes to wait. Traffic.The bus on a cold prairie morning.A file to download.The show to start. The show to end! Who can be patient when the guy ahead has 20 items in the 10 or less line?

Hard waiting.Watching a loved one die, knowing of domestic violence, seeing if the money will stretch.Waiting to breathe easy.

So, what does it mean when God invites us wait? Like a pregnant woman waits 9 months to bring to birth a new creation.

The waiting that God demands is conditional. It depends. It depends on what the circumstances of our lives and our community require.Waiting for me is different than waiting for you.

The waiting of God’s design is not passive. Remember waiting as a child for Christmas morning?The waiting God requires of us leads to change.

I am a person of privilege in a world where there is obscene disparity between those who have in abundance, nay, in overabundance, and those who have little. In this context, what am I waiting for, truly waiting for? A Northend Winnipeg woman I have met is not so privileged. She has no home, bruises on her neck, holes in her shoes. There are track marks down her arms, long unused tracks, but the effects of the years of addiction are still evident. What is she waiting for I wonder?

I am waiting for the other shoe to drop. I am waiting for the recognition that my salvation is completely dependent on salvation foreveryone. Not some ethereal kind of salvation either. It is dependent on people being saved from hunger and violence, from pain and abuse, from neglect and suffering.In this world. I can’t affect what happens in the next.

As we wait through the weeks of Advent we wait knowing how the story is going to end. God does not ask us to wait without hope; the baby is born, there is joy in the air and the angels sing the heavenly chorus. So I wait for what I know will be, but, is also not yet come. So I pray that my waiting will be patient, but not too patient. Come, O Jesus, Come.