Wait

I've been thinking about what it's like to wait for Christmas. My older brother has two daughters that are 8 and 9 and the younger one's birthday is a couple days before Christmas. While I was visiting my parents, the younger one was expressing her enthusiasm for her upcoming birthday and Christmas and all the presents she will get. It struck me that their innocent experience of waiting for Christmas is so vastly different from what it's like to wait on things now. The end of their wait will be toys and games and entertainment and a feeling of being very loved. But as adults, our lives are often filled with apprehension, fear, and uncertainty as we wait for test results, news, job callbacks. Sometimes we don't know what we're waiting for, which can be terrifying.

The Psalmist writes in chapter 27 that enemies gather around and all sorts of evil closes in, and yet concludes in verse 14 that you must: "Wait for the Lord, be strong and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!" Such a poetic phrase, but one much easier said than done. In Advent, we're waiting for a day, which represents the arrival of our Savior. We know when December 25th hits (it's usually the same every year) and we know what's going to happen (family, food, presents, cheesy Hallmark Channel specials), but we don't know when we're going to find out if it's cancer and what the prognosis is, and we don't know if we'll be able to take care of an aging parent and our spouse/children or if we will still have a job in a month. Even though we are assured that Christ will return and that everything will be okay, there's a lot of what if between this and that, so how do we wait constructively? How do we wait without fear? What do we hold onto?

For me, the answer is Christmas. It's not just a day, but it's a remembrance that Jesus not only came, but comes daily, Incarnate in our lives each moment through the Holy Spirit. Wait for the Lord doesn't mean 'eventually' it means 'just a second!' It means God is working in your life, and in the lives of those around you, to bring you joy when you are being swallowed by despair, even if it's just one good belly laugh. It means that Jesus is with the doctors and nurses who are overseeing your medical care even when you don't know that outcome. It means that the Lord is making God's self known to you in each moment, and especially in the dark moments. I know that when I'm most down or scared, the thing that gets me through is not 'it's going to be okay' because who even knows if it's going to be okay? It's knowing that God has promised himself present in that crap, so when I'm afraid I can fall before Jesus and weep with that fear trusting that he sees my tears, even if I don't know when or if my grief will end. It's knowing that he came once, and because he came once, he will come again and again right now, tomorrow, and for the rest of eternity. It's knowing that when Jesus shows up, things do change.

Like the Psalmist, I know that: "If my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up" and "I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." Because of that, we know that even though our enemies do gather around us, and even though our hearts are heavy with sorrow and pain and anxiety, God is here. And because God is here, we know God keeps promises, and that is how we can have hope that it really will be okay in the end.