Sometimes Waiting is Hard – Brad Jersak
Waiting:
“Advent” is a word I was unfamiliar with as a child growing up in my Baptist tradition. But in my years with the Mennonites, I became familiar with the ritual of lighting candles on the Advent wreath in anticipation of Christ’s nativity.
Advent, I learned, meant arrival but intrinsic to that word was the waiting, the anticipation and the longing of God’s people for his appearance and especially his deliverance. As a little boy, I relived that expectant hope as the calendar slowly edged forward to Christmas.
Sometimes Waiting is Hard
I think most children find waiting for the climax of Christmas morning difficult … but they may also enjoy the waiting itself as they experience the whole season as a wonderland of lights, sweets and intoxicating anticipation.
Still, in our culture and in our lives, waiting can be very hard. On top of the frenetic pace and exhausting demands of our 21stcentury society, the Christmas season adds a new dimension of scurrying. I become more sensitive to long traffic lights, slow download speeds and snail-paced line-ups. I become more demanding of others—where’s my fast-food order? Why hasn’t he replied to my text yet? When is she picking me up? Checking my watch every two minutes.
Beyond these trivialities, waiting for important news can be excruciating. Applications are brutal … applying for jobs, applying for housing, applying for school, applying for work permits or scholarship funds or debt forgiveness. Waiting!
And then there’s waiting for medical results. What did the lab say? A second opinion? How long? Three weeks? Good grief! Waiting can be very hard.
Negative Effects of Waiting
We may experience serious negative effects of waiting in our body, soul and spirit:
- * We may have a spike in anxiety that affects our sleep and our appetite.
- * Waiting may also trigger feelings of frustration, which is really a kind of anger, especially at whatever or whoever is prolonging or even blocking our path.
- * Chronic waiting may walk us into grief and groaning.
- * Eventually, waiting may settle into depression and despair.
- * We may even lapse into a hard cynicism or self-defeating victim narrative.
Cries of despair echo around the globe as so many wait in apparent futility for relief from chronic poverty and illness, constant hostility and continual war.
How Do We Wait?
How shall we respond to the moans of those whose waiting has ground them down?
First, I think we must BE WITH THEM. The promise of a virgin-born child named Emmanuel was to say that God is not distant or deaf to our groaning prayers. He is “God with us” … and not in some magical misty fog of abstracted presence. No, he is with us, embodied as those who willingly co-suffer with the broken. It means weeping with those who weep rather than rushing to fix them with empty platitudes. When we hear their story, we bear it with them, as God-in-Christ did and does.
Second, we do our best not to silence their lament. The complaints of those who wait in grief can be messy and it’s tempting to correct them when we hear B.S. about God or the world or themselves spewing out of their mouths. But those toxic beliefs need a wait out, need to be given voice as part of the detox. We need to practice nonjudgmental listening in the presence of our unrattled God. And we need to offer up our own honest laments without fear.
Third, we join in the waiting with a call for deliverance, committing to not growing bored or jaded and simply moving on when the wait seems too long. “How long?!” is the legitimate, weeping cry of many in our world today. Let’s cry it with them:
Psalm 13
1 How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
3 Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
4 and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
5 But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
6 I will sing the Lord’s praise,
for he has been good to me.
Sometimes Waiting is Really Good
So far, I’ve emphasized how difficult waiting can be. But waiting is also incredibly important to human development. I recently brainstormed the positive effects of waiting with a congregation in Regina, Canada. They offered the following list of positive impacts of waiting.
- * Waiting develops patience, endurance and resilience
- * Waiting creates longing and increases expectancy
- * Waiting builds gratitude for what we’ll receive.
- * Waiting prepares our hearts and readies us to receive.
- * Waiting increases our capacity to receive … enlarging our hearts.
- * Waiting cleanses us as we let go of lesser desires or attachments.
- * Waiting deepens faith in the goodness of God despite delays.
Many times when I or others are waiting on God, we complain that it’s going too slow and ask why God can’t pick up the pace a bit. The sense I’ve had again and again is that God is going as fast as we can. He longs for us to receive the grace that’s already ours but can only deliver that to the degree we can receive it. In other words, he’s honoring the pace of our growth.
Advent Waiting
Back to Advent. Why is it that we step into Israel’s story each Nativity season? Because it is our story too.
As the Jews were waiting and longing for their Messiah to restore the kingdom of Israel, so too, we wait for Christ’s arrival to restore this world. Century after century they wait. Remember, they waited 400 years for deliverance from slavery in Egypt! And then later, they were exiles in Assyria and Babylon. And then even when they returned to the land, they lived under Greek and then Roman imperial occupation.
We, too, have been waiting. Whatever expression the glorious return of Christ is meant to take, 2000 years of waiting have left us wondering, “How long, O Lord?” How many times have we mistakenly set dates, despite Christ’s warning, and ran aground on our own impatient predictions? Sometimes we make up such silliness because we’re bored or because it makes for good book sales. More legitimately, whenever and wherever the people of God experience great tribulation and persecution, like the martyrs under the altar in Revelation 6, they cry out, “How long?” from sheer desperation.
Sometimes Waiting Gives Way to Arrival
The good news is that sometimes our waiting gives way to arrival. Advent reminds us that although we wait for our Savior to return, he’s also already come. This was the experience of Simeon when Mary and Joseph brought Christ to the Temple as an infant:
Luke 2
25 Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. 26 It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. 27 Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, 28 Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying:
29 “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,
you may now dismiss your servant in peace.
30 For my eyes have seen your salvation,
31 which you have prepared in the sight of all nations:
32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and the glory of your people Israel.”
33 The child’s father and mother marveled at what was said about him. 34 Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, 35 so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”
Yes, we wait for his appearing to restore all things and many of us wait to restore the broken places of our lives, but we also proclaim his arrival. Emmanuel is “God with us,” not “God was with us.” We welcome his presence whenever two or three gather in his name. We recognize that Christian worship is about “God with us,” and not only “God not yet here.”
Why Simulate the Story Each Year?
Thus, we relive the Advent story to remember that even as we wait for Christ’s return, yet we celebrate the good news that he’s already come. And conversely, though Christ has already come, we remind ourselves that we wait for his appearing to restore all things and pray that he will restore our lives in the here and now.
I wish that all those who suffer through waiting would experience Christ’s arrival immediately. But until they do, we wait, we groan and we pray. And we remember that it’s not all just about us and our waiting. Did you know Christ is waiting for us in those who wait this season?
Advent Justice
Finally, friend Kenneth Tanner calls me to see in Advent how the world groans and waits for Christ to be revealed through us as kingdom builders and peacemakers. I couldn’t say this better so I’ll give him the last word:
“Advent is the church’s reminder that creation still longs for the return of its suffering King. As we enter a frenetic month—a time when we are tempted to rush and to spin ‘round, to embrace fraudulent expectations, to anticipate the arrival of what turns out, in the end, to be nothing if we are in pursuit of nostalgia and the gods of December—let us remember that the true God waits with creation for humanity to welcome the One who yet suffers with the poor in the places of the unwelcome.
“Christ our crucified, risen and ascended Lord is coming to us now and always in the hungry, the naked, the thirsty, the sick, and the prisoner. This is what the world looks like in Advent season—what the Holy Family looks like—waiting for its Maker to judge as only he can judge, for his good judgments which perfect humanity and the cosmos, which burn away from us all that is not of Love.”
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