Waiting...

So you wait. You wait for school to start. You wait for school to end. You wait for the big vacation trip. You wait for graduation. You wait for Mr/Ms Right. You wait for the baby to be born, and then for it to sleep through the night, and then for it to go to school and for it to come home from school…and this begins to sound familiar. You wait for the promotion and for the raise and for the paycheck, or sometimes for the job to show up. You wait for retirement and for pension checks.

You wait to die.

Through it all, you wait with longing that is sometimes passionate and sometimes faint but persevering, for Jesus to come.

They waited. “Redeemer,” said the angel at Eden’s gates, and “Messiah,” said the prophets, and the centuries and the lifetimes slid by, and they waited.

When you’re the one doing the waiting, it’s endless. It might be ten minutes for the phone call or a week for the medical test results or nine months for the pregnancy or hours for the birth, but it’s all forever.

“It’s all relative,” said Einstein. “

To me, all times are soon,” said Aslan.

“God is patient,” said Peter.

And still we wait.

Advent comes every year. At least you only have to wait one trip around the sun for that. Then you only have to wait a month for Christmas. It’s a time when we can rediscover both the waiting and the end of waiting. When the little girl and her fiancé got through the night at the stable, and the waiting was over, it had still just begun. There was babyhood to be got through, and childhood (bar mitzvah, Son of the Covenant) and then 18 years at home waiting for the ministry to begin.

That 3 ½ years must have gone by in a flash. Not so the hours of the “trial,” or, God help us, the crucifixion. Or the grave…But that part ended. And IT WAS DONE!

Then he said, “I’ll be back. Soon!”

And so we wait. Even so, come, Lord Jesus!