Advent & the power in waiting

Whether you mark it in a formal way or not, Advent is a season of waiting. I don’t think there’s a single child in the country this month who’s not counting “how many sleeps” until Christmas Day, even while their parents are silently hoping for just “a few more sleeps” to get everything done.

Waiting is hard. Though we likely don’t find it as hard to wait for Christmas as our kids (though maybe you do!), as adults we still find waiting hard. Whether we’re waiting for an appointment, to find out some news, for our winter cold to get better, for God to change our circumstances… we don’t like waiting.

God knows that we find waiting hard. David cries out “How long, LORD” in more than one Psalm, Habakkuk asks how long he must call to God for help (Hab.1v2), even the martyred saints are calling out, asking God how long until he comes in judgment (Rev.6v10). The Bible is full of people waiting.

In fact, you could say that the Bible is all about waiting. From that first promise of a Satan-crusher in Genesis 3, the human race waited for Him to come along. With each son that was born, the faithful Israelites must have been asking ‘is he the one?’ And thousands of years passed before that very unassuming baby was born: Jesus, the deliverer! As we count down the sleeps until Christmas in our families, it would do us well to remember the thousands-of-years wait of the Old Testament.

Waiting is good for us

We can wonder why God didn’t just make that promise to Adam and Eve – to have one of their children crush Satan’s head – and then have that son be Cain. But again and again in Scripture we see God using times of waiting to draw His people closer to Him and to form them into the people He was making them.

We see Abram, a partially obedient liar, transformed into Abraham who was willing even to sacrifice his son for the LORD. We see Moses changed from a cowardly murderer to the godly leader of the Exodus. We see David moved from being an adulterer and murderer to being a man after God’s own heart.

These are not quick fixes, but the slow work of God in His people’s hearts through waiting and circumstances. And it’s the same for us. I wonder, if we reflect, how much of our own sanctification we can attribute to times of waiting upon the Lord.

Lost opportunities to wait

And yet in our culture we are losing the practice of waiting. We get same-day delivery, can instantly stream that next episode, can click and collect to avoid queuing. It’s the same for our kids. One grandmother was recently complaining to me that she didn’t know what to get her grandchildren for Christmas because they have everything. They aren’t expected to wait for their birthday or Christmas to receive what they’re after. Even Advent calendars, the markers of waiting, are sometimes so plush these days that there’s a full-on toy for each day. There’s no need to wait for the gifts.

Can I encourage us to think about taking the slow option this December? To practice waiting, both for us and our children, that we might better strengthen our muscles of patience. That we might enter into the wonder of waiting for God’s promises to be fulfilled even as we teach this to our kids. And as we practice waiting in the small things, God may well transform us in small ways, and better equip us for those bigger, harder times of waiting. I’m praying for God’s work in us as we do that, this Christmas.