We spend so much time waiting that the word is an adjective we use to describe various nouns. So we have waiting rooms and waiting areas. We have waiting lists and waiting times.
For me waiting is often a frustration. I see it too often as synonymous with just wasting time.
But waiting is not always a bad thing. It depends how we use the waiting time. Much of the joy in life comes from the pleasure that comes after a period of waiting for something good to happen. I'm thinking of some of life's key moments, like waiting during your engagement for the wedding day and waiting during pregnancy for the child's birth.
For many people, advent is just the boring wait until Christmas, like waiting in a queue before you get in to see an exciting film or show. Necessary but dull.
This advent I'm trying to use the waiting time positively, to consider the state of the world and the state of my own life, and recognise afresh the need for the Saviour, just as much in 21st century Britain as in 1st century Palestine.
God's idea to put the world to rights when all else had failed, by coming to the world himself as a baby to save it, must be the most beautiful, loving and audacious thought ever to have entered the divine mind.
As one Christmas carol puts it:
Sacred Infant, all divine,
What a tender love was Thine,
Thus to come from highest bliss,
Down to such a world as this.
Tender love indeed because he comes not to get anything from us, but to give us everything he has. He loves us and wants us to love him too. That's it. It's all he wants and it's the only thing we could possibly give him. As another carol says:
What can I give Him, poor as I am?
...Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.And waiting to celebrate his birth once again is no waste of time. It is an act of love and an honour.
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