We are in the season of Advent.  The season of preparation.  The season of waiting.

We live in an instant-gratification culture that hates waiting. We are barraged with Christmas sales, music, and merchandise in October.  So when we hear talk about “Advent” we tend to think only of the countdown calendars… and even then, it’s hard to understand and embrace the waiting.

Advent is a Season of Preparation

What is it that we are “preparing” for?  We prepare for the coming of Christ.

For young children, we certainly focus on the Miracle of the Incarnation: in Advent we prepare for the birth of Christ.  But as we grow older, we hear the readings throughout Advent… readings that are not simply about the coming of the Christ-Child, but of the Second Coming and John the Baptist’s message of repentance.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) summed up the meaning of Advent when he suggested that in it, we celebrate three comings of the Lord: the past, the present, and the future,

• The Past: The first coming was the coming of Christ in history: the Miracle of the Incarnation.
• The Present: The coming of Christ within the hearts of disciples.
• The Future:This final coming (often referred to as “The Second Coming”) will take place at the end of the world (the Apocalypse).

The Past – The Incarnation: Amid the secular holiday retail extravaganza, we do manage to see the images of the nativity, however meager. Look for them.  Revisit the story of the Nativity.  Marvel at the Mystery of the Incarnation: God became human.

The Future – The Second Coming:  Though admittedly, we don’t see many images of the Second Coming in seasonal decorations.  Not very heart warming, I suppose. Even as Jesus himself admits we do not know the hour (Matthew 24:36), we are called to prepare our lives for this reality by having our priorities in order.

The Present – In Our Hearts:  St. Bernard referred to this dimension of Advent as the “invisible” reality.  Here, we can look to the multitude of Christmas movies and focus on the messages of conversion, from The Grinch to Rudolph to even my least favorite, Frosty.

Yet still, we manage to misunderstand the meaning of this season of preparation in our daily lives.  Bear with me as I ask you to take a moment to engage your religious imagination:

The thing is that Jesus couldn’t care less about the condition of my house.  What he cares about is the condition of my heart.

When John the Baptist tells us to Prepare the Way… to Repent and believe… he’s telling us to get our priorities in order.  To quit obsessing about the things that don’t matter (consumerism, materialism, and perfectionism, just to name a few) and give our hearts to the things that do matter (love, presence, and a faith that does justice).

So perhaps in the midst of all that time we spend waiting, we could ask ourselves a better question:  

• What do I need to do to prepare my heart–my life–to welcome Jesus?

IMG_0220 by Alex Harden licensed under CC BY 2.0

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I struggle with Waiting.  Patience is not my strongest virtue.

I’m not talking about the banalities of waiting in traffic or waiting behind a check-writer in the check-out line of the grocery store.

I’m talking about Waiting to hear news about a job in the midst of unemployment. Waiting for a diagnosis.  Waiting for that life-changing email or phone call.  Waiting for a response.

Waiting for more information so that you can move beyond the gazillion choose-your-own-adventure style possibilities in your head and actually start doing the “next thing,” whatever that may be.

Most recently, this Waiting sat like a ball of anxiety in the pit of my stomach.  My boys got sick while we were visiting my parents in Malaysia.

When my younger one gets sick, it’s always been no-energy with a scary-high fever for the first 24 hours.  After that first 24-hours, the high fever always breaks and then, I can tell whether it’s worthy of a doctor’s visit or just a passing bug.  My older one has a similar cycle, but the high-fever isn’t quite so scary.  It was only a 24 hour wait.  I have waited longer for other things, but this was my children… in another country… it was just hard.

Waiting is hard.

It’s not that I don’t have hope.  I have confidence that the grace of God will help me face whatever challenges may come.  But as a person of action, I’ll be the first to admit that the Waiting is just hard.

• Can you relate?  Do you struggle with Waiting?

Of course the Waiting provides us with an invitation to trust and an opportunity to pray.  But I am still struck by how hard that Waiting can be.

•  Who do you know that needs the encouragement, affirmation, and validation that we find in the Psalms?

Waiting Alone by Max Wolfe licensed under CC BY 2.0

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