What Are We Waiting For This Advent Season?

HOLY

WAITING

This post is part of the series:

What Are We Waiting For This Advent Season?

at Christine Sine’s blog “Godspace“

Holy Waiting

by Liz Dyer

Waiting

Watching

Together

For the dawn

Of light full blown

To grow inside us

A rebirth of love

Beginning again and again

Life anew

With a promise in our heart

Of coming celebration

What am I waiting for this Advent season?  The same things I wait for all year – love, kindness, mercy, compassion, justice, and the joy and celebration that those things bring.

Sometimes I wait for it in myself as I struggle to forgive someone who has wronged me or those I love…or when my caring seems to be turned back on myself and I am miserable because I am looking in the wrong direction…or when my humility slips away and I become a know-it-all defending my beliefs with prideful certainty.

Sometimes I wait for it in others as I watch innocent people suffer because of power and greed – as I hear hateful words spewed with careless abandon – as lives are lost due to war, disease, hunger, prejudice, disaster – as the oppressed, the disenfranchised, the outcasts are rejected or, worse, ignored.

Sometimes I wait for it in the church as I see exclusion, hate, division, and apathy going unnoticed while some less significant issue seems to be at the forefront – as I see numbers and programs and rules matter more than individual people – as I see the church turning in on itself, protecting itself, nurturing itself.

Sometimes I wait for it in God – when my prayers seem to go unheard and unanswered – when I am overwhelmed with all the injustice and suffering going on in the world – when it seems like the promise might not be kept after all.

Sometimes, I want to give up, to quit hoping, to quit believing, to quit waiting – but then I get some glimpse of the love that is being reborn, I see a flicker of the light that will some day be full blown …

In the man who leaves his successful, highly paid, glamorous job to start a charity for people who need clean drinking water.

In the church that goes to a nearby neighborhood and does extreme home makeovers for those in need.

In the small group of Christ followers who help those in need get their clothes washed and dried and call it Laundry Love.

In the football team who cheers  for the other side.

In the mom (me) who learns lessons of love and grace from her gay son.

In the God who became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.

Yes, I wait all year but the Advent season is a special time of waiting.  It is a time to practice and train – a time to learn how to wait hopefully and joyfully – a time to be reminded of and reflect on the glimpses and the flickers of the past and the present – it is a time of Holy Waiting.