Advent Week 1

Hope For Those Who Wait

Sunday, December 1

As I write this, I am in a waiting room, surrounded by others.  There are all sorts of waiting rooms.  Some are places where the thin line between life and death are straddled by knocking knees and fluttering hearts.  Others are like this one, where the mundane necessities of life make us stop from our hurried rush.

It seems that all waiting rooms are filled with the inconvenienced and the powerless.  Waiting is not something that we do well.  That is why there is always a TV, coffee and magazines available.  Any distraction will do just so we don't have to focus on our waiting.  Like a magician, who with misdirection can make a rabbit appear out of thin air, we try to fill our time so that the experience of waiting can drift into the distance.

There are obvious reasons for this stance, of course.  From the banal reality that we don't like to be inconvenienced to the more existential fear that leaving the waiting room we will confront a world that will never be the same again.

And yet, there is a deeper, more visceral terror that lies understated in every waiting room whether ones where life changing or merely disrupting moments take place.  It is rarely vocalized, but lingers in the air.  Each time we wait, we recognize that we are not the center of the universe.  We cannot do everything, know everything, and control everything.  In the waiting room, we come face to face with the reality that we are not gods who wish reality into being but creatures dependent on the care and actions of others.

This year as we wait during the season of advent, perhaps we can move beyond the distractions in the waiting room--the parties, decorations, and meals.  And instead encounter and embrace the silence in the waiting room and consider our dependence on the grace of God, the soft cry of a baby, the violent death of a man, and the power of resurrection.

John 3:31-35

31 The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the earth belongs to the earth, and speaks as one from the earth. The one who comes from heaven is above all. 32 He testifies to what he has seen and heard, but no one accepts his testimony. 33 Whoever has accepted it has certified that God is truthful. 34 For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God[a] gives the Spirit without limit. 35 The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands.

Bob Fox