The Art of Waiting

This Sunday marks the start of Advent. Despite the fact that we generally jump the gun and make the month leading up to Christmas the season of Cramming-in-as-Many-Christmas-Parties-and-as-Much-Cheer-as-Possible, traditionally Advent is actually meant to emphasize the waiting, not the celebrations. At one time Advent was a season of penance parallel to Lent, hence the purple/dark blue colours; they added one week of "joy"-- the pink "Gaudette Candle"--because they thought that two full seasons of penance was overkill. At any rate, the Christmas celebrations were meant to happen after Christmas Eve-- after His arrival on the scene--and the time leading up to Christmas morning was all about the delayed gratification of waiting for it.

But we don't do delayed gratification that well any more, so the Advent Season has sort of morphed into the pre-Christmas Christmas Season.

And maybe there's something lost there; because there's something powerful in the delayed gratification, the spiritual preparation, the waiting of Advent. It's a time to remember how God's people once sat in darkness, waiting for the light. It's a time to recall their ache, as they longed for the deliverance that God had promised them through their ancient prophets. And it's a time to remember their hope, when they finally heard John the Baptist, that last great prophet of God's Coming One, crying out in the wilderness: "Prepare the Way for the Lord."

But more than mere remembrance, Advent is a time for us to ask ourselves: if he had come to us that first Christmas so long ago, would we have been prepared? Are our hearts so tuned to the things of God that we would have recognized Salvation for the World as it stirred silently and scandalously in the womb of an unwed mother? Are we so spiritually awake to God's passion for the poor, his heart for the humble, his embrace of the outcast, that we would have named that child "Emmanuel"-- God with us-- as he squirmed newborn in the humble arms of the homeless virgin who'd just delivered him into the world?

As we ask ourselves these questions during the Advent Season, we have the chance to prepare again. We can invite God to name, weigh and gently purge the things of this world that keep us unprepared for his coming. We can ask God to teach us again what it means to long for deliverance from the darkness of our petty sins, and selfishness, and pride. We can allow God to renew our own heart for the poor, the humble, the outcasts of this world.

Because in the advent season, we remember not only that he came, but also that he is coming.

As he came once, so he will come again-- quickly-- like a theif in the night-- when the hearts of many have grown cold or sleepy with waiting-- when many of the servants have given up the work and most of the lamps have run out of oil-- he'll return and claim his own. And as we prepare for the celebration of his first coming, so we prepare our hearts and renew our expectation for his Second Coming, asking and hoping that we'll found ready and waiting.