Third Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 35:1-6; Psalm 145:16, 19; Psalm 130:5

Waiting

"Anticipation lifts the heart. Desire is created to be fulfilled - perhaps not all at once, more likely in slow stages." (Luci Shaw)

Are you waiting for something?

Have you been waiting for a long time?

"It's the waiting that's hard, the in-between of divine promise and its fulfillment, like a leap across a ditch after take-off and before landing.  Most of us find ourselves dangling in this hiatus, which in the interval may seem a waste of time. We drum our fingers on the steering wheel as we wait for the light to change. We wait, gnawing with anxiety, for the telephone call that tells us we got the job. For politicians' promises to be fulfilled. For our health to improve. For our headstrong children to grow up. For Jesus to come and resolve the world's confusion and pain. (Luci Shaw)

"Waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminished a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy."  

(Romans 8:24-26 The Message)

"With such motivation, we can wait as we sense God is indeed with us, and at work within us...Though the protracted waiting time is often the place of distress, even disillusionment, we are counseled in the book of James to "let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete." Pain, grief, consternation, even despair, need not diminish us. They can augment us by adding to the breadth and depth of our experience, by enriching our spectrum of light and darkness, by keeping us from impulsively jumping into action before the time is ripe, before "the fullness of time." I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope." (Luci Shaw)

"Oh my Lord, keep me from frustration and impatience when I see little evidence of your living and growing in me. Reassure me that waiting time is not wasted time. That your purposes for us all are large and all-embracing enough to hold firm and prevail, no matter the obstacles or distractions. You have told us that "now is the accepted time...now is the day of salvation." But perhaps your "now" is different from ours. You see our lives from the infinite perspective of eternity, of kairos. We want immediate action, change, growth in chronos, in "real time." We want to see our problems being resolved, Now.

Help us to realize, as those who love and believe in you, that we, too, are pregnant with Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, and that day by day we are being enlarged. Augment our hope, widen our imagination, and nourish our anticipation that the astounding fact of "Christ in you, the hope of glory" will turn true in us in your good time. (Luci Shaw, God With Us)

Amen