Waiting has never been something I have particularly enjoyed doing. I can remember several times in my life when waiting has been particularly difficult: waiting for the acceptance letter from my favorite college, waiting to hear back from a search committee at a church I had interviewed with, waiting to hear back from a doctor about the results of a medical test. All of these waits involved a significant amount of anxiety. Will the answer I want be given to me? If I had known for sure what the answer to each of these waits would be, the waiting would not have been difficult, and I would not have been anxious.
But there is another kind of waiting that I have experienced as well, the wait for something that I really want. As a child I can remember the anticipation of waiting for Christmas morning and the tree with all the gifts under it. There is the joyful anticipation of waiting for a loved to arrive for a visit. Or the excitement of graduating with a degree after many years of hard work to earn it. This kind of waiting can be difficult as well, but it is not anxiety producing. For me, this is the kind of waiting that Advent is all about. God has promised to come into our world to love us and to show us how to love one another. For me, when I really let myself embrace the Advent season, this is a wait that fills me with joy and excitement. Because, when I look at the world around me, I can feel discouraged and hopeless. But when I remind myself that God loves us so much that He is willing to become one of us, I feel joy and excitement. May Advent be for all of us one of joyful anticipation of the one who comes to us as one of us.
Suzannah Rohman
But there is another kind of waiting that I have experienced as well, the wait for something that I really want. As a child I can remember the anticipation of waiting for Christmas morning and the tree with all the gifts under it. There is the joyful anticipation of waiting for a loved to arrive for a visit. Or the excitement of graduating with a degree after many years of hard work to earn it. This kind of waiting can be difficult as well, but it is not anxiety producing. For me, this is the kind of waiting that Advent is all about. God has promised to come into our world to love us and to show us how to love one another. For me, when I really let myself embrace the Advent season, this is a wait that fills me with joy and excitement. Because, when I look at the world around me, I can feel discouraged and hopeless. But when I remind myself that God loves us so much that He is willing to become one of us, I feel joy and excitement. May Advent be for all of us one of joyful anticipation of the one who comes to us as one of us.
Suzannah Rohman